Taking pride in its surroundings

Many organisations claim to have pride in what they do but South Tyneside Homes takes it to a whole new level

Pride has a very special meaning at the ALMO, where it stands for - Prudent management of resources, Respect in relationships with stakeholders, colleagues and partners, Inclusion of all customers and partners at work, Delivery of promises, excellent services and homes that people want to live in and Excellence through continuous improvement.

Established on 1 April 2006 it manages 18,294 tenanted and 703 leasehold properties and is one of the largest employers in the metropolitan borough of South Tyneside with 647 staff.

As with all housing organisations it is currently working on its Decent Homes programme with partners FHM, Gentoo and Dunelm and is on target to meet its 2013 deadline, having last year exceeded the planned number of homes to be made decent and spent less than planned. The ALMO has now applied to the Government to bring forward funding allocated for 2010 – 2011 to 2009 – 2010, working alongside the partners is the in-house property services department.

Having come onto the scene relatively late South Tyneside Homes could have been left playing catch up but chief executive Isobel Riley believes that it has been able to make such good progress because of the strength of its partnering arrangements.

“The partnership is working particularly well,” she says. “I think when you come particularly late in the programme you do get some benefits, all of our contractors are very experienced in Decent Homes work and are bringing all of that expertise with them.” Choosing the right partners is always difficult and for South Tyneside Homes it was important to find companies with a proven track record of delivery and innovation, who were tenant-focused.

“We expect excellent customer care and the utmost respect for our residents in their own homes,” says Riley. “We obviously require that they have a code of conduct that matches our own, ditto with equality and diversity requirements. We take that very seriously and expect them to make sure that they are willing to change the service that they deliver dependent on our customers’ specific needs.”

Sharing information between the different parties is key and they all attend a Decent Homes steering group, which Riley says “brings benefits to everybody”. She continued: “We do have quite a high level of collaboration and transparency between our contractors and we build the prices on the open book basis.”

However there is no room for complacency and Riley is clear that poor quality work will not be tolerated. She says: “ We have very good working relationships with them all. We do lots and lots of monitoring and the partners understand that the end of the day they will only get more work if they perform, but they have got that stability of a longterm partnership so they can really gear up to our requirements.”

It is also important that staff have the right attitude, as Riley explains: “I just think the commitment of the staff to improving service delivery is above and beyond anything I have ever come across and I have worked for some very good organisations.”

And as an organisation it does its bit to make the working environment as pleasant as possible. Big team events are held twice a year giving employees a chance to raise issues and make suggestions. “What you hear at those events is an amazing commitment from people who want to talk about how they can do their own jobs better and their focus seems to be entirely on the customers even when it is not the core part of their job,” says Riley.

“For example the gas fitters told me they were going back to the same boiler types again and again to repair them and suggested a programme of renewal, which we implemented. You have got staff here who really are committed to value for money and delivering a great service to the tenants and that is at the heart of everything we do.”

Staff welfare is key and South Tyneside Homes has signed up to the “Workplace Health Alliance” in a bid to improve staff attendance and to make employees more health conscious. As Riley explains: “It started as a group specifically looking at reducing absence because last year our absence at its height was nearly 14 days per person per year. We brought that down by the end of the last financial year to 10 days, which is a fantastic achievement in one year and it is currently down to seven days so we are doing very well this year as well.”

The company is working with both private and public sector companies and has signed a charter to show its commitment to improving the health of its workforce. As part of the scheme there is a health and well-being steering group made up of staff, including a number of health advocates “What sits behind all this is the emphasis not just on the systems and mechanisms of getting people back to work, which is what a lot of companies concentrate upon, but a far more holistic approach to people feeling healthy and health awareness,” says Riley.

Events have included a cancer awareness campaign featuring a Fruity Friday with fresh fruit platters around the organisation’s premises, which is to be continued on a quarterly basis. There is also a voluntary employee baseline health assessment, asking staff about the health issues they are most concerned about and providing a programme of health awareness campaigns. Plans are in the pipeline for mini health MOTS for all staff with the South Tyne and Wear NHS and the British Heart Foundation and the organisation has increased occupational health capacity.

It is also planning to invest in an electric car for staff to use for meetings, allowing them to walk or cycle to work instead of driving. As Riley explains: “As part of our healthy workplaces work and also our green strategy we did a travel survey to find out how people were getting to work and why. We discovered that a lot come in by car even though they could have walked or cycled because they need to go to meetings from work, so we are going to let people use the car for meetings and encourage them to walk or cycle to work. We have also upgraded the shower and changing room facilities at our workplaces to accommodate that.”

The organisation is now working towards the Gold award, which entails more community involvement and are considering rolling some of the schemes out to tenants.

While Decent Homes work is a major part of South Tyneside Homes’ remit it is involved in a much wider range of works to improve its estates and is carrying out a consultation exercise to see how best to spend the five per cent of Decent Homes money set aside for environmental schemes.

“The idea being that you bring round estates that might not be sustainable without this additional external work,” explains Riley. “We want to make sure it is well spent so we are doing an awful lot of preparatory work and working with tenants, residents and ward members drawing up schemes. We haven’t spent any of this money yet because we feel that getting it right is really important.

“There are some places on every estate that local residents know are bringing down the tone of the whole estate. In talking to residents we are able to identify the areas where the money should be focused and look at issues such as designing out crime, working with police and the council.

“We have already looked at where we might want to change the layout of estates to improve the amenities and residents are exploring issues such as play areas, particularly where they already exist but need more work doing to them and just generally tidying up and providing off-road parking where that has become a real problem.”

South Tyneside Homes is also exploring newbuild options, starting with a small development of bungalows, which will be built to Lifetime Homes Standards. “What is interesting about South Tyneside is it has got a history of very small-scale apprentice new build schemes, so even over the
past 20 years when very few people were building council houses here in Tyneside our apprentices with the property services have been building.

And good progress has been made, working with the Decent Homes partners, in turning empty properties into lettable homes. “We have quite a low level of empty homes, between 1 per cent and 1.25 per cent at any one time so we have got quite a tight grip on the number of empty homes. But that is quite new and we have had to work hard to get it down to that number.”

For Riley it has been about being organised and having up-to date information about the location and state of void properties. She says: “What we found was quite a lot of properties had previously got lost in the system so I think it is about getting your systems right and having a strict database of where they all are as well as having a specific empty homes co-ordinator to keep the list of properties.”

And in a bid to offer a smoother service the organisation has co-ordinated its housing management and property service operatives under one manager. “It is quite groundbreaking,” says Riley. “We have one manager managing plumbers, electricians, gas fitters and joiners who do the work as well as the people letting the homes, so we have got them working hand in glove very much in a parallel process.”

The ALMO has a complex green agenda but the four main areas of focus within properties will be ground source heat pumps, air source pumps, solar thermals and insulation levels.

It has also recently procured a new fleet of low emission, high efficiency HDI diesel vans, which will reduce oil use. At the same time it is introducing mobile working and satellite navigation and tracking systems in a bid to reduce “dead” travelling time and to guide the vehicles around the borough saving on fuel, tyre wear and servicing costs as well as minimising the environmental impact of the vehicle.

The organisation’s vision is “working together to make South Tyneside the place people are proud to call home” and of course, tenants are at the heart of that. So much so that it is a Regional Involvement Champion, trail-blazing the way in the field of tenant involvement.

“We think we have got tenants engaged at every level in the organisation,” says Riley. “We were asked to take part in this scheme as a beacon of innovation and particularly to help smaller housing providers locally to provide better opportunities for involvement with their tenants. We meet quarterly with the other involvement champions and we learn from each other, mistakes as well as achievements.”

Tenants can become mystery shoppers, tenant inspectors, members of the Editorial Panel and Readers’ Panel, reading leaflets and newsletters to make sure they are reader friendly and focus on relevant issues, or members of the tenant group who look at repairs after they are done and inspect
empty homes to ensure they are fit for letting.

And there are events where residents can get together to have fun including “Green Gyms” and a “Silver Surfers Day” for older residents, and a range of activities for young people including a school’s environment programme, working with young children and their families to improve their
local community.

And South Tyneside Homes’ enthusiasm for making the area a better place to live is reflected in the hard work of tenants such as John and Eileen Davison and Ron Wake, who attended a Home Office training event to become community crime fighters, a scheme which aims to help to create
stronger links between agencies such as South Tyneside Homes, the police, community wardens, the council and the communities that they serve. “It is connected with the ‘seeing justice done campaign’ and involves training in how to tackle issues of concern,” Riley explains.

As part of the campaign South Tyneside Homes joined forces with the Home Office and held an event in June, which was attended by 100 tenants. Louise Casey addressed the audience and there was the opportunity to ask questions, as well as workshops looking at the way the court service works,
witness protection and victim support.

The crime-fighting trio are also organising an event called ‘communities in harmony’ and have applied for grants through the local community area forum to hold a borough-wide football tournament for children during the summer.

“On a daily basis, John and Eileen run the Harton Phoenix Residents’ Association and Ron, the Boldon New Town Residents Association, but they also encourage people to report crime and support them through that. They really make people aware that there is something everybody can do to help on issues such as anti-social behaviour and they have done marvellous things,” says Riley.

In fact the Davisons won the “Most Outstanding Resident” category in the National Federation of ALMOs’ awards held in York in April. So pride really does lie at the heart of South Tyneside Homes and is apparent in all that it does and in the work of its staff and tenants. Whatever the future holds for this ALMO it will continue to work with pride.