During the height of the pandemic we implemented a safe system of work to ensure we looked after the health and safety of our staff and customers. We constantly engaged Riverside Customer Voice to ensure changes in the repairs service were influenced and informed by our customers and made the necessary changes when we needed to.

We implemented a new “Empty Home Standard” to improve satisfaction for new customers.

We navigated through Covid-19 with investment works coming to a halt for three months of the year, and progressing at times with limited programmes. Nevertheless, in 2020/21 we spent £20.5 million improving homes, including replacing:We call this our planned maintenance programme.

We also installed 229 major adaptions and 755 minor adaptations to make homes more suitable for customers with specific needs, for example installing walk-in showers and grab rails.

We have worked with Riverside Customer Voice Executive and the Scrutiny Panel to improve our communications via an improved operating guide, customer brochures and completion process.

Improving homes
We have changed the way we manage building safety to ensure we focus our efforts on areas of greater concern.

Some of the key things we have done is:

• Introduce additional staff to manage our approach to high risk buildings, which goes above the requirements of the new building safety regulator and includes the appointment of accountable Building Safety Managers.
• Work with Riverside Customer Voice Executive to develop a Customer Engagement strategy to enable a stronger voice for customers.
• Enhance our approach to building safety inspections of shared spaces.
• Maintain and improve building safety performance during the pandemic whilst improving the overall safety of our homes. We completed over 65,000 legal inspections and over 35,000 safety inspections of our shared spaces, along with over 26,000 remedial actions to improve safety within our communal spaces and investment of over £18m.
• Include a new building safety perception survey for customers to enable us to better understand how safe our customers feel and the key areas we need to improve