2015 Residents Annual Report

W elcome to your Residents’ Annual Report for 2014/15. Here you will
find all the headlines of the last financial year (2014/15) in bite-sized
pieces. If you want a full copy of the Report you can view it on our
website or call our office for a printed copy.

Message in Sheffield and Rotherham. We start this
from the Chair new phase with confidence, optimism
and excitement and hope you will see
Welcome to my first Annual Report as Chair significant changes in the way in which
of Arches Housing. We have made a lot of we work with you.
changes in the last year which we hope will
help us make a step change towards I would like to thank the Board, our staff,
improving the services our tenants receive. our corporate partners but most importantly
our tenants for helping us on this journey.
New Board Members, better internal
communication and new members of staff If you have any comments, queries or
were all vital changes in our 20/20 vision to suggestions about how this great
make a difference to our tenants’ lives. organisation can improve please get in touch.

This year is an important year as we start Kind regards,
our 41st year of providing affordable homes
Denis Creaghan

If you want a full copy of the Report you can view it on our website or call our office for a printed copy.

Rent

We charged just over £4.5 million in rent and at the end of the year we had
£204,000 owed to us by our tenants. This represented 4.53% of the rents we
charge which was just over our target of 4.46%. Compared to our previous years

this is a step in the right direction and the new Income Recovery Officers are really

getting on top of this very important area of our business.

Costs:
This is where we spend the majority of our £4.5million:

£888,000 on management costs (including staffing) £772,000 on interest charges
£776,000 on routine maintenance £54,000 on bad debts
£665,000 on improvements &

replacements programme

Average weekly rent of our homes:

Beds Sheffield Rotherham
1 bed £73.26 £78.87
2 bed £82.68 £90.13
3 bed £93.19 £98.73
4 bed
5 bed £104.76 £119.14
6 bed £114.25 N/A
£115.99 N/A
Some of you may have lower rents
than shown above and others may into account secure tenancies which tenants have, and the affordable
be higher. This is an average taking are traditionally lower, our assured rents which are 80% of the market
rents which the majority of our rent for the area the home is located.

Repairs

We had a big year in the repairs team with 3511 day to day repairs completed.

On average 95.05% were completed on time. reported % Completed Target

on time 2013/14

Emergency up to 24hrs 602 91.97 100%

Urgent up to 7 days 1528 95.92 99%

Routine up to 28 days 1381 95.44 98%

Properties with a valid Gas Service 99.7% 100%

Improvement & replacement programme

We completed 521jobs this year costing 54 Kitchens 34
£665,710 and included: 47 Heating Systems 4
130 Windows
Shower Units Insulation projects 97
Gutter projects 79
bathroom Suites 16

External Doors

Value for Money

This is about making the best use the services we provide and provide (target was £390,000) with the
of the money we receive, so we opportunities to make improvements biggest area of improvement in our
can offer the best possible to your homes. new home development programme.
services at the best possible cost. In the next year, due to a smaller
Getting value for money is something In this year we have made development programme, we have
all our staff are challenged to do. a more conservative target of
Good Value for Money can improve £569,000 worth of savings £134,000.

Customer Satisfaction

A 2014 survey revealed 76% overall service we provide. will be putting in place measures
This has reduced and we are very to turn the tide and make
of residents that replied said they disappointed about it. This year we improvements.
were fairly or very satisfied with the

Apprentice

We continued to employ Sahra Team answering calls and ordering Team. Both came through
Jaffer as a 2nd Year apprentice repairs. Kadesha Taylor joined her Sheffield Council’s ‘Apprentice 100’
and worked in our Housing Services programme.
working in the Customer Services

Complaints

Most of our residents appear Complaints Compliments 1
happy with the services we provide. 2 Staff 2
Staff 7 Quality of Home 1
We see complaints as a chance to Repairs Service 1 Assisted Gardening Scheme
Allocations
put things right and in the year we

received 10 complaints. In contrast
we also had 4 compliments which

is also good to hear about.

Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB) ASB cases by category 5
5
ASB takes many forms and although there are times Verbal abuse and harassment 4
Vandalism & property damage 4
when we need to enforce tenancy conditions by taking Noise 1
legal action, we are often able to resolve most problems Pets & animals 3
through early intervention. Nuisance from vehicles
Litter & rubbish 2
In this last year we received 24 reported cases of anti-
Misuse of communal areas.
social behaviour which is a small reduction on the previous
year of 33. ASB resident satisfaction 2014/5

Unusually the main reason for complaints last year related With case handling 80%
to verbal abuse and vandalism, whereas historically,
problems with noise were the biggest area of dispute. With case outcome 60%

Lettings

This year was not quite as busy for our Lettings Our average of 16 days to re-let a property places us

Officer but we still had 152 new lettings. The majority as one of the best performing organisations.

were in Sheffield with around a third of these being 2 Lettable Standards
bedroom properties. Larger properties continue to be
Residents’ Forum members developed a new Lettable
in high demand. Of these, over 40% were let to Standards document. This will set the minimum
acceptable standard a tenant can expect when they
residents from an ethnic minority background. move into one of our homes.

Our tenancy turnover continue to be higher than we
like, this is one area we need to do more work to find
out why people leave us.

What we let and where Rotherham Sheffield Total
6 35 41
Here are the number of properties we let in area and bed sizes 52 70
18 28 33
Bedrooms 5 6 8
1 2
2 121 152
3 31
4 or more
Total

Development

In the last year we added a further

11 new homes

Diversity Information held % Ethnicity % our largest ethnic
groups by tenancy
Knowing who our customers Ethnicity 99%
are and what their needs 45% White British
are is vital. Religion 82% 13% Pakistani
10% Black/Black British (African)
We have made a real effort to Gender 100% 4% Black/Black British (Carib’n)
update the information we hold
about our tenants. Sexuality 32%

Disability 75%

Preferred language 98%

If you have any comments about the details of this report you can either email us at [email protected] or
call our office on 0114 2288100. Download the electronic version at www.archeshousing.org.uk