foster carer prog - Council meetings - Lewisham Council

Questionnaire and focus groups
Our Questionnaire
1. As part of our review, we sent 1000 questionnaires to a random
selection of Lewisham Homes and Regenter B3 leaseholders at the
start of July 2009. The survey was sent to 805 Lewisham Homes
leaseholders and 195 Regenter B3 leaseholders - approximately 40% of
the leaseholders managed by Lewisham Homes and Regenter B3 (once
properties owned by co-operatives 1 , any properties where the
leaseholder did not live at the property and any properties that were
not permanently managed by Lewisham Homes or Regenter B3 or had
not yet fully transferred, had been excluded).
2. 135 surveys were returned within the specified timescale, 35 from
Regenter B3 leaseholders and 98 from Lewisham Homes leaseholders.
(2 respondents did not indicate who managed their property).
3. The questionnaire asked a short series of questions about
leaseholder satisfaction with (a) the standard, quality and cost of
repairs and maintenance (and major works); (b) the billing
arrangements followed by their housing manager and (c) how their
housing manager provides them with information. Throughout the
questionnaire repairs and maintenance services (covered by the annual
service charge) were considered separately from any major works that
might have been carried out (e.g. replacement windows) and which are
billed separately from the service charge.
4. The questionnaire was designed to provide a baseline of quantitative
information for us to consider. We followed up the questionnaire with
two focus groups, which were arranged and facilitated by an external
consultant in order to provide some independent and impartial
qualitative data to complement the quantitative data collected via the
questionnaire.
5. Although data protection issues prevented officers from passing the
contact details of survey respondents to Lewisham Homes and
Regenter B3, where it was clear in the comments left by the
leaseholder that they wanted their housing manager to be made aware
of a particular issue and take action, information was passed on. In
other cases where there was a clear complaint being made but
uncertainty as to whether the respondent wanted information to be
passed on, the Scrutiny Manager contacted the leaseholder to obtain
their permission to pass their details on. In all cases passed on,
Regenter B3 and Lewisham Homes sought to address the issues raised.
1.
Some properties classed as Lewisham Homes properties are in fact managed by other companies. Lewisham Homes
retains some management responsibility (mainly administrative) but all repairs and services are carried out by a different
company. These properties were therefore excluded from the survey.
8 The Council’s obligations to leaseholders