The council manages around 5,845 properties across the borough and this report aims to let tenants and leaseholders know how we have performed in the financial year, from 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024.

During 2023/24 the housing revenue account spent a total of £18.3 million in delivering services to you. In addition to this we spent £6.3 million on improving your properties, £3.2 million of which went on the decent homes programme and which saw the installation of new kitchens, bathrooms, heating etc.

We will continue to improve your homes in coming years and will always welcome your feedback to help us improve our services; and so if there are any problems, please let us know. We hope you find the annual report of interest. There’s a lot going on and we offer our tenants a range of opportunities to influence our services.

Landlord service general (cross-service)

What we did last year

  • We saw the successful completion of the digitisation of all five and a half thousand of our tenants’ house files and create an electronic document management system to reduce our reliance on paper
  • We carried out our first annual tenant perception survey in compliance with new regulatory standards;
  • We started work in order to ensure that we meet the requirements on the new consumer standards, which became mandatory for all landlords of social housing in 2024

What we are going to do in the next year

  • We will continue to work on meeting our consumer standards obligations and implement various actions in order to improve our tenants’ lives in the homes where they live through the services we provide;
  • We will continue carrying out our tenant perception surveys but on a quarterly rather than an annual basis;
  • In order that we can provide improved services that people want, we will begin a project to update the information we have on who lives in our homes;
  • We will be implementing new policies on vulnerability, domestic abuse and fire safety in communal areas.

Customer engagement

Customers are at the heart of everything we do and we try to ensure that there are opportunities to have your say and get involved in a way that suits you.

We have a dedicated customer engagement team to support tenants and leaseholders in involvement opportunities including the Charnwood Housing Residents’ Forum, Senior Citizens’ Forum, Leaseholders’ Forum, Housing Management Advisory Board, focus groups, editorial panel and a readers’ panel.

What we did last year

  • We awarded 20 community initiatives fund projects, totalling £4,416 to support community activities
  • We spent £14,289 on tenant bids, supporting five projects to improve the areas where tenants live
  • We provided £5,639 to four projects to support local tenants and communities from our EEM community donations fund
  • We held six estate walkabouts in Anstey, East Goscote, Rothley, Sileby, Warwick Way and Ashby Road.
  • We held four drop-in sessions and networking events held throughout the borough in Shelthorpe, Syston, Shepshed and Loughborough Town Hall
  • We engaged 150 tenants in our formal and informal activities, who gave feedback on the services we provide and how we can improve them
  • We continued to deliver on our proposed actions in the 2023/2025 customer engagement strategy

What we are going to do

  • We will consult tenants in the creation of our new customer engagement strategy for 2025/2028 in order to understand how they would like to be involved in the shaping and scrutinising of our services;
  • We will investigate and implement new ways engage tenants which suit their needs;
  • We will develop, recruit and train tenant members to a new mystery shopping panel;
  • We will develop, recruit and train tenant members to a new scrutiny panel.

Investment in and improving tenants’ homes

Investing in our council properties to make them decent places to live is a key priority. This team delivers planned improvements such as new kitchens, bathrooms, heating, doors and external work such as roofing, fascias and soffits to name but a few.

What we did last year

The capital improvements work included 203 new heating systems 12 roof replacements, 15  structural works and 54 bathroom and kitchen replacements

What we are going to do

The 2024-25 programme has started and includes heating, kitchens, bathrooms and roofing replacements.

Repairs

Our busy repairs team continues to provide across-team working between void and responsive work streams. This is how we performed last year against the targets we set:

What we did last year

% Tenants satisfied with responsive repair

Target = 97.40%
Actual performance = 92.42%

% Tenants satisfied with time taken to carry out responsive repair

Target = 97.60%
Actual performance = 86.36%

% Emergency repairs completed within 24 hours

Target = 100%
Actual performance = 99.93%

Urgent repairs completed within five days

Target = 97.00%
Actual performance = 96.57%

% Tenants satisfied that operative arrived on time

Target = 98.60%
Actual performance = 98.48%

Average number of days taken to carry out re-let repairs standard voids

Target = 14
Actual performance = 62.09

What we will continue to do

Gas service and maintenance 

We will keep our tenants safe and warm and work with our contractor, PH Jones, to ensure all gas appliances in our properties are working properly. 

What we did last year 

  • We completed landlord gas safety checks in 5,060 properties as part of a rolling programme to ensure our gas appliances are safe to use and well maintained; 
  • We completed 5,125 repairs with 90.6% within priority to maintain the gas central heating systems in our properties to expected standards; 
  • We replaced 203 boilers with modern efficient eco-friendly models.  

What we’re planning to do this year  

  • We will continue to provide annual safety checks to ensure gas appliances in our properties are safe to use. We will also work with our contractor to ensure repairs are carried out in a timely fashion to provide the best possible service for our tenants; 
  • Boiler and central heating upgrades and replacements are planned for approximately 320 domestic properties in the remainder of this current year. 

Tenancy support and financial inclusion

We offer advice and help to tenants to help them maximise their income.  We support vulnerable tenants to maintain their tenancies and to reduce the risk of eviction and homelessness.

What we did last year

  • In total  876 tenants were helped by tenancy support and financial inclusion officers.
  • 177 tenants were helped with housing benefit applications;
  • 132 tenants were helped to claim discretionary housing payments;
  • We helped  451 tenants to get help through charity applications including applications to assist with cost of living difficulties;
  • We  assisted  six tenants who were having difficulties maintaining acceptable and safe home conditions;
  • We helped 69 tenants to claim and maintain universal credit claims;
  • We dealt with 33 safeguarding concerns about children and vulnerable adults;
  • We supported homeless households moving into temporary accommodation in Charnwood properties including with benefits, utilities and furniture;
  • We provided support, advice and assistance to tenants whose income and welfare had been adversely affected by increases in the cost of living;
  • We reviewed our tenancy support policy.

We will continue to

  • support and advise tenants moving to universal credit through natural and managed migration in order to maximise income to the council and help tenants  ensure that they can pay their rent and that there is no risk to their tenancies;
  • assist and advise new tenants to claim housing benefit or universal credit;
  • help vulnerable new tenants set up their tenancies by assisting to set up gas and electricity accounts and access essential items of furniture;
  • advise and support tenants struggling with the increase in the cost of  living by helping them to gain access to all the financial, debt and health advice assistance that is available;
  • support tenants to maximise their income

Anti-social behaviour (ASB) services

What we did last year

  • We introduced a new case management section to our incident-recording system to ensure that case notes and case progression is clearly documented and easily accessible.
  • We investigated 1,090 incidents reported
  • We served seven community protection warnings
  • We obtained three closure orders, two of which allowed the vulnerable residents to remain in their homes without further risks of being cuckooed.

What we’re planning to do this year

  • We will continue to build on procedures with the anti-social behaviour team to ensure they are up to date with best practice and legislation
  • We are developing dynamic surveying processes to ensure that customer satisfaction is measured throughout the progression of the case.
  • We are continuing to build on our relationship with partner agencies to ensure we are working closely together to achieve positive results

Income management

The team of income officers gives advice and support to maximise income for tenants and refer relevant cases to the tenancy support and financial inclusion teams, helping them to pay their rent and avoid accumulating arrears.

What we did last year

  • The income management team collected 97.06% of the rent due from current tenants in 2023/24, including arrears brought forward. This exceeded our target of 96.70% by 0.36 percentage points;
  • The total rent collected in 2023/24 for all tenancies was £22,520,155;
  • We continued our excellent working relationships with our colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions (‘DWP’) to ensure we assist our tenants to claim universal credit
  • Following the introduction of any-day direct debits, there was an increase in direct debit payers. At the end of 2022/23, we had 2,543 tenants who paid via direct debit. At the end of 2023/24, there were 2,601 tenants. This is an increase of 58 more tenants than the previous financial year who have elected to pay their rent either weekly on any day, fortnightly, four-weekly or monthly.

What we’re planning to do this year

  • We will adapt our rent accounting computer system to improve our low-level rent arrears escalation approach so more automation of the arrears recovery process to takes place to enable income officers to work more efficiently
  • We will continue to look at alternative solutions to enable texting tenants regarding their rent accounts to enable wider and more immediate reach;
  • We will continue to promote the any-day direct debit option to maximise income and assist tenants to make the payment on the day their income is received to reduce arrears;
  • We will introduce a new income strategy that will set out how we will continue to support our tenants and how we manage their rent account.
  • We will review our housing income and financial inclusion policy to reflect recent and planned changes to the income service. 
  • We will support tenants where through their universal credit application process under managed migration and refer on for further support where needed.
  • We will continue to look at introducing new ways so tenants can have access to their rent account information and manage their payment methods

Tenancy and estate management

What we did last year

  • We carried out six estate walks and published the outcomes in Your Homes Matter;
  • We contacted 97.44% of new tenants within four weeks of their tenancy commencing which exceeded the 95% target;
  • We supported 28 separate households to move to alternative accommodation following the serious flooding in Loughborough in January;
  • We continued to carry out communal area fire safety inspections, visiting every one of our 283 communal areas and 21 sheltered schemes every month:
  • We procured a new communal cleaning contractor for our 267 blocks of flats;
  • We started a review of the tenancy and estate management pages on the council’s web site;
  • We reviewed the procedure guide used by tenancy and estate management officers to investigate abandonments and implemented a new updated procedure.
  • We reviewed the procedure guide used by tenancy and estate management officers to investigate items left in internal communal areas and begun drafting a new procedure
  • We drafted a new standalone procedure guide to be used by tenancy and estate management officers to investigate unauthorised occupancy of our properties
  • We started reviewing the procedure guide used by tenancy and estate management officers to manage successions, and drafting amendments intended to reduce costs to the council

What we’re planning to do this year

  • Complete the review of the tenancy and estate management pages on the council’s website
  • Carry out five estate walks and publish the outcomes in Your Homes Matter
  • Review the communal area fire safety policy

Leaseholders

What we did last year

  • We have continued to implement new communal door entry systems, replacement shed doors, roof replacements and emergency lighting installations.
  • The five-year plan continues to evolve.
  • We have attended conferences and training events to enable to keep ourselves updated with changes leasehold law and good practice.
  • We made progress on the project to ensure that all leaseholders’ fire door are legally complaint. We are offering leaseholders the option of having a new fire-compliant front door installed by us (chargeable) as part of our wider programme to replace tenants’ front doors where we have to.
  • We have finalised the procedure for the lease extension process and uploaded this on the Charnwood borough council website.
  • We collected 95.98% of all leasehold service charges raised.

What we’re planning to do this year

  • We will continue to implement new communal door entry systems, replacement shed doors, roof replacements and emergency lighting installations;
  • We will attend conferences and training events to enable to keep ourselves updated with changes leasehold law and good practice;
  • We will be reviewing our changes for additional services to leaseholders;
  • We will develop further electronic communication of certified summaries and estimates to leaseholders as a preferred channel of communication;
  • We will continue making progress with our project to ensure that all our residents have complaint fire doors. This is likely to take place over the course of the next five years;
  • We will hold additional surgeries with our leaseholders to discuss various projects and matters that affect and are of concern to them;
  • We will keep leaseholders informed on matters affecting them under the new Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024, which was given royal assent under the previous government. We are now awaiting details from the present administration on when the various provisions are to be put in force. If all changes under the law are implemented, we are likely to see the biggest change in the relationship between landlord and leaseholder in more than a decade.

Warden services and Lifeline

This team supports our elderly and vulnerable tenants and gives them and their families peace of mind through an on-call warden and emergency response service. 

What we did last year – we dealt with

  • A total number of calls of 65,371 of which 88.1% were answered within 30 seconds and 93.4% were answered within 60 seconds
  • 649 calls due to customers falling;
  • 489 calls to the ambulance service;
  • 147 medical emergencies;
  • 118 medical requests;
  • 1,258 calls to wish customer ‘Happy Birthday’;
  • 163 out-of-hours warden calls.

We completed the digitalisation upgrade of the alarm equipment in all of our sheltered schemes.

What we’re planning to do this year

We are planning to complete the upgrade of alarm equipment in our flats and bungalows for tenants receive the warden service

We will explore and decide on the best option for the digitalisation of our alarm call handling platform.

Where we spent money

During 2023/24 the housing revenue account (‘HRA’) spent a total of £18.3 million in delivering our services to you. In addition to this we spent £6.3 million on improving your properties, £3.2 million of which went on the decent homes programme which saw the installation of new kitchens, bathrooms, heating etc.

Capital spend (improvements to properties e.g. new kitchens, fire safety measures, adaptations and acquisitions totalled £6.6m.

The £18.3 million HRA service costs are broken down as follows:

  • Repairs and maintenance/ planned and day to day maintenance - £8,229k
  • Supervision and management - £6,686k
  • Rents, rates, taxes and other charges - £576k
  • Debt management costs/bad debts - £20k
  • Interest paid - £2,767k

Last updated: Tue 1st October, 2024 @ 12:22