Housing Services Annual Report 2024 25
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Introduction
It’s been another busy year for your housing team.
2024/25 saw us bring in lots of changes to the service and this year has been all about developing our new ways of working to better support residents, while continuing to invest in and grow our great communities.
It’s been great to see some new council housing completed in Collyhurst in the last 12 months, with more to come in the year ahead.
We’ve seen significant improvements within our customer service centre.
We made some big changes to how our customer service centre works. We introduced a new phone system with a smarter call routing process. Three step call handling allows us to make sure your call is handled by the right people at the right time.
The change has been dramatic. In the past, some residents were waiting over an hour to speak to someone. Now, the average wait time is just five minutes – and in many cases, it’s even quicker.
We’ve had lots of positive feedback from residents who’ve been surprised and delighted by how fast they’ve been able to get through.
We know the service hasn’t always met expectations in the past. That’s exactly why we’ve worked hard to make these improvements.
We also launched our new neighbourhoods operating model which shapes how we deliver housing services and enhances our ability to support residents.
We increased our frontline presence, expanding anti-social behaviour (ASB) services and strengthening support.
We also started our home visits. We plan to visit residents once every two years so we can get to know you better and understand your needs.
We want to make sure we get to know residents who might otherwise go unnoticed. You can use the visit to tell us about any concerns you might have and we can look at ways we can support you better.
Our Housing Officers have more time to spend on estates addressing environmental issues and spend more time at our Independent Living Schemes.
I’m very proud of what our teams have achieved this year, but know there is plenty more to do to continue our improvement journey, particularly in how we deal with repairs and complaints.
Here’s an overview of our performance across the service.
Councillor Gavin White
Executive Member for Housing and Development
You
Resident led services, putting you at the heart of everything we do.
Our customer service centre received 121,540 calls and 24,953 digital enquiries, and 77% of residents were satisfied with the service they received.
We also dramatically reduced call waiting times. Residents told us that being able to speak to someone quickly was an absolute priority, so in January 2025 we launched a brand-new Service Centre.
We introduced a new triage system for handling calls, which means people have their queries answered more quickly; average wait times are now consistently under two minutes since the changes came into effect.
Our rent team collected 100% of rent owed. In the current climate of soaring food and high energy bills, we thank everyone who has prioritised their rent payments.
For those who found it difficult to manage, our money advice team stepped in, helping 3,257 residents access £485,343 of financial support in the form of benefit claims, grants etc.
We also look after a £300,000 support fund, and 100% of this was distributed to tenants facing financial difficulty.
Your Home
High quality housing services and home improvements for secure, warm, sustainable homes.
Over the course of the year we carried out 52,000 repairs; 70% were completed on time and 73% of residents were satisfied with their repair.
99% of homes had a gas safety check.
In addition to this, we spent £11.5 million carrying out 2,380 home improvements, and £2.5 million was spent on making homes more energy efficient.
Naila, our energy adviser, shared energy saving advice with 430 residents, helping them to save around 62 metric tonnes of carbon and £84,000.
Over the year, we had an average number of 172 empty homes, which took around 104 days to relet. We have since launched our dedicated Empty Homes Action Plan.
This focuses on collaborative working to ensure we are making best use of housing stock, reletting empty homes quickly to maximise rental income, with a resident first approach.
For 2026/27 we have a clear strategy to improve our repairs and maintenance service which builds on the Repairs and Maintenance Service Standard we introduced in 2024.
Our new Repairs and Maintenance Transformation strategy will be driven by what is important to residents: that homes are safe, repaired and maintained within timescales that are kept.
The strategy looks to the future with the aim of developing a new repairs service when the current contract expires. In the meantime, we want our residents to be highly satisfied with our repairs services, which is not always the case. Currently our highest volume of complaints relate to repairs.
Our learning from this means we will approach every repair with the following principles, based on resident insight and feedback through those complaints.
Communicate and update
We will communicate clearly and simply and keep residents updated using their preferred method of communication.
Learn & listen
We will learn from our mistakes and improve the way we do things as a result.
Trust and deliver
Residents can trust us we will do what we say we will do.
Take ownership
We will take ownership of residents’ issues and seek to resolve them in full to achieve high levels of customer satisfaction.
Our progress will be monitored via our critical friends, the Your Voice group – we look forward to working together to embed our new strategy and deliver a repairs service that residents deserve.
Your Neighbourhood
Welcoming, safe and vibrant neighbourhoods
Jason and Ann, our dedicated waste and recycling team, investigated 1,759 cases of fly-tipping.
They arranged for 45,280 tonnes of it to be removed, making our neighbourhoods cleaner and greener. They worked with the wider neighbourhood teams and together they successfully identified 54 culprits who were issued with fixed-penalty notices.
We take great pride in managing clean, safe neighbourhoods, and we do not tolerate fly-tipping on any of our estates.
Our housing officers carried out 140 estate walkabouts with local residents. Working together, we identified neighbourhood issues, reported problems in the areas we look after and arranged for community clean-up days for those estates in need of some extra TLC.
Thank you to everyone who joined us. By showing you care, you are helping to improve your community.
To find out when we will be in your neighbourhood, visit: www.mcchousingservices.co.uk/get-involved/come-on-an-estate-walkabout
Supporting Successful Communities
We held 36 community events. These were a mix of community fun days, which take place in our parks over the summer, as well as estate clean-up days, coffee mornings and survey consultations.
We also awarded £12,000 to local community groups via our Hobin’s Fund; 13 groups benefited this year, offering all sorts of activities, from martial arts to arts and crafts.
We handled 441 safeguarding referrals raised by colleagues, partners and residents. This led to us opening 127 cases.
We supported 289 victims of domestic abuse, working with partner organisations to keep them and their families safe in their homes.
We successfully resolved 196 antisocial behaviour cases. We took legal action against 12 perpetrators, taking possession of one property from a persistently noisy tenant, and we obtained injunctions against four tenants who behaved aggressively, two of whom assaulted staff.
As part of the Clean and Green Manchester initiative, we received funding to create our Clean and Green Team.
The 15-strong team look after open spaces, communal gardens and the walkways and paths on our estates. These often get clogged with rubbish and leaves, making conditions slippery and difficult to navigate. The team have worked hard all year to clear them.
They have made such a huge difference that their funding has been made permanent, which means residents can continue to enjoy a safer, cleaner environment in the years to come.
Where each £1 of your rent goes:
- Capital Works 33p
- Staff cost 33p
- Repairs and maintenance 21p
- Other Management 7p
- Interest payable & similar charges 3p
- Communal heating 1p
- Other expenditure 1p
- Contribution to bad debt 1p
This period was important for resident scrutiny as we established Your Voice, a group of residents dedicated to scrutinising the various housing services departments from the resident’s perspective. Their work is shaped by the things that you tell us are important via our surveys and feedback.
We’ve handed this section of the report over to the resident Chair, Chris Higham to explain a bit more about their work.
“Hi, I’m Chris and I’m the chair of Your Voice, the new resident scrutiny group. We started our journey by taking part in training courses ranging from how to effectively deliver a scrutiny exercise, to ensuring we are up to date with current laws and policies.”
We did a lot of work looking at data gained from tenant satisfaction measures and other surveys which helped us to decide which areas to look at first.
We started with how the housing service communicates and engages with residents. We put together an action plan of the areas wanted to examine which included, speaking to staff, looking at options delivered by other housing providers and developing our own survey to send out to residents – this got a fantastic response.
We worked with the communications team to redevelop the website and make it more user friendly. And we influenced changes to policies where we have been asked for our input.
I’d like to encourage more residents to get involved with this work. There are lots of opportunities to get involved, ‘Your Voice Forums’ take place monthly, and residents can drop in or out, it’s less commitment and means people focus on the areas that interest them. They examined Good Neighbourhood Management and Repairs and Maintenance this year.
There’s also the Resident Reader Group. They look at policies and letters, and make sure they are clear and accessible. They reviewed the Aids and Adaptations Policy and are now looking at the Good Neighbour Management Policy and Capital Improvement Policy.
The housing team have been informative and supportive. The responses to our suggestions have been well received and majority of our suggestions have been implemented. The housing service still has improvements to make, but working together, we will achieve our goals.
Our next scrutiny exercise is the biggest yet, and it’s the area that receives the most complaints - the repairs service. So watch this space to see how we get on during the coming year!
All social housing landlords must carry out an annual satisfaction survey to comply with regulatory requirements.
From 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025, we spoke to over 1,800 residents via telephone, face to face, post, SMS and online.
We asked them how satisfied they were with their home, and the range of services we provide for them as their landlord.
This gave us lots of information about what residents really value, and where we need to do better. We have a robust improvement plan in place to address the issues, and we’re already making progress.
- 63% of residents were satisfied with the repairs service
We have introduced a dedicated Repairs Service Standard, which was co-created with residents. This sets out our repair types (eg. emergency, urgent, routine) and the timescales within which we aim to complete them.
Our repairs service launched its ‘Getting the basics right’ campaign, which is a joint way of working with Equans that focuses on seven key principles of Customer Service.
- 65% of residents felt we provided a home that is safe
We have established a Building Safety Team that includes two dedicated Building Safety Resident Engagement Officers. They run sessions across all our high-rise buildings to engage with residents about fire and building safety. They are part of a wider team looking at building safety strategies and communication with residents.
- 58% felt we kept them informed about the things that matter
Our electronic residents bulletin goes out once a month and covers lots of useful information, including local events, dates for estate walkabouts, how to get involved with us, seasonal health and safety advice, and home tips.
To sign up, click here.
Your Voice, our resident scrutiny group, have conducted a full review of how we engage with residents and keep them informed.
Their recommendations include making better use of community notice boards and digital screens in local venues, and producing a printed newsletter for those residents who would like one. These ideas will be developed further in the coming months to help us reach more residents.
- 52% were satisfied with how we handle antisocial behaviour
We’ve set up focus groups with people experiencing antisocial behaviour so we can learn from their experiences and strengthen our support.
We’ve improved the information on our website so residents know how to contact us to report antisocial behaviour and what we will do when they report it to us.
We’ve also introduced an after-care survey and support process, to gain more real-time feedback and ensure residents are not left feeling dissatisfied.
You can see the full results and the improvement plan on our website:
We published our Annual Complaints and Service Improvement Report
The report outlines how we are performing when it comes to handling complaints, and the procedures we have changed and improved as a result of the learning that has taken place.
- We received 1,300 complaints over 2024/25
- It took an average of 26 days to respond to a complaint
- 91.5% of complaints were about repairs and property condition
- 32% of residents were happy with how we handled their complaint.
Learning from complaints is essential to developing a culture of continuous improvement and accountability.
We have made changes to our services and revised policies through learning from complaints.
Some of the changes we have made include:
- Increased our front-line workers by 40%
- Improved relet times by 30%
- Redesigned our customer service centre to improve call waiting times
- Established a resident reader group to review our communications.
You can see the full report here:
There’s plenty to look forward to in 2025/26. You’ll start to see the changes our new operating model will bring in the coming months, as our officers will be out and about more. They have already started visiting people in their homes, and we have set up housing officer surgeries in local venues. We have developed a section on our website so you can see who your housing officer is and the areas they cover.
Our Resident First training programme is being delivered to every member of staff, from our caretaking teams to our senior leadership team.
This training is designed to:
- Improve the way we listen and respond to residents
- Make sure your needs are at the heart of everything we do
- Help staff work together to provide a better, more consistent service.
We are learning new skills and approaches that will help us communicate better, resolve issues more quickly, and deliver services in a way that works best for you.
By investing in this training, we will:
- Build stronger relationships with residents
- Provide clearer and more helpful information
- Deliver services with more care, respect and understanding.
You might notice these changes when you speak to Housing Services staff, whether it’s over the phone, in person, or through written updates.
The Resident First training programme has been developed to sharpen our focus on what really matters – that’s you!
We have made some changes to the Housing Services website. You told us it was difficult to find things and it didn’t look great. We’ve worked with Your Voice, our resident scrutiny group, to develop a new look and feel for the website and streamline the navigation. We’ll continue with this development work and we’re confident the changes will improve your experience.
Following the recent Your Voice scrutiny on resident engagement, we shall be implementing many of their recommendations to improve opportunities for residents to get involved with us across the service.
These include:
- A ring-fenced budget specifically for the Your Voice Resident Scrutiny Group to support its independence and sustainability
- An extension of the Cheetham Hill office opening times
- Notice boards in offices to display important information
- A printed newsletter delivered to those residents who prefer to receive information this way
- An annual events programme that delivers community events throughout the year.
Listening to the resident voice is vital to making sure we deliver a housing service that suits the needs of residents, and you can join the conversation.
There are loads of ways you can get involved with us, from scrutinising the services we offer and presenting reports to our board, to joining our reading group to make sure the communications we share are clear and reader-friendly.
In the coming months we’ll need your views as we develop our new housing strategy.
‘A Place Called Home Strategy 2026–2029’, sets out our refreshed vision for housing services in Manchester. It builds upon our original strategy and reflects the progress made over the past three years.
The draft strategy has been shaped by extensive resident insight drawn from complaints, themes and learning, tenant satisfaction measures, resident engagement activities, satisfaction surveys, service requests, and direct feedback.
These sources have given us an understanding of your priorities and expectations and have informed our strategic themes, but we also need to ensure the strategy focuses on the things that are important. That’s where you come in. We’re taking this on the road, gathering feedback at events and meetings as well as offering other digital ways to provide your feedback – so please watch this space.
We want resident engagement to be accessible to everyone. To find out more about the various ways you can join the conversation, visit our website:
