Access and Customer Care Policy

Access and Customer Care Policy Version 2 Approved 20 September 2023 -  Level 1 policy. Part of Fairhives Customer Care Framework

1. Introduction

1.1. Fairhive is committed to building strong and vibrant communities and is focussed on providing support to local people to help them to live healthy, rewarding and fulfilled lives.
1.2. We recognise the negative impact of poor housing and homelessness and aim to provide services which deliver decent homes, positive social outcomes and a great place to live.
1.3. We acknowledge the importance of ensuring services meet the needs of those individuals who are, or become vulnerable owing to age, illness, mental health etc. and will work with them to sustain their tenancies and continue to live independently in their own home, if this is what the individual desires and it is possible to do so.
1.4. By putting our residents at the heart of everything we do, we will offer a service tailored to meet the diverse requirements of our current and future residents
1.5. We will use customer insight and feedback to inform the development of customer focussed services enabling new and existing residents to have the flexibility to access our services when and how they want. . We will, periodically, conduct a resident census to better understand the needs and expectations of our residents.
1.6. The Government has a Digital by Default agenda whereby access to their services will be online only, this along with the benefits provided by online access make it vitally important that we encourage and support our residents in accessing digital services. To support this, we will ensure that we empower residents to communicate and transact with us in a wide range of ways, with a focus on providing high quality digital communication channels, enabling those who can, to self-serve, and allowing us to support those who are incapable of doing so.

2. Outline of Service

2.1. We will support residents and communities so that together we can work to meet their needs now and in the future.
2.2. We operate in areas of deprivation where there are poorer life chances, including poor education and health outcomes. We will therefore offer a range of diverse and flexible services as we recognise that many of the issues facing our residents cannot solely be solved through meeting a housing need. Examples include:

• Additional Housing Management Service supporting potentially vulnerable groups such as those with poor mental health
• Community engagement
• Digital and financial inclusion, employment and skills initiatives

2.3. We will work in partnership with others to help to support people in the right way and at the right time:

• Using a collaborative approach to meet housing needs strategically, to avoid placing people away from their family or local community
• Working in partnership with a variety of agencies
• Embedding our safeguarding policies for children, young people and adults

2.4. We work with a number of different communities, each with its own needs and unique characteristics. We will ensure that we consider all relevant groups in the delivery of our services. We will actively engage residents groups in the design and delivery of our services and we will ensure that we carry our equality impact assessments where appropriate.
2.5. We support diverse, vibrant and successful communities by delivering services that focus on the real needs and aspirations of our residents. We recognise that in order for this to be possible, services need to be accessible to meet the diverse needs of our residents.
2.6. Our approach sets out how we will:

• better understand residents’ needs
• increase choice and information for residents accessing our services

2.7. We will work towards the following outcomes to make services accessible:
Residents:

• can easily access our services in the ways that best suit them, whilst remaining economically viable and efficient for Fairhive
• receive information that is accessible, current, clear, easy to understand and jargon free,
• receive annual reports detailing how we are performing against agreed customer service commitments
• will be supported to help them sustain their tenancies and live independently
• influence and shape services to help drive continuous improvement
• be given the opportunity to provide feedback as to the extent of how accessible our services are.

Employees will:

• demonstrate a “can do” attitude
• provide an efficient and professional service
• resolve enquiries received at the first point of contact where possible
• be highly trained in customer care, equality and diversity and data protection
• be appropriately trained to recognise vulnerability
• work with residents and offer support and advice or signpost them to other agencies where appropriate to ensure they can continue to live in their property
• respect customers’ privacy and confidentiality

Details on what our Residents can expect from us are contained within our Customer Service Commitments publication, which is reviewed annually in partnership with members of the Residents Forum.
2.8. Highlights of our performance against the customer service commitment targets will be published to residents and monitored by the Residents Forum or a sub-group of it.
2.9. We will obtain and act upon customer feedback through a range of methods to enable residents to have a voice in shaping future services and are capable of effectively holding us to account.
2.10. We will report on this customer feedback to the Board and to the Regulator of Social Housing to ensure that residents are given the opportunity to give their opinion on the quality and accessibility of several areas of our service.

3. Implementation

3.1. The Head of Customer Support will hold the responsibility for the implementation of this policy.
3.2. Customer Service Commitments will be used, regularly reviewed and reported upon to ensure residents are fully aware of what they can expect.

4. Performance Measures

4.1. The level of service detailed in this policy will be measured through the agreed Customer Service Commitments across all service areas, along with the Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs) published and periodically reviewed by the Regulator of Social Housing.
4.2. The Customer Service Commitments and our adherence with the TSMs will be measured quarterly and monitored by the Residents Forum. All feedback will be used to drive continuous improvement and highlights will be published in our Residents Newsletter.
4.3. To ensure our standards remain high and in line with the needs of our residents, our overall performance in the delivery of customer service will be annually assessed by ‘Customer Service Excellence’, and if our standards are high enough, accreditation will be awarded.

5. Review

5.1. This policy will be reviewed in line with our policy framework, usually every three years.

6. Impacts

Resident/Staff Implications - This policy has been developed with residents through the Residents Forum where they continually have the opportunity to influence how we provide our services and hold us to account where our performance is not as it should be.

Equality, Diversity & Inclusion - We are committed to promoting social inclusion by applying the principles of equality and diversity to everything we do.
We will ensure equality of opportunity across the full range of our activities, including both employment and service provision.
We adhere to the provisions set out in the Equality Act 2010.

Value for Money - Real efficiencies will be made by getting things right first time and by providing services in a way that is accessible to all who wish to make use of them.

Data Protection - n/a

Accountability - The policy was co-designed with the Residents Forum.

Quality - The policy puts customers at the heart of all we do and ensures that service design and delivery is led by the needs of our tenants. 

When things go wrong - Yes, our complaints policy is regularly reviewed and available to residents.

7. Related legislation and other documents:

• Equality and Diversity Policy

• Customer Service Commitments

• Value for Money Strategy

• Data Protection Policy

• Customer Care Framework

Policy author details

Author	Heledd Williams
Job title	Assistant Director of Housing
Date approved	September 2023
Review due date	September 2026