Welcome to our latest ezine with news from Cottsway’s Communities Team. In this edition you’ll find more on various topics including opportunities for young people, customer satisfaction and an upcoming consultation on the proposed new consumer standards – we hope you find something useful in here.
New community services booklet We thought it would be a good idea to pull together a little booklet that outlines the many and varied support services you can access as a Cottsway customer. Repair appointment cancellations If you can't make a previously agreed repairs appointment, please contact us as soon as possible to rearrange it. Please give us at least 24 hours' notice so we can offer the slot to another customer.
In turn, if we can't keep an appointment with you, we will try to let you know as soon as possible but if we do not give you 24 hours' notice, we will give you £15, and where possible we'll immediately rebook the appointment. Seeking our next Young Leaders Last year we offered four young people living in one of our homes the chance to take part in the Oxfordshire Youth Young Leaders Programme – for FREE!
Working together they learnt new leadership and team building skills while taking part in activities such as catapult building, climbing, a scavenger hunt and problem solving and all four successfully gained a Level 2 Award in Leadership and Team Skills.
We now have a further five free places on offer for this years’ programme which takes place in October and November. If you know of anyone aged 14-21 living in a Cottsway home who may benefit, please get in touch before Friday 22 September. Clean and Green Survey: results To help to improve levels of customer satisfaction for our grounds maintenance and cleaning services, we are now monitoring both contracts more closely. Earlier in the year, we contacted over 4,500 customers who received either service to ask for feedback and gather some baseline figures – thank you to all of you who took part! Moving forward, we will be carrying out a smaller ‘Clean and Green’ survey each quarter to monitor customer satisfaction. Alternatively, you can report any issues at any time via our website. Estate inspections Our Neighbourhood Housing Officers regularly carry out estate inspections to make sure that the communal areas of our buildings are well-maintained, with high standards of cleaning and grounds maintenance. We encourage customers to join us on these inspections as it's your opportunity to suggest areas for improvement on your estate. To find out more, including when we’ll next be in your area, see: Our new-look website We’ve recently launched our website which has a whole new look! We used feedback from customers and stakeholders to make improvements to the site layout and to give it a bright, fresh feel. Consultation on the new Consumer Standards In July 2023, the Social Housing Regulation Act received Royal Assent bringing forward reforms aimed at improving the regulation of social housing, strengthening tenants’ rights, and ensuring better quality and safer homes. Now the Regulator of Social Housing has launched a consultation regarding the proposed revisions to the regulatory consumer standards and is seeking views on four draft consumer standards: - The Safety and Quality Standard
- The Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard
- The Neighbourhood and Community Standard
- The Tenancy Standard
Cottsway staff, Board and Scrutiny Group will be responding to the consultation and would like to invite you to share your views too so we’ll send you a survey in mid-September. In the meantime, if you'd like to know more, please read a summary of the consultation
Alternatively, you can respond directly via: GOV.UK
How we are performing As you know, we carry out a range of customer satisfaction surveys and also gather customer feedback from complaints. We use this information to help us understand how well we are performing and where we can improve. But it’s also important that you, as a Cottsway customer, can see this information too so each quarter we publish the results of our Tenant Satisfaction Measures survey and other performance information on our website. Food bank referrals Since our last Cottsway Connect ezine at the end of May, we have made over 60 referrals to local food banks. If you are in need of a referral, please contact us and we will do our best to help. Call 01993 890000 or email communities@cottsway.co.uk
Donate your old gardening tools and equipment to a good cause Volunteers from the Cogges Manor Farm, Witney are looking for unwanted gardening equipment. They are particularly looking for long handled hoes and rakes, shears, loppers, secateurs, pruners, long handled or telescopic apple pickers, gardening gloves and plastic trugs with handles.
The volunteers maintain the walled garden, woodland and farm all year round and are willing to collect any donations. If you have any items that are in good working order that you would like to donate, please contact Cogges Manor Farm directly - email volunteering@cogges.org.uk or call 01993 772602.
And finally, a few quick links if you’re interested… | 
