Updated quarterly, this data aims to give an insight into how well CDS delivers services to its residents, which areas we’re aiming to improve and how we plan to do this. It looks only at CDS housing, and not at the independent cooperatives we support.
October-December 2018
Repairs Performance
Comparing to the previous quarter, we saw a greater demand in repairs due to the season, and despite this we improved our performance. We’d attribute this to an improved commitment to monitoring when repairs were completed, and the efforts of our diligent and professional new repairs manager in managing our contracts effectively. It’s important to note, however, that we still had 3 emergency orders go out of target. We’re still in the process of working with our contractors to develop a more consistent service.
Complaints Performance
We’ve continued recording every unhappy customer as a complaint, and addressing their concerns to their satisfaction. We have responded to every complaint within ten days of receiving it. However we aim to satisfy 88% of complainants with our first complaint decision, and we’ve not been able to meet this target recently. We only received ten complaints this quarter, much lower than the twenty-four received in July-September.
Overall Customer Satisfaction
We annually survey our residents on how satisfied they are on a variety of measures. The previous survey happened in June and we saw improvements on the previous year in many areas.
74% of our residents are satisfied with the overall service they receive. This is a good start, but we are always looking to improve the experience of our residents. One key change we’re making is procuring and implementing a new Housing Management IT system in order to allow us to deliver timely, personal service more easily. We will also be trialling meaningful new ways to engage with our residents and create opportunities for them to be involved in making decisions about the things that matter the most to them.
Customer Satisfaction – Key Areas
Our customers were least satisfied with our repairs service, which reflects the issues we’ve since been working to solve. Residents on the whole however are satisfied with the quality of their homes. We’re pleased with our rented customers’ satisfaction with the value for money we provide. One reason for this is that our rents are £47.80 less expensive per month on average than an equivalent Social Rent home in London & the South East (source: Homes & Communities Agency SDR 2016/17).
We feel the efforts we’ve been making are showing, and we’re still working to improve. Although we are happy with the progress we made in the last quarter we recognise that there are some areas to work on. We are confident that our continued efforts will further improve the service on offer to our residents.
