National footprint with local impact: Accent’s grassroots approach to housing services

Louise Graham-Smith, Director of Housing

Accent’s geographical presence is both an opportunity and a challenge when delivering core housing services. With 20,800 homes, over 42,000 customers and regional activity across the UK our team’s goal is to be a sector-leading national housing association, but with local connections to communities.

Over the last 12 months, the Housing Services team have been on a journey of continuous improvement, positive change. Our on-the-ground Housing Partners now have smaller patches, enabling them to be more visible and present in neighbourhoods. It’s been a joy to see personal relationships between colleagues and customers develop and hear about the multitude of positive impacts; from topping up a customer in need’s energy meter, to maintaining a challenging tenancy, to signposting vulnerable customers to their local support agencies for personalised advice on individual circumstances.

We’ve taken a ‘back to basics’ approach, refocussing our efforts on delivering strong housing management for our customers. Our more localised service offer allows for frequent face-to-face meetings, community focus and neighbourhood development and regeneration. Our Housing Partners work closely with our Community Development and Inclusion Team to provide great outcomes for our customers. This hands-on place-shaping model is also – crucially - scalable, allowing Accent’s continued development ambitions to be reflected in housing management once new homes are built, and customers have moved in.

Collaborating with our customers to improve our services here at Accent is fundamental to providing high-quality services and places where customers can feel ‘good to be home’. We have recruited three Customer Champions who are long-standing Accent customers and members of our Customer Experience Committee, with responsibility for reviewing how we perform across our housing and customer-facing services. Our Champions will work with us to help drive improvements in areas where customers have said we need to do better, with identified areas of asb, grounds maintenance and complaints. It’s genuinely important for us to have their voices at a governance level at Accent, holding us to account and scrutinising our performance on key areas. Trialling our Charted Institute of Housing Level 2 Certificates for engaged co-partner customers has been a great opportunity. We’ve so far seen five customers through this, giving the tools to not only gain a qualification but also providing the knowledge to hold us to account in delivering best practice.? Their additional knowledge, combined with personal experience, allows these customers to scrutinise us and engage with us even more effectively.

Our local engagement groups allow us to hear what’s important to our customers.? They frequently request updates from teams across the organisation, including governance, repairs, assets and service charges. These projects are then debated with customer representatives, with new ideas and suggestions most welcome. These groups are an area of focus for the coming twelve months, as we wish to grow membership and attendance so we can hear even more feedback from the people we serve. We are looking forward to our upcoming tenant perception survey this autumn, and hearing what all our customers think of us. We’ll use those insights to continue our learning journey, listening and responding to customer needs.

Another area of focus for Accent is anti-social behaviour and hate crime, as we know this is a top priority for our customers. Like all other good social landlords, we take ASB seriously and understand the impact it has on customer’s lives and enjoyment of their home. We’ve changed our policy and procedure to reflect feedback, will now be providing personalised support and quicker response times. Good neighbourhood management is key, and our teams are making this a real priority as we move into the autumn. It’s a work in progress, but our new ASB working group, together with our ASB Customer Champion, are committed to streamlining the service customers receive. Our ultimate aim is to ensure we manage the things that matter most to our customers, such as fly-tipping and noise, to make their neighbourhoods safer and more desirable to live in.

It's vital that social landlords deliver safe and community-focussed housing services. This is our bread and butter; keeping people happy in their homes, maintaining tenancies, using eviction as a last resort and providing support and signposting where necessary. With national footprint, but local impact, #TeamAccent are a network of dedicated individuals working towards a shared social purpose, and I’m excited for our future as an organisation.

Louise Graham-Smith

Director of Housing, Accent