Just as the organisation has spent the last four years transforming the homes of its customers, so Halton Housing Trust has worked hard on changing its own culture. The result is an organisation that is working with its customers to take its services to the next level

In the beginning there was Decent Homes, but newly-born Halton Housing Trust wasn’t satisfied with that and embarked on the higher ‘Halton Standard’ for its improvement programme.

That was in December 2005, when the RSL took over more than 6,200 homes from Halton Borough Council in the Cheshire towns of Runcorn and Widnes, and embarked upon the £85 million improvement scheme. Fast forward to the present day and that improvement programme stands completed over a year ahead of schedule.

“We’ve successfully completed our primary reason for being created,” said chief executive Nick Atkin. “However, we’re not going to stop there. Our Decent Homes programme is only the first phase. The next phase is our Neighbourhood Investment Framework, which will see up to £262 million invested between 2010 and 2015 in a mixture of planned preventative maintenance, new development, regeneration and environmental improvements.”

This latest phase will also offer improvements to the homes of those people who turned down works during the course of the original programme. Within the last four years, the organisation’s contractors have installed nearly 4,000 kitchens, more than 3,000 bathrooms and rewired more than 1,300 homes. Other improvements have included the installation of 2,667 energy efficient boilers, 729 central heating systems and more than 5,000 electrical upgrades. More than 30,000 double glazed windows have also been fitted with a further 4,421 homes having their insulation improved.

“We’ve focused upon ensuring that our customers get the maximum benefit from these bricks and mortar improvements. So, for example, these improvements will help people to heat and maintain their homes but at a lower cost,” Atkin said.

George Crawley, project manager for contractor Bramall, one of four companies working with the trust including the RSL’s own in-house Construction Services, added: “It has been a massive project, but one that we have completed successfully and in good time. We just hope everyone enjoys the improvements to their homes and that it makes a big difference to their lives.”

In this first phase of the trust’s existence, it wasn’t just people’s homes that were being improved; the organisation spent a good two years on a programme of self improvement. The culture change process was led by an externally procured agency that took the organisation through a tailored programme of transformation.

“Five months or so after transfer, we had a mock inspection,” said Atkin. “It showed us that our customers had low aspirations for the service, low expectations of us as a service provider, that our staff had a relatively low morale and the customer experience was mixed – it depended on the individual you made contact with – so that triggered the programme of culture change.”

The first aspect targeted was the theme of customer focus and what that meant for individual staff members’ day-to-day work. One of the positive outcomes of this was the creation of an employee code of conduct which was also supplemented by a customer code of contact. These documents together with a clever application of workplace redesign and psychology helped to play their part in helping to create a more customer-focused approach to work.

The second phase saw the organisation investing in training to bring staff to a consistent level of skills and understanding, in key areas such as the organisation’s diversity policies. There are three main diversity priorities for the trust which are reflective of the local context in which it is working – these being domestic abuse, worklessness and financial exclusion, and disability and the potential need for adaptations to support independent living.

With domestic violence, Atkin said that around 24 per cent of reported cases of domestic abuse and violence within the whole of Cheshire originate in the Halton borough, so it’s a “big local problem” that staff need to be aware of. He added: “A number of our staff visit customers in their homes, so it’s about recognising the early signs. When you consider that research shows the average person suffers 36 separate incidences of domestic abuse before they formally report it, it’s about our staff being able to spot some of the signs and consider the available intervention tools at a much earlier stage.”

Similarly with worklessness and disability issues, it’s about arming staff with the knowledge and the understanding of the problems that customers face to provide a source of help, if it is wanted, for instance on options available to them in terms of adaptations to their home. And at times, it can simply be about empowering staff with the understanding required to help them ensure the appropriate provision of service to meet customer’s needs – for instance if someone is elderly or has mobility difficulties, giving sufficient time for them to answer the door when they call at their home.

The process of change helped the trust become an increasingly customer-focused organisation, with its eye forever on the delivery – and the improvements – of services. This has now firmly reaped its own rewards through the fostering of enhanced relationships with customers, leaseholders and residents.

“We’ve seen satisfaction levels from our customers increase quite significantly,” Atkin said. “For example, with our investment programme we’ve achieved over 99 per cent satisfaction ratings for the way in which the programme has been delivered.”

And delivery continues post-Decent Homes with the Neighbourhood Investment Framework. Planning for this next major investment is heavily customer led, with the priorities for investment determined area by area through extensive consultation with the people who live in those areas. The consultation not only includes the trust’s customers and leaseholders, but owner-occupiers and private renters who live in – and form a part of – the communities where Halton Housing Trust operates.

“The improvements will vary by area, depending on what the people who live in neighbourhoods have determined as being important to them,” Atkin said. “If people say, for example, that they consider there is a need for off-street parking and lighting, then the investment into those areas will go into these improvements. But if people say that transforming grey areas in to green areas and fencing is an important issue, then the money will focus on those issues. So it is very much dependent on what people say they need.”

So, Beyond Decent Homes, Halton Housing Trust is gearing up for the next stage of its journey.