We recently invited you to tell us what we should start, stop, and continue focusing on as part of our new corporate plan. Between October 2023 and January 2024, 404 of you completed our survey - that's incredible!

We also held a prize draw, where all 404 names were placed into a random generator and three winners were selected. A huge congratulations to:

Nigel Hardy who won first prize of £250,

Jacqui Hobby with the second prize of £150,

And Elaine Foreman-Smith whose name was third in the draw and is the winner of £100. Congratulations and thank you to every participant.

Let's take a look at the results of the survey below, and see what you had to say.

Here's what customers thought overall

  • You told us you want us to improve their homes, to get work carried out more quickly and do more preventative work rather than waiting for things to go wrong.
  • Feedback on repairs was mixed and while there were positive views, you think there is room for improvement. Areas where people think we could do better are around flexibility of the service as well as communication.
  • Communication generally is an area of concern too with a view that we need to be more proactive in keeping you informed about what is going on. Some also think we should check in on people more often too.
  • There is concern about elderly and vulnerable tenants who may be struggling to take care of their home. And there are some worries that our increasing use of digital services may exclude some people.
  • You generally would like to see more community services.
  • You also told us that they would like us to do more to manage neighbours who are disruptive as their behaviour has a negative impact on people and the wider community.

Let's review the statistics

We asked you what you wanted us to start, stop, and continue focusing on in the survey. 

  • 29% of people who completed the survey wanted us to do more to improve homes.
  • 21% said you wanted us to improve the responsive repairs service.
  • 16% said we needed to start focusing on supporting older and vulnerable tenants.
  • and 15% said you wanted us to focus on improving communal and green spaces.

 

  • 11% of people who filled out the survey said that there was nothing for us to stop doing, and things were fine as they are.
  • 9% of people said that there were problems around property maintenance.
  • 6% said that there was poor communication with customers.
  • 4% of you said that you had some property allocation concerns.
  • and 4% said we should stop neglecting community and shared facilities.
  • 24% of you said we should continue to maintain existing properties.
  • 16% of said we should continue supporting tenants and engaging with customers.
  • 12% said we should continue with our responsive repairs service.
  • 9% were happy with our customer service and communication.
  • and 9% said we should continue to offer affordable housing and rent.

And here are a few of your comments:

"I think you should really take a good look at the heating and water heating. As you know, utilities have gone through the roof and I personally will not be using the heating (it's far too expensive)."

"If a customer says that a breakdown of something within the property is really causing them problems there should be more of an empathetic and faster response."

"Stop focusing on quick upgrades and more on quality trades people to do a quality job."

"Stop giving answers to customers that are not followed through."

"A focus on upgrading kitchens would be nice."

"I am a domestic violence victim and I have had tremendous support from Futures."

"I feel you need to be more understanding and resourceful towards disabled needs."

"Continue maintaining the good response times to all repairs."

We want to say a huge thank you to all the customers who completed our survey. Your feedback is valuable, and we're working hard to take your views into account as we move forward. Some of this will be spelled out in our new corporate plan and we're looking forward to sharing it with you later this year. Keep a look out for more information.

Photo of a cardboard cut-out of a house surrounded by various tools
Support The Elderly