Following on from last year’s consultation with customers during the Summer of 2022 Riverside compiled the findings to establish a new Customer Involvement and Engagement strategy. This three-year strategy commenced in April 2023 and has five main themes, Local, Digital, Communications, Diversity and strong customer voice. Our consultation with customers last year identified that they wished to have local involvement and have more face-to-face contact locally, also many people now wish to engage more digitally in a post pandemic environment. We are setting out a framework to encourage more local involvement with our customers and we are working on improving our digital offer.

Riverside Customer Voice Executive (RCVE)

The RCVE continues to represent customers’ views and scrutinises our performance. They joined with colleagues in visiting customers across the country during 2022 as part of our consultation for our new engagement strategy. They also formed a joint working group with customers from One Housing Group to help establish the customer pledges and agree some service principles for the newly merged organisation. The RCVE were consulted on Riverside’s Shared ownership and tenants sales policy and the new corporate plan and Riverside values, as well as helping to shape its Tenant Satisfaction Measures. The RCVE continued to meet regularly via face-to-face meetings and via Teams.

Scrutiny Panel

The Customer Voice Scrutiny Panel completed its long-term project into Riverside’s approach to anti-social behaviour in early 2023. Their recommendations are currently being implemented via an ongoing action plan.

Customer Complaints Panel 

The panel have handled eight customer complaints.

Customer Inspectors

Our Customer Inspectors completed 13 joint inspections last year on retirement living schemes the first since the pandemic. They also held two face-to-face meetings with colleagues.

iCommunity

The iCommunity was consulted on Riverside’s complaints process and customer service principles. It has over 1,300 members.

Care & Support

Riverside Care and Support services continue to offer a menu of local, inclusive and accessible opportunities to customers to be involved in the design and delivery of the service.

These include opportunities such as; involvement in the recruitment and selection of new colleagues and volunteers; service quality audits; local sign up processes and resources, and policy and procedure reviews. Almost all (94%) of services now hold Service Involvement Commitments – pledges made between customers and colleagues in each service around what involvement opportunities are offered, what support (if any) is needed to get involved, and how customers would like to receive feedback on what has happened as a result.

The Co-production Officer has continued to deliver virtual Co-production training sessions and face-to-face workshops to over 300 customers and colleagues across C&S. More than half (65%) of services are now regularly submitting entries to our “Customer Engagement Tracker”. This is used to log engagement events, social activities, instances of consultation, involvement, and co-production. The most popular involvement options are planning the local health and wellbeing offer in Retirement Living, planning service activities in C&S services, tenant/resident associations and/ or house meetings.

Co-production Gurus (otherwise known as COGs) are a network of colleagues and customers across the business who champion Co-production in their area. This year they have been critical in contributing to several projects taking place in the Group. Customers from a diverse range of C&S services were supported to attend virtual meetings around the C&S Strategy 2023-26, Service Charge Statement Design (part of the Group’s Service Charge Customer Mapping Exercise), and Homes For Cathy commitments. The COGs have also co-produced the “menu of involvement” (a guide to various opportunities within local service design and delivery to be involved with) and are currently working on the re-launch of the national C&S newsletter.