Shaping our Future update: Putting tenant satisfaction first | Tenant news

Hello everyone,

As you may already know, I have been visiting housing schemes and talking with tenants across the country since joining Habinteg in April 2021.

The feedback I have received from tenants is that, although some tenants are positive about the service they receive, Habinteg is not always getting things right and we must do better for all our tenants.

I am sorry our service has not been up to your expectations on these occasions.

We are working on improving the way we provide services, and I would like to give you an update on the Shaping our Future consultation we ran in the autumn of 2021. We ran this consultation with you so that your insights can influence our new corporate strategy. 

The consultation report reflects what I heard on my visits and it makes for often uncomfortable reading. Many neighbourhoods need investment. The majority of tenants felt their home needs either urgent improvement or will need improvement in the next five years. And while some teams were singled out for praise, there have been too many quality issues with repairs by our contractors.

Our tenants deserve repairs to be done on schedule and ‘right first time’ wherever possible, and that has clearly not been happening. 

Some tenants gave very positive feedback about individual members of Habinteg staff, but I can see that overall our service is not always as good as we would like. We need to carry out more training, improve our day-to-day communications with tenants, build better systems and invest in our teams on the ground.

These are significant challenges and they won't be solved overnight. But we will solve them. Over the coming months you will see a gradual transformation of Habinteg into a housing association that provides homes to be proud of. Homes in safe, welcoming, inclusive neighbourhoods.

Hearing your views through the consultation was important to us, so I’m very pleased that we have now appointed a new Customer Engagement Manager, Ann Johal, to help make sure we hear from even more Habinteg tenants in the future. 

Over the next few months, we will publish the full report that we are using to prepare our new four-year corporate strategy. However, the real test of our transformation will be in the impact you see in your neighbourhood and in your dealings with Habinteg.

I look forward to hearing more from you.

Nick Apetroaie