As we started living through the COVID-19 pandemic which began back in 2020, our colleagues across the business worked quickly to make sure we could continue to deliver essential services to our residents and support those that needed help. We took on feedback from our scrutiny panel and resident groups to change the way we delivered our services, we're now offering same day repairs and making sure we use data and technology better. 

We know there's lots more to do to ensure we offer landlord services that make your life easier. We’re listening and learning from your feedback to help us to bring about the changes needed to improve. The overall satisfaction for us as a landlord increased 3%, to 69%, from 66% in 2019/20 and we're really happy to see a brilliant 15% increase in residents saying we are easy to deal with. Housemark, which analyses trends in data across the sector noted reductions in satisfaction, so we're really happy our improvements have helped us place in the higher end of housing associations in London. 

We've been working to improve our repairs service

 

Our feedback from residents was that repairs often took too long and appointments being missed were one of the things that frustrated you most.  Having done lots of work with our contractors to ensure they provide you with a reliable, good value for money service, we went on to introduce same day repairs
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As a result of changes to our service standards and closer monitoring of contracts 89% of repairs appointments were kept this year, with 88% of residents satisfied with their last repair.  To make sure we hit our target of 95% satisfaction next year we'll continue to work alongside our residents and contractors to ensure all repairs are carried out as quickly as possible and to a high standard. All residents who have expressed dissatisfaction are now contacted to make sure we know where we went wrong and how to continue to improve. We know there is more to do and alongside our contractors, we're  continuing to make service improvement a top priority by listening to, and acting on feedback.

Improving our services through better use of technology

Over the past two years we've focused a lot of time and resources in our data and IT systems to make sure our residents benefit from easier access to information. We've focused improvement efforts on people, processes, data and technology and we're confident we can continue to make things easier and more efficient for our residents in future. We are working to make sure that every colleague across the business has an accurate view of everything important to our customers from rent balances to repairs history so when our residents contact us, they have access to the information they need to manage your enquiry. Our new resident portal was built to enable residents to report repairs, check rent statements and find out key information about their tenancy. It's more efficient for our residents and for our colleagues, so a win-win all round! 


Improving how we manage complaints and repairs

We are beginning to see the benefits of the investment in technology while working to make sure we continue to improve areas where we’ve not met our targets. One of the areas we are re-thinking is our approach to complaints. We value complaints as they highlight problems, areas for improvement and give us a chance to put things right. We’ve been working hard to improve our complaints handling. 

Our customers’ experiences of how their complaints are handled has improved  by 8% this year. We know this still need to be improved, so we completely reviewed our complaints processes and procedures from start to finish. This year we had 254 complaints in total which represents 1.3% of all customer contact, with 26% of residents satisfied with the outcome of their complaint, up from 18% last year. We're working with our Scrutiny Panel of residents to ensure we continue to improve.

Our caretakers and cleaners have been out every day to keep our estates clean and clear 

Our online resident portal

The first resident to sign up and use the Origin Online Account was back in June 2020 when we launched the portal. Since then we've had another 500 residents sign up who are using the system to report to date over 335 repairs and 680 rent statements have been automatically generated and emailed out. 
Sign up here for an Origin Online today and you'll be able to:
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  • Access your account anywhere and at any time
  • View your statements and charges
  • Request a repair and check the status of a previously logged repair
  • Make fast, secure online payments
  • Request a rent card
  • Terminate a tenancy
  • Set up a Direct Debit
  • Log a new enquiry with the Customer Resolution Team