Midland Heart making strides to improve following inspection

Midland Heart Housing Association’s services contain “a mixture of strengths and weaknesses” according to a report released today by the independent Audit Commission.

Audit Commission inspectors carried out a short-notice inspection of the Birmingham-based housing association and examined how well it repairs homes, does annual gas safety checks, and manages its empty homes, focusing particularly on its services to general needs tenants in Birmingham. They also looked at how the association involves its residents in providing services and its approach to rent arrears.

The report shows that empty homes are being let more quickly and new tenants are happy with their homes. Residents are influencing the way services are provided in a number of ways. However, performance on gas safety checks, completing repairs and rent arrears is weaker but is improving.

Deborah Good, Audit Commission lead housing inspector, said: “Overall, the services we looked at were mixed. Midland Heart is keen to provide a good service to its customers but repairs are not always completed quickly enough and a number of homes have not had an annual gas safety check.

However, the association understands which areas need to improve and is already tackling the weaknesses we found”.

Strengths include: customers’ telephone calls are answered quickly, residents are influencing services in a range of ways, homes are being let more quickly and new tenants are satisfied with their homes.
But inspectors noted weaknesses including: not enough customer calls are dealt with at the first point of contact, too few homes have had an annual gas safety check and the level of rent arrears is very high.

Tom Murtha, chief executive officer, Midland Heart, said: “Midland Heart is passionate about its customers and providing the utmost quality of customer service, but recognises the comments made in the audit commission’s report were fair at the time of the inspection.

“The majority of the issues identified had been recognised internally and we already had strategies in place to address each one. We want to assure our customers that we are ‘on the case’ and have set plans in motion to deal with the remaining issues.”

Inspectors made a number of recommendations to help the service improve including: ensuring that performance on gas safety checks continues to improve, encouraging more residents to become involved in shaping services and widely promoting the money advice service to residents with rent arrears.

Murtha continued: “Since the short notice inspection we have made strides to improve our performance in each area. The measures being put in place are long-term, sustainable solutions rather than ‘quick-fixes’.

“The implementation of a new gas servicing team has resulted in significant improvements in this area, with gas servicing levels now standing at 98.9 per cent.

“Last year we began to redesign how our emergency and urgent repairs work is managed, and have been piloting a new system which will be rolled out to all our customers later this year. Currently, our satisfaction level for repairs stands at 90 per cent.

“We are addressing our levels of rent arrears with a sustained focus on improving access and awareness of our financial inclusion services. Just one example of our plans includes a series of customer assessment days where our support services team will be on hand to advise customers genuinely struggling with their payments.”