Proud to be different

As a housing association born out of a failing ALMO City West Housing Trust has always been different and 18 months down the line the organisation is still proud to stand out from the crowd

City West, which has a stock of 14,800 homes across West Salford, was created following a stock transfer from New Prospect Housing.

The organisation hit the ground running, starting its massive improvement programme from day one and within a matter of months had set up its own contractor and materials supply framework, which is open to other organisations, and City West Works, its skills and training centre. It has spent £42 million on improving its stock, putting in over 6,000 new doors, over 5,500 new windows, 1,300 new kitchens, 2,500 new central heating systems and over 1,000 new bathrooms and has completely refurbished 25 properties, including 17 that had been empty for over 10 years, in Caroline and Dixon Streets in Irlam.

“Everything that we said that we were going to do we have achieved it and then some,” says Colette McKune, director of asset management.

City West’s stock includes a number of tower blocks, which are benefitting from an investment of £12 million. Work is due to start imminently on four blocks off Cawdor Street with the selected contractor partner Bullock Construction and architects Halsall Lloyd Partnerships. “We are looking at linking the improvements in with energy efficiency, affordable warmth and the health of customers,” explains McKune. “We are considering different energy efficiency methods such as photo-voltaic solar panelling which would allow us to heat communal areas and possibly sell electricity back to the National Grid, thus reducing the costs of running the blocks.”

Ground source heating is also being considered and structural cladding systems will be fitted, not only improving the way the blocks look but also thermally insulating them and eradicating problems such as damp.

A range of new fire safety features will be fitted and the area surrounding the tower blocks will be landscaped, following consultation with residents.

“We are looking at building in communal areas and we are consulting with residents about what they want,” says McKune. “For example do they want crown green bowling or a garden patch or an elderly gym? We are not saying to customers they can have all of them but we are saying they might be able to have some of them. They are just ideas at the moment but nothing is off the list, if we can afford it and it makes their lives better then we will look at it.”

Carrying out such works in tower blocks is not without its challenges but in true City West style the organisation is not put off by difficult tasks. As McKune explains: “It is much more complex putting these features into tower blocks as opposed to houses as there are so many structural issues in tower blocks plus the fact that there are so many people that you need to engage with throughout the process. For example if you were putting a new central heating system into a house it would be messy and noisy in that house for a couple of days, if you are putting it in to a flat it will impact the person above and below and possibly either side so it is much more disruptive. We also have leaseholders in the blocks so we have to make sure we consult with them and meet their needs as well as the needs of our own tenants so it is a much more difficult process.

“Your mechanical engineering consultant can be as important as anything and we have gone for a consultant and architect who have experience. You couldn’t just get any contractor to come in and do this as it involves equipment such as sky trains and abseiling down high rise blocks.” City West’s remit goes much further than improvement programmes and it has also been working on research projects with Cambridge University and the University of Liverpool.

Cambridge University has selected City West as its preferred partner in housing and is working with the housing association on the energy efficient cities initiative.

Masters student Adam Booth is living in one of City West’s high rise blocks as part of a three-year project to look at how tenants use their energy. “It is not just about putting in a new central heating system, it is about how people use their energy,” explains McKune.

The project has been pinpointing how people utilise energy and leave windows and doors open. It has also looked at links with vulnerability.

“Someone who is at home all day because they are older uses more heating, which is common sense but when you rationalise that around affordable warmth and fuel poverty you realise the pressure that is being put on those people for paying heating bills,” says McKune. “It is also able to show that where a vulnerable customer who lives in the same block of flats is not using the same level of heating they are potentially at risk.”

The work with the University of Liverpool involves a health impact assessment, looking at how what City West does impacts on people’s health. “For example putting in a new central heating system should positively impact on people’s health but whilst we are putting it in it may negatively impact because of the disruption and stress so we have to flex our programmes to make sure that we take account of that,” says McKune.

Skills and training have remained a priority for City West, which has helped 58 local people to find jobs in the last 18 months, as well as setting up the City West Works Training Centre, which has proved so popular that it is being extended.

“When we refurbished our operations centre we put in a training centre,” explains McKune. “We employ our own trainers, assessors and a skills development manager so as well as working in partnership with colleges such as Preston and Salford we deliver a lot of the training in house.”

As well as the training facilities, which are also open to contractors and other RSLs for programmes such as CSCS card training, health and safety courses and some customer involvement training there is also a training programme teaching tenants basic skills such as how to put a washer on a tap, how to safely put a bulb in or how to use the thermostatic controls on their central heating.

The centre has also proved to be an invaluable asset in helping to train female operatives and support women into the industry. “This sector is absolutely dominated by white men and the diversity of the whole of the construction sector needs to change to represent the communities that we work in in terms of race and gender,” says McKune. “Thirty five per cent of women are in the workforce yet less than 10 per cent of women are in construction, so it is important that we set ourselves up as role models.”

All of the contractors on City West’s framework are also required to provide employment opportunities for local people. “Absolutely critical to this is that from day one contractors knew what they were signing up to and that they would have to provide employment opportunities. It is not a nice to do or a maybe – they have to. It was part of the whole procurement process and we have been very up front with them,” says McKune. City West expects a lot from its contractors and those that haven’t met the grade have fallen by the wayside.

“When we recruited the contractors we made it very clear from day one that the customer was at the heart of everything and if they didn’t please the customer, they wouldn’t please us,” says McKune. “Contractors are allocated work on the basis of their performance and customer satisfaction is a key part of that. If we see a contractor that is under performing and not valuing our customers, we will stop working with them and unfortunately we have had to do that on one or two occasions.”

But those who underperform are few and far between and the vast majority of City West’s contract partners go above and beyond.

For example during heavy snow last year contractors and City West’s own operatives who couldn’t do scheduled works because of the weather redeployed staff to paint communal areas rather than sending them home. During this time City West also gave out around 500 blankets to its most vulnerable customers. Staff, including McKune herself, also spent a Saturday night manning phone lines at the service centre after it became apparent that some customers’ pipes were freezing due to plummeting temperatures.

The in-house service centre went live on 1 October and provides a low cost line for tenants to call with their repairs enquiries – a service that was previously outsourced to Salford Council.

“Customers can absolutely expect their call to be answered within 30 seconds,” says McKune. “The operatives answering these calls are highly trained and sit next to property inspectors and property surveyors so they can easily diagnose the problem and deal with enquiries quickly.” While City West has obviously achieved a lot in 18 months, there have of course been challenges along the way, such as the recession and the battle to win over tenants.

“Trying to build up customers’ trust in us has been a difficult one because they have heard it all before with Salford Council and New Prospect,” says McKune. “So we have done a number of different things, such as to link in with our first birthday we put billboards up in West Salford telling people that we are spending a million pound a week in this area.”

While the campaign received some positive comments there was also negative feedback from people who thought it was a waste of money but McKune says it was actually a cost effective way of reaching a wide audience.

“We had billboards up all over West Salford for three months and the whole campaign cost us the equivalent of sending out one letter to each of our 15,000 tenants,” she says. “What we were able to do is to communicate with our customers and other stakeholders and we were able to give many more people the message.”

For McKune the positive achievements have far outweighed any negatives and challenges and she would advise ALMOs currently considering a stock transfer to a housing association, to push ahead. She says: “First of all do it, no doubt about it. It has worked so well for us and more importantly it has worked so well for our customers and they have a greater faith in us now because 18 months in everything we have said that we would deliver we have done and we have delivered over and above.”

But she warns them to be very clear in what they want to achieve and to focus on delivering offer document promises. “You have to involve customers from day one and work in partnership, don’t try to do everything yourself, learn from others, some organisations have done things really well – learn from them, some have done things really badly, learn from it, don’t think that you know everything yourself.”

Looking to the future City West appears set to continue making waves. “We are still new on the block and still learning but we are not frightened to try things differently or to ask for help either and we compare favourably to any organisation at the same stage in their evolution,” says McKune.

“Within 18 months time, the organisation will have delivered its offer document promises and hit all of its targets. I am not going to say what everyone else says which is we will be a three star organisation because as long as you are delivering excellent services to customers and delivering your promises to customers, who cares. I am not going to say that the only reason for our being is to become a three star organisation; we will be top quartile performers delivering excellent customer services.

“We have put in place a very firm foundation and what we need to do now is to start building on that and keep challenging and doing things differently, working in partnership and learning from others.”