Working with our customers: engagement update April-June 2024

Engaging with our customers and listening to their views is very important to us. Customer feedback makes a difference to the way we deliver our services, drives improvements for everyone who lives in a First Choice Homes Oldham (FCHO) home and local communities, and helps us as we strive to be an excellent landlord.

On this page you can see all the ways we’ve worked with our customers to make positive changes April to June 2024…

Our Customer Voice Panel (CVP) is made up of customers from across our neighbourhoods and has been set up to give a real voice to those who live in our homes, so they influence our services and bring about improvements.

• CVP membership has 202 actively engaged members.
• 13 CVP meetings and other engagement activities held this quarter.
• CVP members have reviewed our Damp and Mould and Compensation Policy and our Community Services and Development strategy.
• 10 customers participated in the latest Customer Sustainability Champions working group meeting.

Community Services strategy review:

As part of our work to improve the standard of service you receive and the services we offer under community services, we facilitated two sessions to review the community services strategy and the following session was to review the changes made to the document following the feedback from the initial session:

• 19 CVP members participated providing feedback around the strategy.
• CVP members gave feedback around the visibility of the strategy and ways to access the services.

Performance Challenge

• 8 customers took part in the first Performance Challenge meeting held on 15 May 2024.
• This meeting focused on FCHO’s current performance and CVP members discussed grounds maintenance and caretaking scores as well as complaints data.

Our Neighbourhood Champions carry out quarterly neighbourhood inspections and report back on the condition of their neighbourhood including grounds maintenance, communal area cleaning, litter and fly tipping.

• 23 customers took part in the May Neighbourhood Champion inspections.
• Neighbourhood Champions gave positive feedback around garden maintenance however highlighted a few inconsistencies with internal block cleaning across the borough. The CVP group is now undertaking a scrutiny exercise of the Neighbourhood Care Service to identify where and how improvements can be made.

FCHO Community Grants and Contributions

Our support programme offers funding to community and voluntary groups in/ or delivering for FCHO neighbourhoods.

• Grants and contributions made by FCHO for Quarter 1 amount to £4,400.
• This equates to four significant grants/contributions made and these range from support to improve community facilities to digital inclusion activities

National/Regional Community Funding

• We supported two of our community partners to secure £400 in external community funding from Meet and Code for a young person’s coding and digital event.
• We are awaiting the results of a further £10,000 worth of funding from national community funders that we have supported local partners to apply for

Community Centre Updates

Barker Street

• Monthly Neighbourhood Coordinator coffee mornings started.
• Digital inclusion pilot sessions delivered by Keyring through FCHO Community Development Grant funding.
• Two community planting workshops delivered by Northern Lily in collaboration with the National Trust.
• Work began on the Eden St project (OL1 Oldham led) with 11 volunteers from The Princes Trust who spent 2 full days, digging, pruning and removing waste in preparation for planting a new community green space.

Alt

• In celebration of Volunteer’s Week and with the support of FCHO contractors, internal improvements made to the centre for Altogether community group to make it a more community friendly space.
• fixtures and fittings.

Tensing Street

• New arm-chair exercise sessions being delivered by Willows Holistic Therapy.

Other Community Projects and Activities

• The National Trust Sky Garden competition was a success with 21 customers taking part.
• Community podcast and short film recorded on the impact of community activities on mental health and wellbeing to present to Customer Voice Panel.