Annual performance report for residents 2019/20

Customer satisfaction with Sovereign as a landlord increased in 2019/20 to 81% (78% the year before) but we know there are still areas where we need to do better.

Here’s more information about our contact channels, complaints and feedback – including some of the ways we’re working hard to improve.

Contact channels

Telephone, email and social media

During the year to the end of March 2020 we faced a number of challenges, particularly near the end of this period when we had two major weather events and the early stage of the Covid-19 pandemic.  Despite this, our performance over the year was showing improvement in a number of areas:

• We're continuing to improve our digital channels.  We saw a 20% increase in use of our social media channels and a 6% reduction in emails received.
• As well as increasing our social media contacts, we're responding more quickly to them: in just over 33 minutes (2 minutes faster on average than the previous year).
• We received 22,000 fewer telephone calls than the previous year, despite the understandably high volumes during extreme weather conditions at the start of 2020.  As we moved to an emergency-only footing during lockdown, call volumes fell significantly and have been handled by our home-based advisors.
• 'Grade of service' for how well and quickly we answer both calls and emails also improved on the year before and met the annual targets we'd agreed.

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What's next?
In response to Covid-19, we moved out contact centre advisors from the office to home working for the first time and we've continued to deliver an excellent service for customers while looking after the wellbeing and resilience our people.  We're focused on making sure our advisors are trained and prepared as various services resume, and for a move back to a new office base.

MySovereign

MySovereign is the online home of everything to do with your tenancy and is available 24 hours a day, every day.  It's easy to sign up for an account.  You can pay your rent, book a repair and update your details - all in one place.

5,787 new registrations over the year, bringing the total to 21,348.  More signups since then mean nearly 23,000 customers are now enjoying its benefits.

Satisfaction with how you sign up for MySovereign increased in 2019/20 to 85%.

Customer satisfaction with the online payment process rose to 89.9% in 2018/20 (up from 86.6% the previous year).

We've recently introduced lots of new features.  You can view more content without the need to log in, making it easier to find information.  You can also use MySovereign to apply to add someone to you tenancy.  And we've expanded customer and no Sovereign customers ability to report ASB, domestic abuse, fraud and to make a complaint.

It's also a popular way to book a repair.  Despite this facility being suspended on 19 March when we moved to emergency-only repairs, over 17,000 repairs were booked online over the year - 4,000 more than the year before.

What's next?
Over the next six months we'll be working to update MySovereign with our new branding, as well as increasing what you can do online.  We're introducing paperless direct debit, enabling mutual exchange applications and launching a new way for you to register complaints, give compliments and share your feedback.

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To take advantage of all the benefits of MySovereign, sign up today - it's easy, free and fast

Your feedback

Your feedback really matters and helps us to do things better.  We collect feedback in a number of different ways, by phone, online and by SMS (text).

Complaints are one of the best ways for us to help serve you better.  We look at what's causing them and why people are contacting us, so we can improve the services we offer and how we operate.

We collect feedback to help us understand how we're doing against our four customer experience commitments.

We may it easy
We take responsibility
We get it done
We keep in touch

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Handling anti-social behaviour (ASB) cases
There was a slight fall in satisfaction but higher 'effort' and 'trust' scores show that customers recognise the role of our teams in managing these challenging cases.

Repairs
Despite some extreme weather, these scores were similar to last year, with only slight falls in satisfaction, effort and trust.

Complaints
There's continuing positive feedback for how our Resolution team responds to complaints.  There was a surge in complaints late in the year as we battled the elements and this impacted on our performance.  But we know there's still room for improvement and we're working with customers in our scrutiny groups and using your feedback to achieve this.

Out of hours service
Our out of hours service, including Careline, continues to receive excellent feedback.  Over 90% of customers were satisfied with the service and the communications they'd had from us.

What's next?
We'll continue to work with you to get a clearer picture about what you think's important, including more ways you can share your feedback and feelings with us.  We'll also continue to collaborate with resident groups and other organisations to identify best practice and make your experience of dealing with us better.

Complaints (Full year 2019/20)

We try hard to offer good quality services, but sometimes things go wrong.

We recognise that dealing with complaints to a high standard means we need to understand the problem, put it right, apologise and learn from our mistakes.  We also know there's more we can do to reduce complaints and handle them better.

Number of complaints: 2,958

The two main services we received complaints about were:

Property Services (mainly about responsive repairs - the ones you ask us to carry out) - 1,925

Housing management - 660

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Ombudsman cases
If we've done all we reasonably can to resolve a complaint but someone's still unhappy, they can ask the Housing Ombudsman Service to look into their complaint.  We have very few complaints that get to this stage.

During the year, the Housing Ombudsman completed nine formal reviews.  They found no maladministration and/or service failure on our part in eight cases and judged the other one as outside the jurisdiction.  There are currently two cases awaiting review.

Service improvements
You told us that we need to resolve complaints more quickly, and we've introduced automated alerts to make this happen.

We also want to make sure we capture and act on all complaints, so you'll be able to do this online - as well as being able to share the positive experiences you've had with us.

When you tell us about a problem, you want one person to help you resolve it.  We've continued to provide support and training to our people so we can all be better at taking ownership of issues.

What's next?
The next three months will be challenging as services resume following lockdown and there's an increase in demand on the organisation.  But we want to resolve more of your problems at first time of asking and are reviewing the way we handle complaints to reduce the time it takes you to get a complaint resolved, and make sure we keep you informed along the way.

The pandemic has reminded us all of what’s important, like having a good, affordable, secure home in a safe environment.

We want to continue to work with customers to focus on place-making - improving our existing homes and building more homes in the years to come, so we can help more people in need.

Here are some facts and figures about this and other key activity during 2019/20. (The section above also explains more about our contact channels, complaints and feedback – or visit the related page on how residents help shape our strategies and policies and scrutinise and improve our services.)

Quality services

• 3,468 new customers had a Sovereign home and a chance to put roots down for their families. Homes were relet in an average of 12.7 days, better than the year before.
• National recognition for our ground-breaking work to provide permanent homes for long-term homelessness residents through the ‘Housing First’ initiative.
• Rent arrears stayed low for our social housing homes (2.38%). The figures were 0.85% for homes at market rent levels and 1.97% for shared ownership customers. Please do get in touch if you’re struggling to pay.

More homes, better places

• We completed 195,532 repairs, with customers waiting 10.9 days on average.
• We invested £109m (£16m more than the year before) in maintaining and improving homes, including replacing 958 bathrooms; 1,219 kitchens; 2,070 boilers and windows in 1,174 homes.
• We're also focused on reducing our impact on the environment and making homes more affordable to run. This includes replacing 481 older heating systems with more modern, energy-efficient ones: such as 192 air source heat pump systems at homes in rural areas without a mains gas supply.
• We had 900 applications for 11 new apprentice and trainee places - 8% of our workforce are now apprentices and trainees. Our Women In Trades programme grew too and women make up 3.4% of our trades team.

Strong foundations

• We provide 59,517 homes across the south and south west for around 140,000 residents.
• We’re financially strong with a turnover of £411m and a surplus before tax of £79.1m but our charitable registration and objectives mean all our surplus is invested in our homes and services.
• In fact, we invested £368m in building nearly 1,770 new homes and had one of the largest shared ownership programmes in the country.
• 245 of these new homes were for social rent; 780 for affordable rent; 677 for shared ownership; 30 for open market sale (to help subsidise affordable housing) and 38 through joint ventures with developers.
• These homes included two smaller ultra eco-friendly schemes in rural Oxfordshire as well as larger developments in towns and cities like Poole, Newbury and Bristol.
• And we’re focusing more on schemes where we can influence the design and quality. Later this year we’ll be launching our new Homes and Place Standard to do even more to make sure we’re building the right homes in the right places.

Making sure your homes are safe is our top priority. We do this by providing smoke detectors; checking and servicing gas, oil and solid fuel appliances at annual safety checks; and regular inspections of electrical systems.

Maintaining your safety’s also stayed a priority over the challenging months during and since lockdown, and we’d like to thank you for giving us access.

In the year ending March 2020 we completed 38,726 gas inspections and 9,850 electrical inspections as well as working with partners to deliver asbestos, legionella (68,215 tests), lifts (3,944 inspections) and fire safety programmes.

You can read more about our work around fire safety below, and on other pages about gas safety, asbestos and the safety of the water supply in your home.

Fire safety

We continually review the safety of our buildings to make sure they’d perform as we’d expect if there was a fire. For a number of blocks this has meant changes to the evacuation procedure, fire alarm systems and remedial works (such as fire compartmentation and fire door replacement programmes). All housing associations are doing this and we’re not alone in these changes.

In our blocks of flats and similar sites, we make sure there are appropriate smoke detectors and fire alarms, fire doors and other fire safety measures as well as Fire Risk Assessments (FRAs) – which you can ask us to send you for your building.

We completed 694 FRAs, raised 2,828 fire safety actions and closed 1,875 actions or checks.

Living in our taller buildings

We recognise that living in a taller building (six storeys or more) can present different safety challenges. We’ve published building safety summaries about these buildings to give you more information about where you live.

All our taller buildings have an FRA every year and have been visited by our Primary Authority (Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service, who give us advice and support on fire matters and have endorsed our approach.

Later this year, all our taller buildings will have special signage which helps the emergency services responding to an incident if the corridors are filled with smoke and visibility is poor. And they’ll also have ‘premises information boxes’ with essential information for the rescue services.

We’re also getting ready for new legislation expected later this year which will apply to buildings of seven storeys or more. This will come in over a number of years and change how we evidence to you that these homes are safe.

Get Fire Smart

While fires don’t happen often, 15 were reported over the year - many as a result of cooking.

You can find kitchen safety tips (and advice on avoiding other fires) as part of our #GetFireSmart campaign and, with warmer days coming, please check our ‘seasonal fire risks' section for advice on bonfires and BBQs – including never using any kind of BBQ on a balcony.

Please ring us on 0300 5000 926 to report any fire safety risks or raise other safety concerns, or if you’d like any specific safety advice.

Over the year our Communities team helped 500 customers into work; 2,000 customers into education and 

Here's a link to a video about their year

At the end of March, 23% of residents in our social rented homes were on Universal Credit (UC). That’s 10,717 customers – more than double the number a year ago. Many have found UC quite challenging and sometimes stressful, so our Income team contact them to see if they’d like any help or advice and to talk through what’s available.

And we’re here for anyone else with finance worries – we referred 2,472 customers to our specialist customer income advisors during the year.

When it comes to your personal safety, we work closely with the police and other agencies on issues like domestic abuse, hoarding and anti-social behaviour so please get in touch if you need advice or support.

We also have an anti-slavery statement and work with our suppliers and contractors on equality, diversity and inclusion.

As well as the involvement and hard work of the Resident and Board Partnership, Scrutiny Coordination Group and resident scrutineers, we’re giving residents even more say in what we do and how we do it.

Customer journey mapping

This is about making it easier for you to deal with us by tracking and describing all the experiences a customer has when they receive a particular service.

‘Taking a walk in the customer’s shoes’ lets us identify potential pain points and ideas to improve the experience for customers.  It also highlights where things are going well.

Since August 2019 we’ve completed the following mapping projects:

The 'aftercare and defects' service for people who've bought a new-build home through shared ownership

• 7 customers and 20 employees involved
• 3 workshops
• 10 ‘quick wins’ proposed plus 14 longer-term goals

The journey customers make when it comes to compensation

• 8 customers and 5 employees involved
• 2 workshops
• 11 ‘quick wins’ proposed plus 9 longer-term goals

Our current project is the journey customers experience with our External Management Companies service. We’ve mapped this with the teams involved and are now talking to customers about their emotional experience and suggestions for improving the service.

Coming soon are Customer Journey Mapping projects looking at buying a new home; the anti-social behaviour (ASB) service; and service charges.

Co-creation

Over the last few months, we’ve continued our co-creation work (a really collaborative approach where customers and employees work hand in hand) on a new Homes and Place Standard. This sets out our vision for the homes we want to build and the places and communities people want to live in.

Further customer workshops focused on environmental sustainability; the home; place and surroundings. Customers discussed what key principles we should apply in these areas when we undertake future developments and the next workshop will develop these ideas more.

Covid 19 meant we had to postpone a workshop about our draft new Empty Homes Standard. But our next one is in August and customers will be able to visit empty homes and look at the potential new changes to the standards they helped design.

A series of further workshops are planned and we hope that the new standard will be agreed and can start to be used from the new financial year.

The RBP and SCG have continued to get regular updates about progress in both these areas.

Sovereign charter

Again, due to Covid 19, we had to postpone much of our planned consultation in the spring. But we’ve adjusted our timescale and hope to consult with residents and staff over the next six months about creating a Sovereign Charter.

This will be underpinned by the National Housing Federation’s ‘Together With Tenants’ work and the six commitments in that around: relationships with residents; communication; the voice and influence of residents; how associations can be accountable; quality; and what happens when things go wrong.

Here’s what we’ll be doing.

• A series of (digital) focus groups with involved residents and employees to consider the principles for a Sovereign charter.
• Wider digital consultation with residents on these suggested principles.
• Engaging with our Executive Board and Board members about the proposals.
• Preparing a draft Sovereign charter – and then holding some more focus groups to review and amend anything if necessary.
• Finalising our Sovereign charter by December 2020 for RBP and Board approval.
• Officially launching the charter at the next Residents’ Conference in early 2021.