It’s that time of year again when Thrive Homes releases its Annual Report for Tenants – one of the ways their performance is shared with their customers each year.
Have you had a look yet? If so, the CEP would love to hear what you think about how well your landlord is performing. If not shame on you, only joking!
We appreciate customers have busy lives, and these are unprecedented times. There’s always a ‘but …’, but we are really keen that you to read the Annual Report, maybe talk about it with your family and neighbours and let us know whether it was a hit or a miss?
Not got a lot of time on your hands?
The good news is you can read it in chunks whenever you get a moment. You can even choose to read only those sections that interest you most. The Annual Report provides a snapshot of Thrive’s performance between 1st April 2019 - 31st March 2020. Some of the topics include...
Why is the Annual Report important?
The Annual Report for Tenants is a vital part of the Social Housing Regulator’s approach to ensuring Thrive is open and transparent about its performance and sees this as a crucial way for customers to be able to challenge and hold their landlord to account.
Please, tell us what you think!
Having listened to your feedback in Thrive’s Annual Report survey a few months ago, your Customer Experience Panel (CEP) worked closely with Thrive colleagues to produce the Annual Report, ensuring it covers the things we think you want to know about in a straightforward manner.
We know there’s always room for improvement, so we want to take this opportunity to check in with you to see if we got it right. Our invitation for you to have your say comes with a promise to respond within a fortnight and you can leave your feedback by clicking here.
Our promise to respond, within a fortnight
Our promise is similar to our recent Question Time event about Thrive’s Cleaning and Grounds Maintenance Services. Have a look at the video and full questions and answers on the website to see how Thrive responds and acts on your feedback by clicking here.
We are all guilty of thinking there’s no point giving feedback as we believe nobody listens to us. This is wrong! We genuinely want to hear from you, and more than that we desperately need to hear from you.
At the most basic level, Thrive wants to know if the Annual Report provided you with the right content and level of detail, if the text, graphs and charts were simple to understand and whether the design format made it an easy read? This will help us to improve next year's Annual Report and recharge our batteries to go again. It's tough to get fired up when you aren't sure if you are hitting the right spot. Your feedback good or bad would make all the difference to us.
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Whilst you're still here, we have a few extra questions for you...
These are additional, and it’s fine if want to stick to commenting on how the Annual Report looked or choose to widen the feedback to cover other things. All forms of feedback are welcome and will make our day.
Click below to read the key topics and - if you wouldn't mind - please leave your thoughts.
What you think is really important to us. We are a group of eight who want to feel confident that we accurately represent the views of as many customers as possible.
a summary of the feedback and ensure we get back to everyone who responds to this blog.
So, what are you waiting for?
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Thrive Homes is developing lots of new homes to meet the demand for affordable rents and shared equity.
Would you like to know more about these developments, maybe see videos of them being produced and hear feedback from the people living in them? Do you think Thrive Homes is developing the right types of new homes? You can read about types of homes were developed on page 9 of the Annual Report.
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99.8% of Thrive’s homes meet the Government's Decent Homes Standard, but the Government requires Thrive to exclude those homes where customers have declined to have the works done from this figure.
Perhaps you are one of these customers, or you had the works done after initial reservations over say the upheaval or you just have something to say either way. What could Thrive Homes do to encourage customers to have the works done?
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Thrive Homes currently captures customer experience through measuring customer satisfaction, and the findings are reported in tables, graphs and charts etc.
Is this the best way to capture customer experience? Do you think it would be better to take a different approach maybe based on encouraging customers to provide their stories, photos and ideas that better reflect their views? What would make it easier to give feedback and for Thrive Homes to understand what the feedback is telling them?
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The Housing Ombudsman has introduced a new Complaints Code and Thrive Homes is currently doing a self-assessment against the Code.
Do you know how to make a complaint? Do you have confidence in Thrive’s complaints process? Is there anything you think Thrive Homes could do better or differently when handling complaints or encouraging feedback more generally?
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Thrive Homes produces an annual Value for Money Statement to show they are making good use of their assets and resources and are efficient, economical and effective.
Do you have enough information to take a view on the Value for Money of Thrive’s services? If you were in charge of Thrive Homes for a day, what changes would you introduce to improve the Value for Money of the services you receive?
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Thrive Homes has been awarded the Planet Mark by the Eden Project for showing good practice in sustainability. Like all other housing associations, Thrive Homes is required to meet the Government’s net-zero carbon 2050 target to help beat Climate Change, and this presents a huge challenge.
How well informed do you feel about what this could mean for your home and how your behaviours may need to change for Thrive Homes to achieve this target? What do you think should be done to make your home more energy efficient? How could customers be better informed and involved in meeting the ‘greening homes’ agenda?