Working with our customers: engagement update July-September 2022

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 from July - September 2022…

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.

• 146 customers now part of the CVP.
• 18 CVP meetings and other engagement activities held this quarter.
• Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) customer working group launched, and 11 customers recruited.
• Customer Sustainability working group launched, and 10 customers recruited.

CVP Members have also:

• Reviewed our repairs service, via online and face-to-face meetings to ensure all customers had the opportunity to feed into the review.
• 48 CVP members completed the Neighbourhood Inspection survey. This is a record response rate; we have never had 48 complete in one quarter.
• A CVP member attend the July board meeting.

Customer void inspections

As part of our work to improve the standard that you can expect when you move into an FCHO home - from gardens to cleanliness as well as the general condition of your property – we have recruited volunteers from our CVP to be Customer Void Inspectors.

• 12 members of the CVP are now trained as Customer Voids Inspectors.
• Inspectors took part in the fourth phase of voids inspections in September.
• 6 properties were inspected against our Enhanced Lettable Standard.
• 5 inspectors visited properties in person and 4 carried out inspections via video link.
• As part of this inspection, customers carried out their first ‘pre-inspection’ of a void property before our teams worked on it and followed this up with a ‘post-inspection’ too. They also had the opportunity to meet and speak to our Voids team about the decisions made.

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.

• 48 customers took part in the August Neighbourhood Champions inspections.
• We are now developing our Neighbourhood Champions’ work by introducing the ‘Place Standard’ survey to explore what else different neighbourhoods would benefit from, to see if we can support by creating community groups which can work together to gain funding to improve the area.

We support community and voluntary groups in Oldham with a number of funding streams.

ROCA (FCHO Funding)

ROCA (Respect Our Community Awards) is our grant scheme which offers funding to community and voluntary groups in Oldham.

• £1,480 ROCA grant funding issued.
• £750 of Nature in Neighbourhoods Oldham grants issued.
• £3000 donation made to GMPA (Greater Manchester Poverty Action) to support the Cost of Living Crisis summit.

Funding & Partnership Development

• Funding applications for community project made to an equivalent value of £235,100 across 10 projects.
• £10,000 of funding secured for community projects.

Community/Place Based Research

Everyone has their own experience of the place where they live and work, and we want to get conversations going with our customers about what matters to them in their neighbourhood. We are using the Place Standard questionnaire to do this.

• Place Standard questionnaire work is underway in Barker Street, Derker and Alt, and is in use for one active external funding application for a community project relating to young people, and skills and training.

Community Groups/Networks

We are involved in multiple community partnerships and networks. It supports community groups with activities like grant funding applications outside of ROCA and our Community Awards.

• 6 community centres open and offering a variety of different sessions for local people.
• Recent sessions include:
  • Parent & Toddler group at Alt Café
  • Youth Club service run by Oldham Youth Services at Apfel Lane Community Centre and Alt Café
  • Support drop in run by Manchester Mission at Apfel Lane.

West Vale is our project set to transform the area where tower blocks Crossbank House and Summervale House once stood. On the vacant site we are building 88 high quality, new homes to help meet local housing need. We are working with local people and organisations for the benefit of the community as the West Vale project progresses.

• Consultations about Broome Street play area and wider regeneration of the existing West Street neighbourhood were held in July and August.

West Street Digital History Project, supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund

• Project now named The Towers: A History of Summervale and Crossbank.
• The project has continued participant recruitment.
• Digital skill training sessions began in August and are currently running on Monday mornings at Barker Street Community Centre.
• In September the project team participated in Oldham Local Histories Month. They took part in an interactive session at Oldham Library which was attended by seven people.