Customer Annual Review
Our vision is to be efficient, local, visible and listening, providing sustainable homes and communities.
This Customer Annual Review shows our performance over the past financial year and has been produced in collaboration with you, our customers.
We gather feedback from customers all the time to learn, improve our services and get input into our new strategies. Thanks to your feedback we’ve included sections in this annual review that you want to read more about. We’ve included your customer voice throughout and made our performance information clearer.
We’ve included a link to our annual Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSM) page for 2023/24. The TSMs were introduced by the Regulator of Social Housing in 2023 and will allow you to compare us with other housing providers. This independent survey of 500 customers has helped us to further understand customer satisfaction and plan improvements to the services which you’ve told us matter most.
Your money – how do we spend your rent?
Our ambitious development pipeline to provide much needed homes to local customers was strengthened in April 2023 by a £50m credit facility with NatWest. The funding also supports work to improve existing homes and provide services to our customers and communities.
In December 2023 our Board approved a new Asset Management Strategy which will deliver over £60m of investment into our existing homes over the next three years.
Efficiency and value for money are core to delivering on our promises to customers and as Housing Association Legal Alliance members we’re able to secure rates and efficiencies we’d otherwise not have access to.
How do we spend your rent?
Every penny of our income is used to improve our services, build new homes and support our communities.
For every pound we receive, this is how it’s spent:
* Interest paid on bank loans to help us build more homes
** Housing management costs for customer facing teams as well as central services like People Team, Finance, IT and Commercial
*** Overheads, for example depreciation and bad debt
Total spend of repairs and maintenance = £20,898,000 (a breakdown of costs is below)
|
Description |
2024 |
2023 |
|
Routine maintenance (eg day-to-day responsive repairs) |
£12,679 |
£10,146 |
|
Cyclical maintenance (rolling maintenance schedule eg painting, decorating, lift maintenance) |
£3,702 |
£4,703 |
|
Planned maintenance (eg new kitchens, bathrooms, windows, roofing and doors) |
£4,517 |
£4,452 |
|
Total |
£20,898 |
£19,301 |
Delivering quality customer service
In 2023/24 we responded to an average of 9,475 phone calls and 2,217 e-mails per month. This equates to 80.64% of your calls answered and an average wait time of 6 minutes and 38 seconds.
We’re listening to your feedback and looking at how we can make it as easy as possible for customers to access our services.
Improving our repairs service is a priority and will reduce customer requests, this means quicker responses for customers and less time waiting on the phone. We’re working hard to tackle repeat contact, particularly with repairs and gas queries around appointment failure. Our Planning Team has been increased and we’ve improved our planning system to help keep customers updated about appointments and ensure we arrive when we say we will.
We’re making sure our Customer Services Team are fully equipped so they can deal with your queries more quickly at first point of contact. All new colleagues now receive a six-week training induction, and we continue to expand our internal ‘knowledge hub’, a comprehensive tool where advisors can seek information on all our services and processes at the click of a button.
For those who’ve told us they want to do everything online – we’re making this as simple as possible via our portal and our MyGolding app (launched November 2023). Using faceID or fingerprint recognition, it’s saving customers the worry of remembering passwords and usernames and continues to provide quick and easy access to rent account information and repair bookings.
Better online services will help to reduce call volumes and waiting times for customers further. And for those who want to call, we’ll be able to resolve more things at first contact for you.
How we’re performing
- 77% of customers are satisfied with our overall service against a target of 80% (this is calculated by the average score of customer responses to a range of surveys. We usually receive around 750 responses per month). In 2022/23, overall satisfaction was 73%.
- Satisfaction with our Customer Services Team for 2023/24 was 78.5% a 6% increase on 2022/23.
- Our Customer Services Team received 113,686 calls in 2023/24. This is a decrease of 5,369 calls made in 2022/23.
- The top three types of calls made into the team were:
45% - Repairs and maintenance / Gas
23% - Rent queries and payments
13% - Tenancy issues
- We saw 97,611 visits to MyGolding, compared to 63,660 visits in 2022/23.
- 34% of these were for rent payments, with an average 2,786 payment transactions made per month.
- 26% of visits were for checking rent statements.
- Registrations for MyGolding have gone up by 12%. 5,980 customers (75%) are now registered to the portal, an increase of 8% on last year.
- We let a total of 443 homes to customers in need
- We’re supporting customers to move to homes in locations of their choice, with 598 customers on HomeSwapper (a Mutual Exchange service)
- 121 customers moved via Mutual Exchange, double the average number expected for a landlord of our size
Your voice
“I was kept in constant contact and was updated on what was going on. They were very supportive when I was very stressed and stayed professional” Golding Homes Customer
“I was unwell and tired and the agent understood straight away, handling my query quickly and efficiently. I was very impressed and grateful.” Golding Homes Customer
“I’m autistic and a vulnerable person living on my own. I had a lot of anxiety and confusion about the repairs that were needed. The person I spoke to was really nice, really reassuring and listened to me without judgement. I absolutely loved the experience and talking to the person I spoke to. They were outstanding at helping somebody with special needs and who is vulnerable on his own. A massive 100 out of 10 for the all-round experience of the phone call.” - Golding Homes Customer
Repairing and maintaining your home
Our busy repairs and maintenance service completed 23,697 emergency and routine repair requests received from our customers throughout the year.
We’re aiming to improve customers’ experience of our repairs service, we know when we get repairs right it drives customer satisfaction, but we’re inconsistent. Our aims are to increase right first-time repairs and reduce waiting times which customers have told us are too long. In 2024 we’re carrying out a total repairs review which will look at the entire repairs process, from when you first report your repair, to the job being allocated to the right trade, communicating with you and attending to complete the job.
We’re setting up a new team dedicated to improving our communication about repairs and ensure that we resolve quickly completing repairs that have gone over target times. We’re investing in more resources, both sub-contractors and in-house, to reduce wait times for repairs.
We’ve also introduced SMS text messaging to keep customers up to date on repairs and made some changes to the planning team who schedule repairs jobs so they’re better resourced.
We’ve updated our online repairs guide to make it easier for you to understand what’s our responsibility and what’s down to you. Please make sure you check the Repairs Guide before reporting a repair to us. When you do report a repair, these changes will also make it easier for our colleagues to make sure your report goes to the right team, first time.
How we're performing
- 80% of customers were satisfied with their most recent repair. (target 82%)
- We completed 9,238 emergency repairs in 2023/24, this was 702 more than 2022/23
- 14,947 routine repairs were carried out by a combination of our own operatives and sub-contractors for more specialist works, 4,773 more than 2022/23
- 86.8% of our repairs were completed on the first visit, this is down from 88.4% in 2022/23
We know damp and mould is a concern for some of our customers. We’ve improved our approach, working with customers to remove any health hazards urgently, whilst investing in the team and our homes to resolve longer term issues. During 2023/24 we received 847 enquiries from customers and helped close and resolve 968 cases (this includes historical cases from the previous year).
Around 80% of our works are mould treatment and ventilation work, with the remaining 20% being more complex cases. We spent £2.3m during 2023/24 on repair and improvement works relating to damp and mould. In 2024/25 we’ll spend an extra £700K to reduce damp and mould in our homes.
You can find tips on managing condensation in your home or report damp and mould to us here.
Empty Homes
When a customer leaves their home, we make sure it’s ready to handover to the next customer.
It’s important for us to complete works in empty homes as quickly as possible for customers to move into their new homes. Plus, we aim to maximise rental income to help fund our services for customers throughout the year.
We monitor rent loss as a percentage, and in April 2023 this was at 2.4%. We worked hard this year to reduce this steadily every month and by March 2024 our void rent loss was 1.5%. Our target is 0.8%.
One trend impacting how quickly we can re-let our homes is the time and cost of clearing out belongings and rubbish left in homes and gardens. We’re working with customers who are moving out to make sure they leave their home ready for the next person to move in as soon as possible.
Your voice
‘Excellent service. The carpenter arrived as stated on the text I received shortly before they arrived. He’d already surveyed the old gate and explained what the job would entail. He was very polite and professional. I loved my new gate, and he cleaned up all the mess that was created, which I give 5 stars for. I share the gate with a neighbour and she is very happy too.’ Golding Homes Customer
'I’m over the moon, the property was clean, freshly painted, new flooring downstairs. The children and I love it, and it will be our forever home. The neighbours are lovely as well.' Golding Homes Customer
Improving your homes
In December 2023 our Board approved our new three-year Asset Management Strategy 2024-2027. This is our plan to improve the quality of your homes, with a commitment to spend over £60million (over the next three years). We consulted with customers on this strategy and received a fantastic 538 responses, which helped us develop our key priorities:
- Affordability of our customer’s homes
- Investment in our customer’s homes
- Estate improvements
99.96% of our homes meet the government’s decent homes standards* - the national standard expected of all landlords to keep homes in a reasonable state of repair. Three of our homes fell below this minimum standard at year end, but we’ve put action plans in place to restore compliance and maintain safety for our customers.
The aim of our Sustainability Strategy is to ensure our homes meet EPC C** and above by 2030. At the end of March 2024 73.5% of our homes achieved this. During 2023/24 we successfully bid for Government funding via the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund (SHDF) for projects to be delivered during 2024/25 to improve the energy efficiency of our homes further. This is match funded where Golding will be reimbursed £1.3m for spending £2.6m on energy efficiency measures.
* At 31 March 2024
** EPC stands for ‘ Energy Performance Certificate’. It rates the energy efficiency of homes.
How we're performing
We've successfully achieved more minor adaptations in our homes this year with an increase in budget. Our aim is to increase this again for next financial year – 2024/25.
Next year 2,000 of our homes will see some major investment, we'll replace:
- 300 kitchens
- 173 bathrooms
- 460 boilers
- 400 windows
- 464 doors
- 40 pitched roofs
Your voice
“The new windows have made a real difference to the whole street and the house as a whole. It’s good having pride in your street. Once my windows were in, I took the opportunity to repaint the front and give things a facelift.” James – Golding Homes Customer (pictured)
“I moved in six months ago and am really happy here, I’ve had no problems. I’m really pleased that the roof’s being done. They always let me know what’s going on and I hope it’ll make the house warmer come winter.” Steve – Golding Homes Customer
Putting things right
Complaints provide valuable customer feedback, helping us to learn and make changes to improve our customer experience. While complaints highlight, you’re not happy, they’re also an opportunity for us to say sorry and put things right.
We make it easy for customers to raise a complaint through various channels, including over the phone and online. We make sure we meet the requirements of the Housing Ombudsman Service, including completing a self-assessment form each year.
We’re committed to learning from the complaints we receive and make sure that as part of our response to every complaint, we explain to customers how we're using their feedback to improve. In addition, we regularly review themes from our complaints and hold services accountable to prevent future dissatisfaction.
Following customer feedback, we formed a new, bigger, centralised Customer Resolutions Team to better ensure we can work with customers to find solutions when things go wrong.
We’ve also made sure our information on complaints is clear, visible and accessible so customers can make a complaint with ease and confidence.
The most common complaints received in 2022/23 were about:
- Repairs and Maintenance – quality of work and time taken to complete a repair
- Planning - appointment failure and communication around follow-on works
- Damp and mould
- Tenancy issues, including anti-social behaviour, noise nuisance
- Gas issues – no heating/hot water and not attending appointments
The main reason customers are complaining is down to poor communication from us. We’re sharing this feedback at our listen and act sessions where service managers are using it to drive change and improvements. This has included additional resources particularly in repairs and changes to policies to support our customers fairly.
How we're performing
- Total number resolved at stage 1 – 509 (558)*
- Total number resolved at stage 2 - 90 (41)*
- 91% stage one complaints responded to in ten days (93%)*
- 32% of 36 customers who completed the complaint survey were satisfied with how the complaint was dealt with
*figures for 2022/23
Your voice
“Callum provided excellent customer service since he picked up my enquiry. He was very patient, understanding and didn’t try and constantly talk over me. Golding Homes Customer, Danielle
“The advisor always communicated with me and kept to her word.” Golding Homes Customer
Supporting your tenancy
Our expert teams are always on hand to help customers that are struggling financially or with the cost-of-living. They can help unlock funding, provide benefits support, advice about paying rent, budgeting or helping customers to find work or training.
Our welfare benefit team helped unlock £444,154 in benefits for customers last year and we awarded just over £50,000 through our hardship fund to help with cost-of-living.
We recognise managing a budget can be hard and sometimes we have to deal with things we weren’t expecting. When faced with such challenges there are times that you might need some support and our teams are here to help.
We’ve also continued to work in partnership with Maidstone Borough Council and other local authorities to help customers access support and keep their tenancy on track.
How we're performing
- We awarded £52,213 in hardship grants, supporting 489 customer applications for financial assistance. In 2022/23 we awarded £114,970 in hardship funds to 683 people.
- Referrals to our Welfare Benefits team averaged at 66 per month (2023/24) in comparison to 70 per month (2022/23).
- We helped customers access £444,154 in benefits (£517,612*).
- We collected 99.26% of rental income (99.22%*).
- Rent arrears for March 2024 was 2.6% (2.9%*).
- Total number of arrears cases between March 2023 and March 2024 increased by 140 cases.
- Our employment advisors supported 162 people (152*).
- We helped 55 (47*) people find employment and supported 50 (36*) people into training.
- We supported 37 (39*) people with a Personal Development Grant, totaling £4,808 (£6,948*) for help with training and learning.
*2022/23
Employment Support
Over the last year the Employment team have:
- Delivered three training sessions for a group of 10 customers
- Worked with partners to deliver four jobs fairs with over 800 attendees
- Supported our future generations by attending careers events at two local schools
- Collaborated with Maidstone Jobcentre to support a major recruitment drive – with over 105 people interviewed, and all 72 vacancies filled
Positive contributions to neighbourhoods
Our work to build and contribute to positive communities is important to us. We worked with local partners to provide community grant funding to 27 local projects last year.
We invested £48,900 in community initiatives, including our Golding Homes Community Grant, FishFEST, Shepway and Park Wood food larders, Get Active sessions for children, We Are Digital and armchair exercise classes.
We worked with our contractors to deliver meaningful social value by funding community projects such as slow cooker courses and providing sheds for our Give Back Clean Up day in Shepway.
We rewarded customers like Charlotte and Nina, who make a positive difference to their local communities with a We Care award. We were also delighted that another customer Paul was recognised for all his hard work in his community by the Kent Housing Group awards and he went on to be shortlisted for a national award.
Your voice
“I have disabilities that affect my understanding and speed of processing. I get very easily overwhelmed. I have little knowledge of how to do things online. The person I spoke to was very clear and very patient with me. He talked me through what I needed to do. I was very anxious before I call but now feel reassured that it's all sorted." Golding Homes Customer
“I can't thank you enough for all your help and coming out to see me. You were so kind and reassuring me that I wasn't going to end up losing my home. I felt it was all very positive and I can move forward. Today is the first time I’ve not been stressed with all the worry. I genuinely felt like you cared and was so patient with me." Golding Homes Customer
Keeping you safe
Our work to keep you safe in your homes with essential safety checks on the big six areas (gas, fire, electrical, asbestos, water hygiene and lifts) is crucial and we’ll continue to work hard to maintain our 100% compliance. We carry out vital gas safety checks every year. We’re currently 100% gas safety compliant. We carried out 7,711 gas services in 2023/24. We also test your carbon monoxide and smoke detectors. You can play your part by always giving us access to your home to complete these essential safety checks.
In addition to these checks, we carry out regular safety inspections to all our residential blocks. We set our own timescales - monthly for high-rise buildings (above 8 floors), quarterly for mid-rise and annual for low-rise blocks. Over the last year we completed 100% of all required checks. As part of new fire safety legislation, we undertook fire door inspections to all homes in residential blocks above 11m in height. We have information pages for all our high-rise homes on our website with key fire safety information.
We meet regularly with Kent Fire and Rescue Service (KFRS) as part of the Primary Authority Partnership. This means we share information on our homes, undertake joint audits, receive direct advice and also host training drills so KFRS are familiar with our homes.
How we're performing
- 100% compliant in all areas of health and safety in the home (gas, water hygiene, fire risk assessment, passenger lifts and asbestos)
- We’re working to achieve 100% compliance with our five-year electrical testing program (we’ve got 20 more homes to complete to meet this target).
Your voice
“Such a helpful engineer who was very respectful. He also recommended a new boiler but wasn't sure that would happen. The next day a survey was set up for the following day and this has now taken place. A new boiler is imminent. Brilliant outcome! Thank you.” Golding Homes Customer, Jarrod
‘The electrician was very friendly, polite and respectful. He repaired it quickly and efficiently. Being an electrical fault he was also mindful of the dangers and maintained our safety throughout.’ Golding Homes Customer
Cleaning and maintaining shared spaces
We work to support our customers to live in clean, safe and secure communities, that they can feel proud of. Our estates team respond quickly to reports of fly tipping, collecting 99% within our target of three working days. Last year they responded to 3,416 incidents.
We’re working with our partners Maidstone Borough Council to educate and enforce laws around fly tipping to stop it from ruining your community.
Our cleaning and caretaking teams carry out 1,700 visits a month and visit and maintain 438 communal areas every week. This includes wiping down walls, windows and hard floors and checking bin stores. We check the quality of this work through regular inspections. Last year 99% passed our quality check.
This year we’re looking to introduce customer inspectors who check the quality of work on cleaning and estates maintenance on our estates. If you’re interested in helping us with this, please get in touch via engage@goldinghomes.org.uk
Being greener
We’re committed to being greener and reducing our impact on the environment, so out on our estates, we’ve planted 50 young trees (or whips) and 250 bulbs, installed 50 bird boxes and created an insect hotel and herb/flower planters at Sunningdale Court. Our wildflower project continues to be a great success. We’ve introduced more wildflowers to another six estates with open green areas. This project is proven to enhance areas, deter fly-tipping and encourage wildlife.
How we're performing
In 2023/24 we completed:
- 21,669 (99%) cleans of communal areas
- 1,166 inspections to quality check cleans and grounds work
- 1,194 “handy person” jobs to help our vulnerable customers
- Cut the equivalent of grass covering 46 full size football pitches
- 4,482 emergency lights tested by our Response team
- Cleared 711 mattresses which equates to being 21 meters taller than the Blackpool tower.
Your voice
"The cleaners will do anything for you.... I have struggled to carry heavy sacks downstairs before, and it's never been any trouble for them to open the doors and take the heavy sacks for me. Some of the older residents may only interact with the cleaning team out of their whole day and this means a lot to them. They always make time for us within our block". Golding Homes Customer
"The grounds maintenance service that is provided around our area is great. I will say again that I am very satisfied with the cleaning here." Golding Homes Customer from Willowbrook Place
Looking after your neighbourhood
We’re committed to being local and listening and being out in your neighbourhoods.
We continue to listen and work with you and our partners to improve the areas where you live.
This year we held 35 Neighbourhood Action days, which included 27 Housing Hubs (in person or online) carried out at the same time. We engaged 198 customers at these events, visiting every area where we’ve got homes. These days are focused on your voice and working together to create actions that benefit you, your family and your local community.
During these visits we inspect and grade areas where you live to help us prioritise how we can help to improve shared communal spaces and promote clean, green and safe communities.
Customers told us the top three issues which matter to them on estates are:
- Reducing litter
- Reducing anti-social behaviour (ASB)
- Encouraging responsible dog ownership
We’ve been working to tackle this by:
- working with Maidstone Borough Council’s Waste Disposal team, Kent Police and KCC Community Wardens
- issuing 380 agreements to customers for the management of private gardens, parking, pets, nuisance smells, bin stores, noise, respect. Helping to educate and change behaviours that challenge communities and promote good neighbour relations.
- issuing 1,010 advice letters regarding responsible pet ownership (278), correct waste disposal (677) and looking after shared spaces (55)
- putting up dog fouling signs (13 sites) and recycling signs (6 sites) in areas where we’ve identified issues. More are planned for 2024 to align to top reporting enviro-crime issues of waste, fly tipping, litter, dog fouling.
Clean, Safe, Green
In October 2023, we launched our first “Clean, Green, Safe” neighbourhood charter in Marden, signing up fellow landlords and other local services to work together to respond to the local community.
We published tailored customer newsletters for 10 different areas (282 customers) with communications about local neighbourhood and estate issues to support education and our visibility.
Colleagues from across Golding joined forces for a clean-up day in Shepway and in eight hours, managed to clear the area of waste and bulky items, put up eight sheds for customers to use in their communal gardens and planted 250 bulbs with the help of some of the children living in the area. Our partners, Idverde and Blue Mountain helped to clean the canopies and grounds and Travis Perkins contributed £2,400 towards the sheds (and an additional discount) as part of their social value commitments.
Your voice
“I’d like to say a big thank you to the team you sent litter picking on Cumberland Avenue. I really appreciate it and I’m sure others along my street do too.” Golding Homes Customer, Maria
“The pet event is good because you get to speak to different services and get the best advice for your pets. It also encourages children and families to learn more and participate in the activities.” Golding Homes Customer, Anna
Anti-social behaviour
We all have the right to live peacefully and safely in our homes and communities without anti-social behaviour, but we understand sometimes things happen that make this a challenge.
Your feedback told us that understanding of ASB differs among customers. We’re using this to review the service and plan how best we can help our customers to live peacefully in their homes. This includes new and improved information on our website.
We’re investing in training for our colleagues to improve our response to reports of anti-social behaviour and reviewing our policy commitments and processes for ASB and hate crime.
We’ve got a new Neighbourhood and Communal Areas Policy to improve our response to reports of enviro-crime and nuisance such as parking in your communities. This will help us to be proactive, promote respect and consideration of others and manage expectations better around what we can do and what customers can do, to improve relationships with their neighbours.
This year we launched a brand-new project in collaboration with Kent Police and Cast A Thought to tackle a rise in ASB and illegal fishing in Downswood. FishFest is a fishing initiative with teenagers in Shepway and Park Wood to teach them how to fish in a legal, controlled and safe way.
How we're performing
During 2023, 162 cases of anti-social behaviour were reported to us.
The top reported issues include:
- Domestic abuse - 68
- Verbal abuse - 32
- Drugs - 13
- Noise - 13
- Physical violence - 9
- Hate crime - 8
- Other (animal / vehicle / litter nuisance - 19
Your voice
‘FishFest was a great success, providing a focussed learning opportunity for young people in the Downswood area. We initially thought six children were coming but were really pleased when more turned up. Speaking to the group, it’s evident they now feel better equipped to pursue this hobby both safely and legally. I’m extremely grateful to local services and businesses for their efforts and generosity and look forward to coordinating events like this in the future.' PCSO Kirsty Greaves
Domestic Abuse
Keeping you safe is our top priority. Last year we brought in new policies on domestic abuse, safeguarding and fair access to make sure we’re supporting all our customers diverse needs. We also trained 101 colleagues to improve our response to victims and survivors and help us better identify vulnerabilities.
Our ‘Place Safe’ scheme for providing safety measures in homes launched and we supported 6 customers. We also:
- Supported 69 victims and survivors of domestic abuse (68 were supported in 2022/23)
- Attended ‘one stop shop’ for domestic abuse and housing advice.
- Launched a new Domestic Abuse case management approach in March 2024.
- Identified and trained Domestic Abuse support champions
- Raised awareness throughout the business with an impactful case study film of a customer talking about their experiences - shown to all colleagues.
We launched our fair access policy which sets out our commitment to customers to make sure they can access our services fairly and receive the assistance they need to sustain their tenancy. Through this we’ll demonstrate our corporate value “We Care" treating our customers fairly and with respect, being clear about where we’ll tailor our services according to need and vulnerability.
We supported the global 16 days of action against Domestic Abuse in November 2023 raising awareness through the #knowseespeakout campaign.
We continue to work with the Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance (DAHA) to review our practices and learn how we can improve.
In June 2023, we also signed up to a voluntary collaboration between registered housing providers in Kent and Medway, to support customers at risk of harm from domestic abuse to move to another housing provider in a safe area, whilst retaining their tenancy rights. During the first 10 months, we referred seven customers into the scheme, with two being successfully housed. We’ve also supported one customer into our properties following a referral from another provider.
Your voice
“I cried, happy tears when I was put forward for this property. I couldn’t believe I had a safe place for both me and my son to call home. We were able to move in really quickly and I also had a support network available. Golding has supported me with furniture and food vouchers. To have a safe, warm home is one less thing to concern myself with, it really is a blessing." Golding Homes Customer
Delivering new homes
We remain focused on delivering much-needed new affordable homes and strive to ensure we’re providing high-quality, energy efficient homes for local people. We’re committed to supporting all customers in their new homes and ensure all enquiries are responded to within five days.
We’re now delivering Phase 1 of the Cambridge Crescent regeneration project which will see the delivery of 119 new homes and four new commercial spaces and are working closely on planning for Phases 2 and 3. On completion, this project will provide 236 new energy efficient homes and thriving community spaces.
We’ve re-commenced work at our Somerfield Terrace site. This project will deliver 73 modern and efficient new homes for market rent, shared ownership, social rent and discount market sale, six of which are modular houses constructed fully off-site.
We’ve also exchanged contracts with developers including Taylor Wimpey, Fernham Homes and Bellway to deliver over 150 additional affordable homes in and around Maidstone, for a mix of shared ownership and affordable rent, to help meet the local housing need.
How we're performing
- In the last year we delivered 157 homes for 569 people.
- 81% average customer satisfaction score for our Aftercare function.
- We currently have eight construction projects underway.
- 67 shared ownership sales were completed against a target of 67.
- £9.2m in shared ownership income was achieved against a budget of £8.5m.
- We’ve helped six shared owners to staircase* and to own more of their home. This together with staircasing income from Re-Sales, has generated just over £1.2million income.
- We work with over 19 different managing agents** across estates where we’ve got new homes
All income generated through the sale of new homes is re-invested into improving services and existing homes, as well as building more, much needed affordable homes.
*Staircasing enables you to gradually build up the equity you own in your shared ownership home by purchasing additional shares in the overall ownership and reducing the proportion that you pay rent on.
**The managing agent is the company appointed to run and manage a building or estate.
Your voice
“Thank you for everything you've done for us it's taken a lot of the world off my shoulders and to know I can finally make my home feel like home is beyond happiness.
Honestly the work you've done for us to get everything done is incredible!” Golding Homes Customer, Miss Liah-Jade Orpin
“My flat is perfect and I’m very glad I used shared ownership to buy. I’m working with my independent mortgage advisor to own 100% by next year. It hasn’t been easy as a single person trying to buy, but it’s worth it. I’d advise anyone thinking about it to just go for it, with careful budgeting and planning the shared ownership model can help you make your home ownership dream come true.” Golding Homes customer, Liliana
Working together with you
Thousands of customers have engaged with us giving us their views, both online via our customer voice panel and in person through our various committees and Boards. Keeping customers at the heart of everything we do is essential, so we’ll continue to involve you in our decisions and focus on building trust with customers by doing what we say we’ll do.
Our Customer Voice Panel (CVP) now has 2,700 members! Members simply agree that we can invite them to take part in special surveys or events that are designed to collect your opinions on your services, and your community. They’re never under any obligation to respond to invitations to be involved, but you choose to respond when a topic or request interests you.
Our Customer Insight group (CIG) is an independent group, made up of customers who meet four times a year, and have been chaired by John Jackson throughout their third year. They’ve provided scrutiny of Goldings performance, meeting with senior managers, and contributing to decision-making. The group receive updates on performance across the organisation, holding service leaders to account.
We’re excited to tell you that the CIG’s role is being developed in 2024, with an investment by Golding Homes into formal training with Tpas (the resident involvement and empowerment specialists) for all members. This will allow CIG to provide formal scrutiny of services, with recommendations to Golding’s Board. The recommendations, and the Board’s responses will be shared with you.
In addition we also have the trainee board member role which is a programme that trains people without previous board experience to improve the boards diversity and representation.
We continue to build on our strengths, together with you, our customers. We’re local people and your local housing association.
Your voice
“I really wanted to work with an organisation that’s actively supporting residents to alleviate some of the hardships they’re facing in the current climate and was really excited to be trained as a Board Member by an organisation that takes the 'social responsibility' part of social housing seriously.” - Trainee Board Member, Rebecca Fraser
“What Golding Homes was offering from this traineeship was a unique insight that I hadn’t seen on offer elsewhere. I’ve always been interested in how decision making by social housing providers happens and this traineeship was the perfect opportunity to explore that.” - Trainee Board member, Jamal Langley
Your feedback
We gather feedback from customers all the time to learn, improve our services and get input into our new strategies:
- after each call you make to us, and each repair completed
- at our community hub and neighbourhood open days
- through the complaints and compliments you send us
- through our customer voice panel and Customer Insight Group
- through quarterly phone ins to our Chief Executive
- through our Tenant Satisfaction Surveys conducted by IFF-Research
You can see our listen and act tracker on our website which shows examples every month of how we’re using your ideas and feedback to change our services for the better.
In 2024 we kicked off our Customer Compass project which is helping us to understand our customers’ needs better and tailor our services. We’re reaching out to request this information every few years and using it to make sure customers have fair and equal access to all our services.
You’ve made sure your voice was heard this year, with 9,092 survey responses that told us about your experience of 16 services we deliver — thank you.
- Tenant Annual Report Consultation (365 responses)
- Pet Policy Consultation (540 responses)
- Asset Strategy (539 responses)
- Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Policy (150 responses)
- Customer Engagement Strategy (325 responses)
- Fair Access Policy (413)
- Your OPAL services (299 responses)
- Customer Strategy (712 responses)
- Our recharge policy (515 responses)
If you have any feedback about this annual review, please send it to communications@goldinghomes.org.uk
Your voice
“I’m involved as a customer on the CIG and CEC because I want to be able to ask the questions that us as tenants need answers to. I like being involved in the decisions that make a difference to my life and home and I like being able to give back to our community in a small way by putting forward opinions and questions that actually matters to us. We can’t moan about something and then do nothing to improve it, this is how we get our voice heard." Simone Gamble, Golding Homes customer (Customer Experience Committee (CEC) and Customer Insight Group (CIG) member)