YHN Annual Report 2009-10 - Your Homes Newcastle

Chief Executive’s round up
I am pleased to be able to tell you that, despite the uncertainty
caused by a shifting economy and the introduction of a new
government, we have continued to provide high quality services
to customers. Our core services have come on leaps and bounds
with improvements, new services and updates.
• Board agreed the best option for our Concierge
Service Review and we are now preparing to
implement the physical changes to the service.
• Our Telecare service launched an over 85’s project
which gives residents over the age of 85, living in
Newcastle, six months service for free. The service
includes an alarm unit connecting you to a 24 hour
response centre, a splashproof pendant alarm to
wear around the wrist or neck and 24 hour response
services including a mobile warden.
• We launched a new handyperson scheme in
partnership with the Anchor Staying Put initiative.
This aims to help vulnerable and older customers
with small but important household tasks not
covered by our repairs service.
• Our Asylum Seekers Unit celebrated its 10 year
anniversary. We held an event at YHN House to
mark the celebration and the outstanding work of
the unit, which brought together stakeholders and
partners from across the city.
• We worked with Palatine Beds, a supported
employment business, to win them a new contract to
supply a range of composite doors to the city council,
in addition to supplying environmentally friendly
beds.
• Our Housing Management service successfully
retained its Charter Mark accreditation (and will
soon be part of the Corporate Customer Service
Excellence Assessment) and staff continue to drive
up the level of customer service. This is evident from
new tenant and end of tenancy surveys completed by
customers and through mystery shopping exercises.
An increasing number of Housing Management staff
are also getting involved in community activities such
as the Walker fi reworks event, ‘Week of Action’ in
Byker and Cowgate and the Jubilee Magpies football
team – helping to get young people off the streets
and prevent vandalism on estates.
We have made signifi cant progress with our new build
programme, namely:
• completed 34 bungalows (at April 2010), going
some way to tackling the chronic lack of supply of
social housing in the region. The bungalows have
allowed us to release some large family houses
in the local area. It’s meant a lot of work for our
local community housing staff but has been a really
positive, if occasionally challenging, experience for us
all.
• made inroads into other types of accommodation,
concentrating on customer groups for whom there is
a distinct lack of housing, namely learning disabled
people and young families.
• started to investigate options for low cost home
ownership.
We recognise, however, that the current arrangements
for grant funding are unlikely to last forever, and are
looking at how we will fund future developments.
Meanwhile, our Modern Homes Programme is
progressing to plan, and should be complete by 2011.
Key milestones include:
• over 20,000 homes now reach the government’s
Decent Homes standard,
• fi rst tenants moved into The Sycamores, Riverside
Dene in the summer of 2010, with another two
blocks becoming available towards the autumn, and
page 6