VALUE FOR MONEY SELF ASSURANCE STATEMENT

Transcription

1 VALUE FOR MONEY SELF ASSURANCE STATEMENT DEVELOPING HOMES AND CREATING OPPORTUNITIES FOR PEOPLE WITHIN WEST NORFOLK

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3 INTRODUCTION Our mission statement is Developing homes and creating opportunities for people within West Norfolk. Currently, we own 6,773 homes and have commenced a 30m redevelopment of over 320 homes within central Kings Lynn. We expect this redevelopment and other work with our partners will create up to 20 local jobs and bring more than 8m into the local economy. At Freebridge, our business plan provides the strategic context for our activity, including value for money. We have four overarching aims, linked to our Corporate Bond: Increasing Satisfaction Community Focussed Appreciating Assets Increasing Capacity For us, increasing capacity means not only our own delivering better outcomes more efficiently, but increasing the capacity of our communities, partners and the residents we serve. For example, currently we are working with The Purfleet Trust and Marks & Spencers to create a community café, an environment where people can feel comfortable, connected and will want to revisit. Our work with the Cabinet Office s Behavioural Insights Team is helping to improve the social and environmental conditions not only of Hillington Square but the way we work and interact with others generally. As well as improving the properties Freebridge already own ( 8.1m in 2012/13), we were able to give the keys to the tenants of our 100th new home. We are delighted to report our value for money achievements for 2012/13 and actions for further improvements this coming year.

4 SELF ASSURANCE REVIEW Over the past couple of years, our critical evaluation of the way we do business continues to recognise that our staff really are our greatest asset. Our strengths lay in the areas of tackling antisocial behaviour, effective lettings and ensuring our residents valued the extent to which we kept our estates well-maintained places to live. By stepping up our coaching programmes and undertaking a significant and wide ranging restructuring of our senior management and departmental teams, a third of all our cost efficiencies achieved over the past two years ( 500k) have been due to our organisational restructures and supporting our managers to develop staff, rather than out-source activity. Being more reliant on our staff rather than external suppliers has facilitated a three-fold achievement: Lower cost services Better customer service Higher levels of staff empowerment and capability The areas of opportunity for us lay in responsive and void repairs, our management of rent arrears and collection and our interaction and engagement with residents as a whole. This past year we improved in a number of areas and are pleased to have completed 99.2% of the decent homes work. Overall our performance regarding customer satisfaction is below that of our peer group, but we are also well below the median with respect to costs. We believe that it is not only year on year efficiencies we wish to track, but also the cumulative effect of us understanding our business drivers, changing our ways of working and improving our ability to redirect financial resources appropriately. Seven years ago, we embarked upon a programme of improving our housing stock, learning about our residents and developing our staff. By 2011/12, we had largely achieved our transfer promises, our stock was 95.2% decent and our staff were well on their way to an understanding of residents needs and aspirations. Satisfaction levels showed improvement to 88%. With respect to our peers, as evidenced through Housemark benchmarking for 2011/12, our performance clearly showed our strong relative position relatively low cost, but variable degrees of effectiveness.

5 EXERNAL & INTERNAL BENCHMARKING Housemark, a key source for social housing benchmarking, has developed eight key areas and standard key performance indicators (KPIs) by which our performance may be benchmarked against our peer group. Internally, we track and assess our performance monthly through a number of key performance indicators. As we develop our understanding of business drivers and what drives our customers satisfaction levels, our ability to correlate KPI statistical results to specific management actions also grows.

6 HOUSEMARK BENCHMARKING Overall Performance 2011/12 and 2012/13 Our peer group consists of 63 registered providers, all with similar attributes to Freebridge 2012/13 Direction of Travel : 2011/2012 Results (1) Responsive repairs and empty properties - Repairs completed exceed the peer group best performers, but the number of days taken to complete the works and satisfaction with repairs both require action taken to improve performance (2) Rent arrears and collection On par with our peer groups for rent collected, current tenant arrears and levels of write off, this is being achieved at 22% below the best performers value of average cost (3) Anti-social behaviour - Resolution rates have improved in 2012/13 and match the peer group best performers of 98.4%, with both satisfaction of case handling & outcome also improving. This compares favourably with our peer group, matching the upper levels of 98.4% and 91%. The average cost is lower than the median by 10% (4) Major works and cyclical maintenance - Decent homes failure % due to non-trad works still to be carried out. The average cost is lower than the median by 13%, however action needs to be taken to improve energy efficiency ratings, and although satisfaction with quality of homes has increased slightly, still below benchmark (5) Lettings - The average cost is higher than the median but with re-let times continuing to improve year on year, reducing to an average of nine days. Empty property numbers are still higher than the median due mostly to the Hillington Square project, affecting 70 properties which are vacant but unavailable to let. (6) Tenancy management - Tenancy turnover is affected by the profiles of our tenants primarily elderly and high proportions of disabilities. Overall satisfaction levels are static, while the average cost is lower than the median by 9%. (7) Resident involvement - The average cost is lower than the median by 2%, matching the best performers. We hold more profile information, thereby understanding the needs of our tenants better, and although the tenants views taken into account are slightly less than the median, they have improved on 2011/12 performance. (8) Estate services - Satisfaction with the neighbourhood is increasing slightly each year, with emphasis on improving communal areas for all the residents. 2012/2013 Results

7 OTHER KEY EFFICIENCES REALISED Whilst our budgeting process remains our strategic control in which we plan for cost efficiencies and track costs, within each year, as opportunities arise or business objectives are updated to reflect changing conditions, other key efficiencies are realised. The following table details our achievements over the past two years: We aim to develop further, our ability to predict performance and better define and report on our social and environmental achievements. Over the next year, our focus is on: Organisational Culture and Governance improving our links and understanding of our financial, social and environmental returns Protect our income streams achieving our welfare reform objectives Business drivers develop more in-depth understanding of cost drivers Procurement streamline our processes and improve tenant engagement Service reviews continue our programme of service reviews Staff development develop our in-house coaching/training with respect to VfM Asset management create detailed analysis on an individual property basis

8 Freebridge Community Housing Juniper House Austin Street King s Lynn Norfolk PE30 1DZ Main Switchboard Telephone: enquiries@freebridge