It is a well told success story within the housing sector: the social landlord damned by the Audit Commission in 2005 with a zero star rating and “uncertain prospects” that leapt to two stars with “excellent prospects” in the space of two years

The spectacular turnaround was brought to nationwide attention by an inclusion in The Times Top 100 in 2007. The organisation that had teetered perilously close to administration just a couple of years ago was now amongst the best companies to work for in the UK.

A repeat performance in the 2008 Top 100 list and numerous awards in-between begs the question: “Where to next?” for Chester & District Housing Trust (CDHT).

Phil Jones, director of property services, said: “CDHT improved its core services dramatically in the two year period following the Audit Commission’s report. The organisation was revitalised with new leadership and refocused on customer service. We invested in the company’s infrastructure as well as its neighbourhoods, creating a core of skilled technicians to ensure we deliver across the organisation, from desk to door.”

Now the housing trust is lending its services to other organisations such as Steve Biko Housing Association (SBHA), a Black and Minority
Ethnic Registered Social Landlord providing affordable homes and sheltered accommodation centred mostly in Toxteth, Liverpool.

CDHT is working with SBHA to deliver improvements including new quality kitchens, taking into account religious and cultural requirements. By teaming up with CDHT, SBHA has benefited from the larger organisation’s specialist housing refurbishment expertise and buying power and CDHT benefits too.

CDHT’s in-house repairs and maintenance provider TrustWorks supplied the materials and expertise to transform SBHA’s properties after a tender process.

TrustWorks provides a 24-hour responsive service to more than 6,200 homes and with its greater purchasing power and specialist knowledge costs are kept down, ensuring faster and more economical fitting.

TrustWorks develops its staff as highly trained ‘cross skilled’ technicians enabling the organisation to keep most repairs in-house, greatly increasing efficiency and cutting down on time wasted waiting for outside help. When specialist assistance is required it has a select framework of partner contractors who provide a solution for works such as passenger lift and stairlift maintenance and refurbishment, door entry maintenance and renewal, gas servicing and specialist metal works.

TrustWorks has also transformed its supply chain with residents helping to select various supply partners. A new in-house store provision has been launched with BuildBase, a national building supplies specialist.

The partnership delivers efficiency savings that the trust uses to invest in more improvements for its customers. CDHT places great importance on customer feedback: residents’ views for a three-year improvement plan have been received and a new asset management group has been appointed to ensure that the trust’s multi-million pound investment schemes continue to deliver improvements that meet residents’ hopes and expectations.

Jones explains the TrustWorks business model: “We make a small profit - well sort of. It’s what we call a surplus and it goes straight back into our communities. We actively involve our customers in everything we do because they are the ones who drive our service delivery standards. Our extensive consultation processes allow us to share ideas and resolve issues quickly. By working this way, we ensure that the things we do are sustainable and we deliver what communities actually want.

Many of our operatives live in the areas in which they work so customers know that they have someone who cares about the standard of their neighbourhood working to improve their home.”

TrustWorks operates as a business in its own right. The organisation’s self-sufficiency allows it to tender for other housing trust contracts, which has the dual advantage of gaining more funding for CDHT activities, while providing a cost-effective solution for other organisations without the in-house skills and buying power.

SBHA has benefited greatly from TrustWorks’ multi-skilled technicians. Specialist flooring and disabled adaptations were provided with attention to detail at every step and a target lifespan of 20 years. Ethnic differences have also been taken into account, for example, some Islamic residents required larger sinks to accommodate for traditions of large family meals. This specification change was built into the design following intensive consultation with the residents concerned.

CDHT employs two female plumbers and a joiner, who are appreciated by some of the more elderly residents who felt more at ease inviting them into their homes. A tri-lingual, Arabic housing advisor is now employed by SBHA to provide advice on other housing issues and help overcome language barriers. All CDHT staff are also trained in the use of telephone interpreting service Language Line providing on the spot help where needed.

SBHA chief executive Tracy Gore said: “SBHA is focused on supporting tenants and providing excellent customer service, tenant feedback is consistently positive. Whilst the board includes community representatives, we are a relatively small organisation with less than 10 staff directly employed. We work with other, like-minded organisations to help us deliver housing services. CDHT is one of them and they’ve done an excellent job by all accounts.”

Jones reflects on the reasons for success: “We won the work for SBHA based on our customer-focused attitude providing extensive consultation, expansive choice, flexibility and cost-effective value for money. Questionnaires were given to everyone who had a new kitchen and I understand the feedback has been very complimentary with 100 per cent satisfaction received.

“We don’t use any sub contractors, we use small, multi-skilled teams so we can keep standards high and the number of people in and out to a minimum. Residents seem to like the fact that they see one team during the process, they are not waiting around for streams of sub contractors to turn up and the team are accountable to the resident in delivering a fantastic service.

“We’ve also had many comments from our installers to say how much they enjoyed working with SBHA and how polite residents were. They also felt that they had benefited from working in such a diverse environment through learning different cultural experiences which they can use to the benefit of CDHT customers in the future”.

The future for TrustWorks is intertwined with CDHT’s broader plans for regeneration and social enterprise, as Jones sums up: “That’s what being a housing provider is about. Regeneration, community cohesion, social enterprise, all of these are just ideas if you don’t have the bricks to back them up. You can just fix leaks and wait for things to break before replacing them, or you can look for what could be improved and do it first. Since our work with SBHA was so successful we can look at extending our help to other organisations.”