Thank you to everyone who came along to our ‘Grab a Cuppa’ session in August. I was joined by Jamie Lewis (Head of Extra Care – Central), Tracy Jones (Head of Operational Development) and Caroline Kaiser (Head of Extra Care – London and Kent) to deliver our latest key updates.
If you missed the session, you can watch it back on YouTube
Here’s a summary of what we covered during the session.
Extra Care Resident Forum
Our Resident Forum is working with us to help us provide better services to our residents, particularly regarding how we communicate and the literature we provide. If you’re interested in being part of the forum or would like to find out more information, please contact the Chair, Ian via email: Ian@kingedwardcourt.org.uk.
The forum is also keen to hear from residents’ associations to learn more about the challenges residents have and any suggestions on how we could improve.
National Residents’ Survey
We want to hear about your experience living at Housing 21 and will be launching the Resident Survey on Monday 2 September. This year, we’ve changed the process to make it as easy as possible for residents to share their feedback by having:
- Survey events held at your schemes: Your scheme manager will be sharing the details of these events very soon if they haven’t done so already.
- Guidance: Residents told us that last year’s survey questions weren’t always clear, so we will provide guidance to help you understand what each question means.
- Raffle: Each scheme will be holding a raffle; tickets will be handed out when you give your completed survey to your scheme manager, and you could be in with a chance of winning a £50 gift voucher.
The survey closes on Saturday 21 September, and we expect the scheme-level results to be available in December at the latest. At this point, your scheme manager will hold a meeting with residents to share the results.
Resident Service Charges
Every year, we review our budgets between November and December. As part of this, we consult with residents about the service charges, and we build the budget together.
We’ve started to review the materials for the consultations based on the feedback and these include:
- An improved template for Service Charge Budget (a guidance tool for managers)
- New FAQs designed for residents and managers
- Redesigned ‘Understanding Your Service Charge Budget’ guide, including
key rent and service charge differences information
We expect these documents to be signed off and available before the budget meetings start taking place in November and December. Residents will receive the letter advising them on the final service charge budgets in February 2025. We will share more information about the service charges in the coming months.
Next session
Our next Grab a Cuppa session will be on Monday 18 November, 3pm – make sure you save the date in your calendar. You will be able to join the meeting on the day here.
In the meantime, if you have any questions please email: Charlie.wilshire@housing21.org.uk
