Over the last year we’ve increased the number of housing officers out and about in Cumbria by 50% and extended the availability of our officers to evenings and Saturdays.
Our new online services mean you can book, cancel and rearrange a repair, check your live rent and charges account.
We’re developing more options to make accessing our services convenient for you, whilst maximising value for money, so we can spend money on your homes, neighbourhood and community.
We want to know what you think about the changes.
What are we proposing?
All the ways to get in touch with us means few customers come to the office. With this in mind we are now proposing to close our Carlisle office reception desk at the beginning of April.
We’re working with a very small number of customers who use the office more regularly to make sure we meet their needs. We have also looked at alternative arrangements for those of you who use the telephone we provide in our reception area.
Based on monitoring what you use our office for, we’ve been working with Carlisle City Council to agree that they will provide some services on our behalf to ensure that customers can still access our services.
These will include:
— Providing printed copies of Choice Based Lettings (CBL) application forms for customers who can’t apply online.
— Support for customers to access Riverside services over the telephone.
— Providing a face-to-face signposting service for access to Riverside services including Cumbria Choice.
The staff at the Civic Centre will be able to help with queries about Cumbria Choice and you will be able to use a phone there to call us.
The Civic Centre is open Monday to Thursday 9am-5pm and Friday 9am-4pm.
We are planning to move the computers which are used to access our online services, from our reception area to another location nearby to the OpShop at 157-159 Botchergate, so that customers can still use them.
What do you think?
As always, we want to be sure you’re involved in making decisions about your services.
So if you have any questions, comments or ideas about alternatives to our proposals, please get in touch with Jamie Hendry at [email protected] or call 0345 111 0000 by Friday 1 March.