Appendix B 

 

 


North Yorkshire Council Housing Improvement Strategy 2025-30

Why we are improving our tenant services:

As part of our Council Plan, North Yorkshire Council (NYC) aim to ensure that all residents are ‘free from harm and feel safe and protected’ and to deliver ‘good quality affordable and sustainable housing which meets the needs of our communities’. Our Housing Strategy 2024-29 sets out the Council’s ambition to be an ‘Exemplar Social Landlord’.

Following the creation of NYC in 2023, and a subsequent restructure of the housing service, NYC identified a range of issues within our tenant services which led to a self-referral to the Regulator for Social Housing (RSH) and a C3 Regulatory Judgement in September 2024.

Those issues included a lack of reliable information about the condition of its homes, a failure to meet aspects of landlord health and safety requirements, a lack of reliable information to support its understanding of and response to the diverse needs of its tenants and limited and inconsistent meaningful opportunities for tenants to influence and scrutinise its services. 

We have undertaken a root cause analysis to understand the background to non-compliance, to ensure lessons are learned and sustainable improvements are implemented.

Using this information, alongside our ambition to deliver high quality services based upon tenant needs we have developed a Housing Improvement Plan, designed to ensure that we understand and meet those needs, deliver transparent services, make data led service improvement and provide a safe and secure home for everyone.

What are we doing:

Since we made the self-referral we have made some immediate changes to the services we deliver for tenants. In the background we have also strengthened our governance around Housing Services, created a Housing Improvement Board and a Housing Improvement Plan which focusses on addressing those known areas of non-compliance.

We are basing our Improvement Plan on our internal review of compliance with the regulatory standards, our root cause analysis, internal audit of our rent compliance and feedback from residents.

We are also linking in with the Councils wider Transformation Programme, understanding where we can join up with projects around ‘Customer’ and ‘The Way we Work’ to maximise value for money.

Our goal is to improve the quality of our tenant services across North Yorkshire

What we want to achieve:

By delivering the actions within the plan we hope to achieve the following strategic outcomes:

1.    Ensure the problems identified in the regulatory judgement are addressed as well as the underlying causes and learning is captured in revised governance, policies and reporting.

2.    Our culture reflects a high performing organisation and continuous improvement.

3.    Work is prioritised appropriately, and risks are well managed

4.    Systems and Data are effective to support service delivery, reporting and oversight.

5.    All properties have an up-to-date stock condition survey.

6.    Data relating to safety of homes and compliance is robust and maintained.

7.    Complaints are well managed, and processes meet the expectations of the Housing Ombudsman complaints handling code and consumer standards.

8.    Resident views are heard and acted upon

9.     The repairs service delivers repairs in line with targets set

 

What we’ve achieved so far:

Court with solid fill

Stronger Governance – We have established an Improvement Framework, Overview and Scrutiny Committee, Housing Improvement Board, Tenant Scrutiny Panel and Performance Framework.

Handshake with solid fill

Regulatory Engagement – We are working positively with the Regulator for Social Housing (RSH) to improve our compliance position and to work towards a C1 position; that overall the landlord is delivering the outcomes of the consumer standards.

Heart with pulse outline

Landlord Compliance – We have developed Management Plans for the ‘Big 6’ Health and Safety concerns. We have also commenced a programme of Decent Homes Surveys and implementation of an Asset Management System.

 

Headphones outline

Listening and Engaging with Residents - Over 2000 tenants took part in our first Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSM) survey, we are conducting quarterly surveys to keep a better track on performance. We have developed a Tenant Involvement Strategy, recruited to the Tenant Panels and launched ‘Open Door’ the tenant newsletter.

CheckList with solid fill

Policy Harmonisation – We have developed a policy framework which details the priority policies we will seek to harmonise and timescales. We have already harmonised critical policies on Allocations, Domestic Abuse, Tenancy Strategy, Repairs and Anti-social Behaviour.

Questions with solid fill

Complaints Handling – We have created a dedicated resource within the Community Development Directorate and have improved our complaints classifications and data collection to ensure we can now report on and learn from our complaints.

Medical outline

Damp and Mould – We have improved our damp and mould processes to be compliant with Awaabs Law and launched an online reporting tool to make it easier for tenants to let us know when there is a problem.

What’s next?

Our Housing Improvement Plan (Appendix A) focusses on 7 workstreams, which includes not only the issues raised the regulatory judgement but our wider commitments to meeting the RSH consumer standards:

 

Workstream

Key Actions

1

Governance and Oversight

Strengthening oversight and accountability for improvements, policy, data and performance

2

Understanding Stock Quality

Carrying out stock condition surveys across all our stock to inform investment priorities

3

Keeping Homes Safe and Compliant

Ensuring all our homes comply with safety standards and staff are well trained to maintain safety programmes

4

Understanding Tenants and Responding to Diverse Needs

Understanding our tenants and their diverse needs through feedback and data to ensure fair and equitable service delivery

5

Effective Repairs and Maintenance Service

Reviewing contracts and planning to deliver timely repairs

6

Working with Others to Ensure Safe Neighbourhoods

Ensuring effective working with partners on maintaining shared spaces, dealing with anti-social behaviour and domestic abuse

7

Allocate and Let Homes Fairly and Manage Tenancy

Develop strategies and policies with tenants for tenancy sustainment, ensure service charges and are fair, transparent and well communicated, and ensuring rents are set correctly

 

Themes 1-4 directly address issues of regulatory concern highlighted in the Regulatory Judgement. Themes 5-7 pick up other areas, not highlighted within the Regulatory Judgement but where NYC are aware work is required to further our compliance position.

Timescales

Actions within the current improvement plan are scheduled to be complete by March 2027

Further, operational, actions plans are being developed to address those areas of the Consumer Standards where we feel further development is required in order to achieve our ambition to receive a C1 grading and ultimately to become an exemplar social landlord.

Staged Improvement

We recognise that a staged approach to recovery is required, and we have aligned these stages with our ambition to achieve regulatory upgrade

The Housing Improvement Strategy will be delivered in the knowledge that recovery is not a linear journey and there may be both internal and external factors (such as tenant feedback, regulatory engagement and additional legislative change) which cause us to pause and modify our response.

The stages of improvement are not distinct, Phases Two and Three could (and should) happen concurrently, as the service focusses on harmonisation and compliance in the short to medium term whilst framing scenarios for longer term improvement post-crisis.

STAGE TWO – ADJUSTMENT AND TRACK RECORD OF DELIVERY AGAINST PLANS June 2025 – March 2027 § People - supporting our people out of Crisis Recovery; cultural change § Processes - Harmonisation of policy and process § Systems - Implementing required systems and improvement plans § Management of Finance/ Performance / Risk § Customer Feedback - Tenant Satisfaction Measures informing service delivery § Building on and interpreting data moving into forecasting § Assessing impact and make informed adjustments based on above. § Achieving a stable base upon which strategic review can take place. STAGE ONE - STABILISATION, PLANNING AND HIGH PRIORITY ACTIONS STARTED May 2024 – June 2025 1. Root Cause Analysis 2. Restructure 3. Improvement Planning/ Prioritisation 4. Financial/ Performance/Risk Management and assurance established 5. Reset Customer Relationship 6. Establish Governance 7. AGILE approach to service improvement - immediate responses, stabilise then assess. STAGE THREE – EMBEDDING AND ASSURANCE THAT ACTIONS HAVE BEEN EFFECTIVE, LONGER TERM ACTIONS COMPLETING March 2027 – June 2028 § Strategic Review of Service - New Operating Plan with effective governance and assurance process in place (revised from crisis stage) § Evidence based long term investment and asset management plans § Service Delivery model based upon evidence based assessment of tenants current and future diverse needs and vulnerbilities. § Ongoing Strategy / Policy / Process Review programme based on evidenced understanding, directed by Tenants and overseen by Elected Members § Outward facing service - working in partnership with other NYC services and external partnerships to deliver holistic services for tenants. § People - Effective Learning and Development Strategy and Workforce Planning Strategy to ensure culture, knowledge and professionalism is encouraged and retained.

STAGE FOUR – CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT June 2028 onwards § Continuous Improvement embedded as business as usual. § Tenant-centred approach to service review and improvement § A predictive asset maintenance strategy § Regular training and development of our people, creating a professional workplace that attracts talent. § Strategic partnerships are valuable and provide direct benfits to tenants § Excelling at community engagement and support services § Encouraging sustainability in our homes and communities Tenant Involvement and Transparency

We are committed to understanding and listening to our tenants and we want to ensure that the tenant voice is heard in decisions that affect homes, safety and communities. We have worked with tenants to develop a new Tenant Involvement Strategy, providing increased opportunities for tenants to be involved in service improvement.

We are also improving the way in which we deal with feedback, through both the quarterly Tenant Satisfaction Surveys and through lessons learnt from complaints, ensuring that we have more of a finger on the pulse of tenant experiences.

In order to ensure that all those involved are kept up to date with progress on delivery of the Strategy and of any service improvements which might impact directly on tenants a Communication Plan has been developed.

Transparency with tenants and wider stakeholders is central to delivery of this Improvement Strategy and regular updates on progress will be delivered to the Tenant Forum, Housing Improvement Board, Overview and Scrutiny Committee and made available on the website as well as updates being given to all tenants via the quarterly newsletter.

How will we measure our performance and impact?

Our Performance Framework (Appendix D) details the performance data which will be collected.

Our performance will be monitored, by the Housing Improvement Board and the Regulator for Social Housing on a monthly basis, progress will be reported to Overview and Scrutiny, Management Board and Executive Committee quarterly.

Financial Monitoring reports will be published regularly. These reports set out our progress against our budgets.

We will measure our performance through the annual Tenant Satisfaction Measures and incorporate learnings and feedback into the Housing Improvement Plan.

Using the 2023/24 TSM survey results as our baseline we will seek to improve our performance..

We have appointed an external consultant, Savills, to be a critical friend to us, and challenge and support us to deliver on our Improvement Plan.

Strategy Review

The Housing Improvement Strategy will be agreed and monitored via the methodology above on a quarterly basis.

An annual Housing Service Improvement and Performance Report including Complaints Handling and TSM performance (the statutory requirement) will be reported to Overview and Scrutiny, Executive and Tenant Panel – this will also serve as the strategy review document, ensuring that sufficient progress is being made and impact is being felt, on an annual basis.

How can you get involved?

Do you have ideas on how we can improve our housing services? Whether you can spare a few hours or want to be involved regularly, we'd love to hear from you.

Contact us at myhousingvoice@northyorks.gov.uk

Find out more about Tenant Involvement at North Yorkshire Council : >>link<<