Past quarterly reports for residents

Over the last few months of 2021, we continued providing a full range of services and supporting customers and their communities - despite the ongoing challenges of high Covid levels as the Omicron variant emerged.

And it continued to be a very challenging time for many residents. Following our successful welfare calls to certain customer groups during lockdown, we’ve been sending SMS messages to about 4,000 residents aged over 70. These are a chance for a check in and offer support around heating, finances or other help. Customers can just reply ‘yes’ for a call back.

We want to offer more services digitally too – giving you access where and when it suits you and freeing up our people to get out into neighbourhoods or provide individual support.

During December we moved MySovereign to a new platform and improved the look and feel. Thousands of customers have now re-registered or signed up, getting online access to pay their rent, check their balance, request a repair – and more. It’s quick and easy, just visit https://my.sovereign.org.uk/.

Please get in touch if you’re struggling financially or need help at the moment. There’s lots of support and advice available – you can also find out about some of these support offers on our advice and guides pages.

Below are some highlights of our performance between October and December on some of these key services and areas of support that matter to customers.

Thank you.

Services and support

We let 753 homes: 604 relet homes and another 149 new homes we let for the first time.

• We completed 192 mutual exchanges.
• We completed nearly 54,000 emergency, routine and out of hours responsive repairs.
• Although Covid has delayed us from returning to full delivery of planned works, we’ve still managed to prioritise and install 227 new bathrooms and 458 kitchens in the first ten months of the year.
• We completed 1,018 Neighbourhood Standard inspections (and, since July 2021, we’ve also carried out 86 neighbourhood improvements across our estates - totalling £194k).
• We saw a drop in Universal Credit (UC) claims but were still able to support 148 customers with UC claims and issues.
• We supported 470 people with aging well projects and services and 106 residents to get into work or better work – a huge increase on the three months before. Residents also completed another 349 training outcomes. 
• We supported 54 community groups and worked with communities and partners on 15 environmental projects, engaging with nearly 2,000 people across our community development projects.
• We helped hundreds of people get back on their feet - tailored support like providing 92 with equipment to get online and 326 with digital training, as well as working with 1,264 residents through our money and digital services. We helped our residents make savings of £34,562.
• Our quarterly ‘STAR’ customer survey showed that measures are back on trend with the previous two years - overall satisfaction was 79% and satisfaction with neighbourhood was at 86%.
• Repairs satisfaction was at 90% as we continued to catch up on non-urgent repairs and were also affected by national labour shortages and some materials.
• The challenges of the period were also reflected in more complaints (1,051) with ‘communication’ still being a big part of dissatisfaction – with satisfaction at 38%.
• Work continues on transforming our complaints service: around making sure we keep customers updated while we’re managing their complaint, and how we improve the experience we deliver to them.  Early in 2022 we also began the phased launch of a new way of dealing with repairs issues in ‘real-time’ - helping to reduce the number of complaints and giving customers the opportunity to resolve issues quickly and easily.

Role of residents

Resident and Board Partnership (RBP)

• Key focus areas for the RBP included reviewing the new customer metrics and performance - areas such as ‘our service’, ‘your home’, ‘your neighbourhoods and ‘your safety’. All these are related to our customer impact strategy and the Housing White Paper.
• The group also found out more about our strategic asset management strategy and how it will look to develop a blueprint to help meet housing need and bring current homes up to standard for future customers.
• There was also an update on the Enhanced Empty Homes pilot and feedback on how the project’s developing.   

Scrutiny Coordination Group (SCG)

The SCG completed its review of Sovereign’s social media just before Christmas and are now developing recommendations to improve the service. They interviewed key staff about how we use social media to communicate with residents and others. They also analysed how customers use social media to contact us and looked at what we do compared to other housing providers.

• The group also heard how we’re implementing actions recommended after the scrutiny of the anti-social behaviour (ASB) service in autumn 2020 - and tracked progress on other recommendations, making sure they keep holding us to account.
• In preparation for their next scrutiny, starting in spring 2022, the SCG also heard from the Responsive Repairs team and analysed the latest customer satisfaction data around repairs – all good background to help them look into what drives satisfaction with the repairs service.

Youth Panel

The Youth Panel is the voice for our younger residents. Over the autumn its members gave their insight into various services and continued with their own community projects, such as ‘safe space’ - connecting isolated people with others in the area.

Other activity

A successful recruitment drive (including email and Facebook campaigns) led to 100 customers saying they’d like to get involved with us. As well as new potential resident scrutineers and a pool of people we can contact for feedback on specific topics, we welcomed a number of new members to the RBP and SCG.

• In October, residents played a pivotal role in mapping two customer journeys: the Market Rent service when someone is looking to rent on an Assured Shorthold basis with a choice of flexible tenancy lengths; and the journey our Keyworker customers experience.
• The two projects involved 67 customers interviews and led to 70 service improvement actions, such as providing Keyworker customers with an in-room welcome pack and making customers aware of upfront costs on property adverts.
• In December, RBP and SCG members also provided valuable insight and feedback in some discussion groups on sustainability – helping us gather a customer perspective on our plans to reduce our impact on the environment, as we move towards our target to be carbon neutral by 2050.

The government’s national Covid-19 recovery plan continued over the summer but it remained a difficult time for our customers and a challenging one for delivering some services.

We worked hard to catch up on demand for services such as non-emergency repairs and an increase in requests to move. But we were also affected by national issues like national shortages of skilled labour and certain materials, alongside price increases in things like fuel.

We explained more about this in an update email to residents and on our Covid-19 pages.

Despite this backdrop, we continued to complete thousands of repairs; build and let hundreds of homes; support our customers and communities; work with residents to review and improve our services – and much more. Below is more information about our performance between July and September on some of these key areas that matter to customers.

As always, please get in touch if you’re struggling financially or you need advice and help. There’s lots of support and advice that we and our partners can offer.

And don’t forget that you’ll need to register to do some things on MySovereign (like pay your rent or log a repair) but there are also 100s of pages of useful information which you can access without logging in.

Thank you again.

Services and support

• We let 753 homes: 676 relet homes and another 77 new homes we let for the first time.
• We completed over 50,000 emergency, routine and out of hours responsive repairs.
• Income teams continued to help and advise residents claiming Universal Credit, supporting with 227 cases.
• We supported 385 community organisations and 68 residents to get into work or better work. Residents also completed another 27 training outcomes. 
• We helped hundreds of people get back on their feet through tailored support – like providing 25 with equipment to get online and 51 with digital training, as well as working with 300 residents through our money and digital services.
• At the end of September there were just over 34,000 registered users of MySovereign. We’re continuing to develop the site and will be moving to a new platform and improved look and feel at the end of the year, paving the way for some extra features in 2022.
• We’ve also set up a ‘living together’ fund to support our teams and residents find innovative, often simple, solutions to local anti-social behaviour issues – for example, by fitting underlay in a flat if there’s a major problem with sound travelling to neighbours below.

Role of residents

• Key focus areas for the Resident and Board Partnership (RBP) were reviewing and contributing to the Customer Impact Strategy as well as customer performance indicators and building safety. They also found out more about the national political landscape and how that’s impacting on housing, and about some key communication projects where we needed input from residents.
• The RBP is following up all these areas with further in-depth meetings or incorporating them into resident-led scrutinies to help us understand the voice of our customers better.
• The Scrutiny Coordination Group (SCG) reported back on its investigations into how we distribute community grant funding. Recommendations included increasing visibility of the grants by producing an impact report, revising the web pages about the grants and producing an ‘offer’ document to make sure the application process is simple and robust for smaller, grassroot community groups.
• The SCG also discussed MySovereign and how they’d like to see it develop, as well as reviewing progress on actions from previous scrutinies – including presenting back on the ‘scrutiny tracker’ to the RBP as part of making sure Sovereign remains accountable to customers.
• RBP and SCG members have also done ‘deep dives’ to look at a number of service areas including Universal Credit, tenancy support, money and digital services as well as our Customer Impact Strategy and how we measure customer-facing services.
• In April, residents also mapped the journey that our home ownership customers experience when they’re looking to staircase (buy more shares in their home) or sell their home and move. This involved video interviews with 24 customers and led to 12 service improvement actions, such as having a dedicated case manager so that a customer only has one person to speak to.
• The Youth Panel is the voice for our younger residents. Its members have given their insight into our building safety information and discussed how they could get involved in some of our environmental projects. In May, Ebony - one of its members, also spoke about her experiences at a national ‘Understanding the tenant of the future’ conference.

This spring and early summer, the national recovery from Covid-19 began but things remain difficult for many people. We continued to provide our services and support, reopening various aspects of some of these in line with the government’s four step recovery plan. But we received a lot more contact about things like repairs and requests to move – alongside needing to catch up on work that had been postponed. This meant some services took longer to provide than we would like.

We also began to feel the effects of external factors affecting organisations across the country and making front page news.

The information below gives you a flavour of our performance between April and June  on some key areas that matter to customers. We remain grateful for your ongoing patience and support. Do continue to interact with us on MySovereign where you can (you’ll need to register to do some things like pay your rent or log a repair but lots of useful information is available without logging in).

But please get in touch if you’re struggling as there’s lots of support and advice that we and our partners can offer.

Thank you again.

Services and support

• We let 753 homes: 676 relet homes and another 77 new homes we let for the first time.
• We completed over 50,000 emergency, routine and out of hours responsive repairs.
• Income teams continued to help and advise residents claiming Universal Credit, supporting with 227 cases.
• We supported 385 community organisations and 68 residents to get into work or better work. Residents also completed another 27 training outcomes. 
• At the end of June there were over 29,000 registered users of MySovereign. We’re continuing to develop the site and there’ll be improvements later this year to help if you’re facing a damp and mould issue or need to report a defect in a new-build home.
• We’ve also set up a ‘living together’ fund to support our teams and residents find innovative, often simple, solutions to local anti-social behaviour issues – for example, by fitting underlay in a flat if there’s a major problem with sound travelling to neighbours below.

Role of residents

• Key focus areas for the Resident and Board Partnership (RBP) were reviewing and contributing to the Customer Impact Strategy as well as customer performance indicators and building safety. They also found out more about the national political landscape and how that’s impacting on housing, and about some key communication projects where we needed input from residents.
• The group is following all these areas up with further deep dive meetings or incorporating them into resident-led scrutinies to help us understand the voice of our customers better.
• The Scrutiny Coordination Group (SCG) reported back on its investigations into how we distribute community grant funding. Recommendations included increasing visibility of the grants by producing an impact report, revising the web pages about the grants and producing an ‘offer’ document to make sure the application process is simple and robust for smaller, grassroot community groups.
• The SCG also discussed MySovereign and how they’d like to see it develop, as well as reviewing progress on the recommendations made in previous scrutinies – including presenting on this ‘scrutiny tracker’ to the RBP as part of that group’s role in making sure Sovereign remains accountable to customers.
• RBP and SCG members have also done ‘deep dives’ to look at a number of service areas including universal credit, tenancy support, money and digital services as well as our Customer Impact Strategy and customer metrics.
• In April, residents also mapped the journey our home ownership customers experience when they’re looking to staircase (buy more shares in their home) or sell their home and move. This involved video interviews with 24 customers and led to 12 service improvement actions, such as having a dedicated ‘case manager’ so a customer only has one person to speak to
• The Youth Panel is the voice for our younger residents. Its members have given their insight into our building safety information and discussed how they could get involved in some of our environmental projects. In May, Ebony - one of its members, also spoke about her experiences at a national ‘Understanding the tenant of the future’ conference.

When we shared our last quarterly report, we’d resumed most of our services but were restricting non-essential repairs within people’s homes. Our aim was to help reduce infections during the third lockdown by minimising our direct contact with you where we could. 

Three months later, the national recovery is well underway and the roll out of vaccinations is continuing, but we know things are still very difficult for many people. 

We’ve had another busy few months providing a range of services and support – and you can read more about our performance below. 

Here are some highlights of the quarter:

• We let 673 homes. 
• ​We completed over 37,700 emergency and essential repairs, despite the third lockdown from early January.
• ​We supported 122 community organisations, 69 residents to get into work or better work, and another 202 with training. Other teams and specialist partners offered support and advice on a wide range of issues. 
• The Scrutiny Coordination Group (SCG) has finished reviewing our community grants programme and made recommendations about how we can better promote this in our communities. 
• Our quarterly customer survey showed overall satisfaction slightly down at 79% but 81% for the year. 
• ​Despite not being able to carry out routine repairs inside people’s homes, satisfaction with repairs was at 69% and satisfaction with your neighbourhood up slightly to 87%. 

October to December remained difficult for everyone as we faced different tiers of restriction to help stop the spread of Covid-19. Adjusting to the latest guidance meant multiple short notice changes to our services, so thank you for your patience. We also sent 112,000 ‘Covid update’ emails to keep you in the know. 

Here are some highlights of the quarter:

• We let 800 homes, completed 220 mutual exchanges and 55,000 repairs. 
• Income teams supported 616 residents claiming Universal Credit.
• We supported 194 community organisations, 59 residents to get into work or better work, and another 217 with training 
• We continued to provide support and advice on a range of other issues 
• Our resident scrutineers completed their investigations into ASB and are working on recommendations to improve the service for our customers.
• To deliver the best possible residents’ voice, we recruited eight new members to our Scrutiny Coordination Group and Resident and Board Partnership after a successful recruitment campaign which included a focus on attracting a diverse range of residents.
• Residents have also helped us look at the stages customers go through with our Home Ownership external management service (known as customer journey mapping). We’ll use this to help us design better processes and customer communication.
• Our quarterly ‘STAR’ customer survey showed overall satisfaction remained at 83%, despite post-lockdown pressures on our services. It was a particularly challenging and uncertain period for repairs but satisfaction with these stayed stable (0.3% change).
• We know that satisfaction with our complaints handling isn’t as good as it should be. In December we self-assessed against the Housing Ombudsman’s new code. While we performed well against most measures, we identified some key areas for improvement and are working on these.

Our focus in July to September remained on keeping everyone safe as we reintroduced services after the first national lockdown.

With new national restrictions in place from November, we’re working hard to maintain more services this time - and continue new Covid secure ways of working. Some of these will make things easier for customers even after restrictions are lifted (such as virtual viewings or text message reminders if you’re in arrears).

Here are some highlights of the quarter:

• We let 818 homes and completed 210 mutual exchanges.
• We completed 49,000 repairs.
• Income teams managed a big increase in residents claiming Universal Credit (996).
• We supported 160 community organisations, 90 residents to get into work or better work and another 421 with training - as well as helping hundreds more in other ways.
• New partnerships can help you better with domestic abuse or mental health issues.
• With many of us at home longer, anti-social behaviour reports went up. Our resident scrutineers are investigating this service to see how else we can improve.
• Our quarterly ‘STAR’ customer survey showed that we’re generally doing well with overall satisfaction at 83.1% (up from 81.6% in June).
• Finally, more of you are getting online. MySovereign now has over 24,000 registered users and we’ve launched some new features.