• Project name: My Voice programme
• Lead organisation: Wheatley Group

Statement of support

Wheatley Group is Scotland’s leading housing, care and property management organisation, comprising four social landlords, a property management company, and a care organisation. The group offers an award-winning range of services to over 210,000 customers across 19 local authority areas in Scotland. Group subsidiaries are united by a common commitment to excellence in all they do and a joint mission of 'Making Homes and Lives Better' for the people they serve and the communities in which they live.

The Customer First Centre (CFC) aims to provide tenants and factored homeowners with an exceptional customer experience, handling requests efficiently and in a friendly and highly personalised manner. The team of advisors operates 24/7, supported by their housing, Lowther and repairs specialist teams, to resolve more complex interactions related to tenancy, repairs and owner/factoring issues. These teams ensure that 90 per cent of customer contacts are resolved within our CFC model, thus allowing housing officers and other frontline staff to spend more time in their communities. Last year, 148,000 visits were carried out to our customers' homes, an increase of 43,000 on the previous year.

'My Voice' enables the CFC to prioritise service improvement activities based on customer feedback, enhancing overall customer satisfaction. Wheatley launched the 'My Voice' programme within the CFC, a digital customer engagement and feedback tool designed to be inclusive and accessible. This programme allows Wheatley Group to solicit near-instant feedback from customers, ensuring that service delivery is reviewed and influenced by their views.

At the CFC, the transition from surveying 50 per cent of customers to 100 per cent from 1 June 2023 resulted in approximately 1,500 surveys being solicited each week. Surveys are issued twice daily via SMS or email, to gather satisfaction scores, reasons for the scores, and requests for callbacks on low scores.

Customer feedback is integral to Wheatley’s service improvement strategy. For example, low satisfaction scores trigger an in-depth review, leading to lessons learned. Feedback from 'My Voice' is presented through a dashboard, providing real-time insights into customer satisfaction and trends. The customer experience (CX) team coordinates follow-up actions, ensuring immediate risk identification and timely resolution of issues.

This system allows Wheatley to address urgent issues promptly and integrate customer feedback into its performance management framework. Analysis of trends helps identify service inconsistencies or issues, enabling both immediate fixes and long-term strategic improvements.

For example, within the CFC, the analysis identified communication and resolution as key themes, an example being customer dissatisfaction relating to communication between CFC and housing teams. To address this, an experiment was conducted with one of Wheatley’s smaller subsidiaries to apply a geographical approach to the service. This allowed CFC advisors to work closely with local housing officers and repair teams, develop relationships, and provide a truly personal experience by learning about the local area, housing stock, and issues affecting customers. This approach has proved successful, and Wheatley will now roll it out to other subsidiaries.

Insights from 'My Voice' are reported monthly to business leads and quarterly to managing directors and subsidiary boards. By integrating customer insights into decision-making processes, Wheatley enhances overall service quality and aligns with its performance management framework.

Additionally, the CFC is leveraging insights from 'My Voice' alongside customer demand data to initiate a customer journey mapping exercise. This improvement action focuses on enhancing the experience for all customers. This initiative aims to better understand and improve the customer journey, ensuring a more seamless and satisfying experience.

The programme has now evolved to include other service areas of allocations and neighbourhood environmental team due to its success.

Outcomes and achievements

The 'My Voice' programme is embedded in Wheatley’s strategy, helping achieve our aims and objectives by listening to our wider communities and engaging customers to shape our services. It shows that Wheatley’s people are its biggest asset with the top positive terms being ‘helpful’, ‘polite’ and ‘friendly’.

Key achievements:

• Transitioning to 100 per cent customer surveying, resulting in increased feedback and improved satisfaction scores.
• Implementing real-time feedback analysis to drive immediate and long-term service improvements.
• Enhancing customer satisfaction through personalised follow-ups and resolution of issues highlighted in feedback.
• Improving the CFC CSAT score from 4.28 to 4.45 out of five, a four per cent increase.

Customer quotes:

• "Wheatley takes their tenants' needs very seriously so whenever I call, I get nice people from start to finish.”
• "Nice person answered my call, she was organised and efficient. She called me back as she had said she would."
• “My call was handled well, and I had good communication with the advisor. Happy with the next step of action.”

Joe Lambie, Wheatley’s director of the customer first centre, said:

“Wheatley’s 'My Voice' programme demonstrates our commitment to leveraging customer feedback to improve service delivery and achieve excellence in customer experience.”

• Project name: Support in a Crisis - The Cost of Living
• Lead organisation: West of Scotland Housing Association
• Partner organisation: Willowacre Trust

Statement of support

In early 2023, in response to many people within our communities reporting that they were struggling with the cost of living crisis, West of Scotland Housing Association (WSHA) and its subsidiary Willowacre Trust decided to take direct action to help our tenants. This action was informed by close consultation with our tenants, leadership team, staff team and external partners and formed a key business objective for the whole organisation as we worked to mitigate the worst of the crisis for the tenants who relied on us the most.

Although we had a number of people telling us they could not manage with the cost of their household expenses, we felt that a whole system approach was needed to reach out to every tenant and ask them what difficulties they were faced with and whether they needed us to assist. 

We reached out to all 4,300 of our tenants with a comprehensive cost of living survey. 748 tenants responded - the largest response WSHA have ever had.

The survey’s 17 questions ranged from asking about the impact of the cost of living crisis on tenants’ finances, health and wellbeing, to their awareness of the support we already provided and asked for suggestions of how we could assist further.

The major issues respondents identified they were struggling with include:  

Main area of concern:

• Energy costs - 78 per cent
• Food costs - 60 per cent 
• Council Tax - 53 per cent
• Debt repayments - 52 per cent
• Socialising - 46 per cent 
• Rental costs - 37 per cent
• Travel costs - 34 per cent
• Child-related costs - 28 per cent

There were a number of issues that emerged including access to food, utilities, finance and housing. 15.68 per cent of tenants had missed meals, 23.4 per cent had accessed a foodbank, almost 20 per cent had limited their use of energy. 21.3 per cent had borrowed money and 10 per cent were considering downsizing. 

In the survey, we specifically asked respondents to let us know if they required additional, individualised support. 391 tenants contacted us – 52 per cent of our initial respondents. 

Although we had a strong indication that tenants were struggling, the scale of the response, the level of help needed and the type of action tenants had taken to mitigate the impact of the cost of living could not have been anticipated. The survey allowed for bespoke responses and the example below is only one of many received which illustrate the scale of the crisis:

"My food shop has tripled. I no longer eat what I want for dinner, I have a portion of my son's meal and a portion of my daughter's meal to fill my plate. I no longer cook things that need to bake or stew like casseroles, the oven is too expensive to run. My gas and electric costs have made me realise how poorly sealed my doors and windows are. We wear our dressing gowns and slippers in the house at all times as I can't afford to have the temp set at 18 anymore. I get my shopping delivered as I can no longer afford a taxi to and from Asda. And I'm not fit to walk both ways with my granny trolley any more, long covid is real. I'm terrified of vet bills, now I no longer have any savings. WoS repairing my fence and gates have been a mind saver. My daughter is autistic and needs stimulation, daily activities like swimming, crafts etc. I can no longer afford to entertain her. Her mental health has taken a huge downturn. She's self-harming. She's overheard me talking about gas and the price of baths, she’s refusing to bathe to save money."

The survey responses made it clear immediate action by the association was needed.

Outcomes and achievements

We undertook discussions with staff, board and Tenants Advisory Group and an action plan was created setting out 37 actions. The plan involved all departments covering one-to-one support, new forms of partnership working and changes in organisational strategy.

We provided 548 types of support and assistance including:

• Money advice - 86
• Food - 63
• Handyperson - 39
• Starter packs - two
• Tenancy - 56
• Digital - 44
• Older persons’ - one
• Energy - 168
• Upcycling - nine
• Groups e.g. health and wellbeing - four
• Activities e.g. bus trip - nine
• Other support - 20
• Referrals to other organisations - 29
• Income maximisation - one
• Housing support - two
• Welfare rights - 15

187,972.50 was secured externally to assist with our response to the crisis including monies for a wellbeing adviser and energy advice assistant, energy vouchers, money advice, digital support, social inclusion and switching to smart meters.

Through our tireless work, we also secured 20,743.91 in energy debt write off and welfare benefits.

Here is a sample of what tenants said after our support:

• "That’s brilliant! Thank you so much for this. We can stay warm now. I can afford to get the kids a wee treat now as I don’t need to spend all my money on the gas."

• Project name: Choices: Kingdom’s Participatory Budget
• Lead organisation: Kingdom Group

Statement of support

Choices is Kingdom’s participatory budgeting scheme available for customers of all tenures. They can use this funding to make a difference to their community.

In 2018, Kingdom’s Scrutiny Panel carried out an investigation on estate management services. Through this investigation, they learned of Kingdom’s enhancements budget of £10,000 per year. This funding was for housing staff to use for improvements to communal areas. After the Scrutiny Panel consulted other customers, they made a recommendation to the board that customers should be able to influence how these funds were spent. The board made the decision to keep the enhancements budget and created a new budget of £15,000 per year for customers to use. During 2018, a series of consultation events took place with the Scrutiny Panel, other tenant groups, staff members and PB Scotland. PB Scotland worked with tenants to look at different ways to implement participatory budgeting, and the 'Choices' scheme was born. The scheme was promoted to staff and tenants, and launched at our annual summer gathering in July 2018.

How does Choices work? Customers submit an application explaining their idea or project. The application form can be completed online, in person and over the phone. After the organisation checks for the proposed project is achievable, the idea is consulted on by the wider community for the final decision. Customers may vote 'for' or 'against' the idea and provide comments and further ideas. Kingdom uses CX Feedback Engagement+ to do the consultation. For more expensive projects, Kingdom looks for alternative solutions like cross funding, or asks the customers to decide which project should have priority. Kingdom then works with the residents to help them deliver the projects.

One of the most recently completed Choices projects was at one of Kingdom’s developments in Dunfermline. A customer applied for funding to turn a large communal garden behind three four-in-a-block flats into 12 private gardens. They had some concerns that the garden was too big and open for their children and pets. Kingdom’s customer engagement team, estates and housing colleagues held a walkabout with customers at the development to discuss the idea. Private gardens would mean an increase to rent payments and that the Kingdom’s grounds maintenance team would no longer cut the grass. Despite these changes, those who attended the walkabout were enthusiastic about the project. Estates colleagues advised the project could go ahead and the 12 households were consulted.

As the project would involve an increase to rent, customers needed to make a unanimous decision. When consulted, a majority voted in favour of going ahead. However, some customers rejected the idea and raised concerns about the rent increase and the responsibility of maintenance being on them. Staff discussed these concerns and the estates inspector suggested a compromise - Kingdom could create three smaller communal gardens, one for each block of flats. This would mean no rent increase, that Kingdom would continue to maintain the grass and would offer the security for children and pets outlined in the application.

Customers voted on the new proposal and unanimously agreed to this idea. Although some customers were initially disappointed at not getting a private garden, they recognised this compromise was a positive solution to suit the needs of all.

Outcomes and achievements

Upon completion of a Choices project, customers are asked to provide feedback so Kingdom can keep improving Choices as a service and to learn for future projects. While the finished project in Dunfermline was a compromise on the original idea customers applied for, the feedback has been very positive. One customer said:

• “I’m delighted with the garden project. The job was well done and looks great. It has created clearer boundaries and feels like a better and more defined use of the garden space. Thank you.”

This project highlighted the importance of seeking a compromise rather than rejecting a project when concerns are raised. Kingdom have learned that the priority for customers continues to be keeping rent costs low. Going forward, Kingdom will continue to look for a compromise when a project may seem it cannot go ahead.

Kingdom are continuing to promote Choices to customers to empower them and work in partnership to support community projects. Choices is a key tool for Kingdom in giving customers a voice and to deliver on the promise of providing ‘More Than a Home’.

• Project name: Connecting Housing and Tenants (CHAT) Annual Visit
• Lead organisation: East Ayrshire Council

Statement of support

At a development day for managers across housing and housing asset services, a key theme emerged of the need to get into every council property on at least an annual basis. This was as a result of reported increases across services in the number of gas capped properties including tenants opting to cap their gas, forced entries to carry out gas servicing and electrical inspections, increase in cases of tenants experiencing self neglect and the condition of properties being terminated - all of which led to the development of the CHAT. The benefits of the CHAT to both the landlord and the tenant are vast including building relationships with all of our tenants and not just those who come to our attention normally following a breach of tenancy; creating the opportunity and the platform for upstream early intervention and improving tenants health and wellbeing, improving stock information in relation to aids and adaptations and saving time and resources when allocating homes and the ability to investigate and identify dampness and mould within every council property.

A steering group was established comprising key stakeholders and led by service managers within HAS and housing services. Stakeholders included neighbourhood managers and three neighbourhood coaches who would pilot the CHAT; policy and strategy, IT, comms and the Tenants and Residents Federation. Three subgroups were then established to lead on key work streams to implement the CHAT in relation to IT, communications and the development of the form itself. The sub groups met regularly to give feedback into the main steering group on a six-weekly basis. Owing to stock numbers and a recognition that whilst CHAT was fundamental to the role of the neighbourhood coaches it would undoubtedly generate more work initially, an incremental approach was agreed to take forward the pilot.

300 council houses - 100 houses across three neighbourhood housing teams which were a mix in terms of demography and area profile were identified by the neighbourhood managers and coaches.  Prior to the launch of the CHAT, the neighbourhood coaches worked with the East Ayrshire Tenants and Residents Federation to pilot the CHAT and provide tenants feedback to inform improvements. 

The pilot ran over a three month period from January 2024 to April, with regular sub group meetings and steering group meetings throughout. Developments and improvements were identified by the three neighbourhood coaches carrying out the pilot and their experience of this. This included the need for updated IT equipment and changes to the form to capture key information.

At the end of the pilot, time was taken to pause and reflect on the results of the pilot prior to further roll out. New IT equipment was ordered, which would also improve the efficiency and ability of the neighbourhood coaches to work better and smarter when onsite and reduce back end processes. A further two neighbourhood coaches per team have now been identified to carry out the CHAT visits within their patch, with full roll out to be achieved by April 2025.

Outcomes and achievements

Out of 411 visits, we have had 294 successful visits and 95 per cent of those tenants reported that the visit was helpful.

Early intervention on a number of households where there were early indications of self neglect which we otherwise wouldn’t have been aware of.

173 of the 294 successful visits didn’t have contents insurance. This presents a good opportunity to promote the benefits of home content insurance as many tenants don’t have this and aren’t aware that they can lose all of their possessions following a major incident.

A number of properties were flagged as potentially damp, however further training has been arranged for neighbourhood coaches on recognising the signs of dampness to ensure accurate reporting.

Visits have also proven to be very good for the maintenance of our system data and tenancy management, for example:

• 124 contact detail updates
• 19 household detail updates
• 14 household members terminated (removed)
• 45 household members added

39 households assisted with aids and adaptations enquiries and property information updated which will assist with allocations. 

Onward referrals for support to the Health and Social Care Partnership, fuel support, financial inclusion and universal credit support teams.

• Project name: Customer Service Excellence Accreditation / Satisfaction Survey
• Lead organisation: Parkhead Housing Association

Statement of support

Following a full tenant satisfaction survey in 2021 it was clear Parkhead Housing Association had work to do to improve overall satisfaction amongst the local community. With services impacted during the lockdown periods of the pandemic, the survey response from tenants and owners in the Parkhead area was at a disappointing level and therefore some improvements would be required to be made.

As a result, Parkhead Housing Association embarked on an exhaustive and collaborative process with staff, board and customer groups to refocus and realign at a strategic level. The culmination of this process was the production of a new strategic plan in 2023 with an accompanying Tenant Engagement Strategy. The process of engaging and consulting closely with staff and customers gave the association a renewed emphasis on communication and customer engagement. Alongside the renewal of the association’s overall strategy, PHA also embarked on a year long project to completely revamp the association’s approach to communication including re-development of the PHA website, external publications and social media accounts.

This renewed focus has seen a significant improvement in the association’s tenant satisfaction survey results in late 2023. The 2023 satisfaction survey scores were a culmination of all the hard work over the previous two years. In particular, the association saw a massive improvement in overall customer satisfaction with the figure increasing by over 10 per cent from the 2021 survey. PHA saw significant increases across the seven key charter indicators including a huge 17.8 per cent increase in those rating rent as value for money.

The results of the satisfaction survey provided PHA with the momentum to continue to improve and develop the front facing services. As such, PHA decided to challenge themselves and see how their service stacked up against the detailed and in depth Customer Service Excellence Accreditation criteria. This process would provide the association with further useful data on their frontline service but also areas where the association can continue to improve and develop. Parkhead Housing Association achieved the Customer Service Excellence Accreditation at the first time of asking in May 2024.

PHA were assessed across 57 elements of the customer service excellence standard covering five areas including customer insight, the culture of the organisation, information and access, delivery and timeliness and quality of service.

PHA achieved full compliance against 52 of the 57 elements, demonstrating only five allowable ‘partial compliances.’ PHA also managed to achieve ‘compliance plus’ under section 3.4 Co-operative working with other providers, partners and communities. PHA demonstrated well developed partnerships with other organisations by offering wide ranging and co-ordinated services to their customers. It was clear PHA also supported and interacted closely with the local community in all aspects of their work.

As part of the accreditation process, PHA staff were interviewed by an assessor regarding their views on the association’s approach to customer service. Over and above that the assessment process also included in depth interviews with local partners and a focus group of customers.

PHA CEO Aileen McGuire said: “This is a major milestone for Parkhead Housing Association and we are absolutely delighted to be awarded the CSE accreditation. This reflects the hard work not only from our front-facing staff but the whole organisation as we always aim to deliver the highest possible level of service to our customers, partners and stakeholders.”

Susan McKeown, chair of Parkhead Housing Association, added: “The board value the hard work and dedication of our team. We are proud of the work we have done to take our service to the next level and as a board we are looking forward to building upon the recognition from the CSE accreditation process.”

Outcomes and achievements

• Establishment of a highly collaborative process to renew the association’s strategic direction including staff, board and customers.
• Introduction of a new strategic plan and tenant engagement strategy including the development of four strategic themes; Sustainability, Culture, Innovation and Customer Engagement
• Launch of new PHA website including introduction of leading functionality such as repair reporting, application forms and live chat.
• 90.5 per cent satisfied with overall service - increase of 10.9 per cent
• 91.4 per cent rating landlord as good at keeping them informed - increase of 7.9 per cent
• 82.7 per cent satisfied with opportunities to participate in decision making - increase of 7.5 per cent
• 87.9 per cent satisfied with quality of home - increase of 14.4 per cent
• 84.2 per cent satisfied with management of neighbourhood - increase of 14.7 per cent
• 82.1 per cent rating rent as good value for money - increase of 17.8 per cent
• Achieving the Customer Service Excellence Accreditation at first time of asking with only five partial compliances out of 57 elements assessed including two areas of ‘compliance plus’.

• Project name: Targeted Tenant Support Projects
• Lead organisation: Orkney Housing Association Limited

Statement of support

Orkney Housing Association has built upon its approach developed as a response to the pandemic to provide ongoing holistic support to our tenants. This was a change in approach for the association and followed the successful distribution of funding awards achieved under the leadership of our previous director of operations Paul Scott. Our senior housing services officers Emma McConnachie and Alan Sim embraced and led on this approach, engaging with and energising their team to always ask the right question. The housing team were equipped with training, up-to-date knowledge and confidence to engage on the sensitive subjects of fuel and food insecurity.

Identification of the issue

After the onset of COVID in 2020, the association initiated an outreach Tenant Support Contact programme where we made attempts to contact each of our tenants to enquire how they were managing under government imposed restrictions and if they required any additional support with their tenancies or day-to-day living.

With a contact success rate of 70 per cent and positive feedback from tenants, a Winter Contact programme was introduced that same year to again contact all tenants with a focus on their financial situation, energy supply (where Orkney is disproportionally affected by fuel poverty compared to national standards) and possible difficulties accessing essentials such as food and medicine.

In 2022 we successfully bid for funding from the Scottish government's fuel support fund and every tenant was awarded a direct payment of £125 to assist with their winter energy costs. With a small surplus from the funding and using the data from the winter contacts we were also able to target tenants who had indicated that they were struggling with energy costs and provide an enhanced payment.

In 2023 we decided to use a more targeted approach and made funding available from the association via the Tenancy Sustainment Fund.

Engagement methods

By actively interrogating previous programmes’ data, we proactively contacted tenants who had previously requested support. Our teams increased knowledge about their tenants and any indicators of vulnerability greatly assisted this project, our frontline team felt confident and empowered to undertake these more sensitive conversation. Uniquely, we also utilised all forms of communication, including our rent consultation correspondence, rent increase letters and the distribution of further grant funding from the Scottish government (each tenant receiving £150), to encourage our customers who were not identified for targeted support to get in contact with us if they were experiencing difficulties or hardship.

Our Winter Programme in 2023 provided an additional support payment to 89 households (50 of those were fuel poverty and 35 had multiple support needs). We facilitated enhanced payments to tenants experiencing severe hardship.

Embedding Practice and Lessons Learnt

As a result of the funding made available in response to the pandemic we recognised and embedded the importance of additional support for our tenants. This has evolved into a proactive practice and has been (and continues to be) highly effective and beneficial. Feedback from tenants has been incredibly positive. Staff have an enhanced sense of satisfaction and have been equipped with the training and tools to make a tangible difference in the wellbeing of our most vulnerable customers.

Outcomes and achievements

Embedding a proactive culture within the organisation. Significant assistance and support to all tenants, particularly around fuel poverty, where Orkney is disproportionally affected by fuel poverty compared to national standards.

Types of support provided in 2023:

• Energy Advice - 50
• Financial - seven
• Foodbank - one
• Rent - four
• Various (more than one selected) - 24
• Callbacks requested - two
• Other - one
• Fuel Support Fund payments (£150) - 829 (£124,350)
• Enhanced payments - 35 (£26,050)
• Tenancy Sustainment Fund - 24 (£8,846)
• HACT funding - 29 (£6,468)