Welcome to the first edition of Cottsway Connect in 2025 - it’s been a long, cold winter but it now feels as if spring is coming! We’ve got lots of information, updates and offers for you and hope you find something of interest.
Our customer-wide survey 2024-25 Every three years we carry out a large scale customer-wide survey as it provides us with useful information and feedback. In our most recent survey, carried out in December 2024, we asked for your views on how we keep you informed, how we can improve and how you prefer to let us know your views.
We had an amazing response with over 1,500 people (23%) responding and we'll use this feedback to review our customer communications and to help inform our new Customer Engagement Plan, due to be published later this year. Is your household information up to date? It’s important that we have up-to-date details of everyone living in one of our homes. We’re currently reviewing the tenancy information we hold and are contacting anyone who needs to update their details.
If you’ve recently received a text asking you to complete our form, please do so as soon as possible. It will only take around 10-15 minutes to fill in, depending on how many people live in your home, and you can do it quickly and simply online. Opportunity to (rock) climb the career ladder We’re offering two youngsters aged 14-21 living in our homes the chance to, quite literally, rock climb or orienteer their way to new leadership skills for FREE!
The young leaders course, run by Oxfordshire Youth, is a great opportunity to develop new skills and improve career prospects while having fun. We’ve allocated one place already but still have one fully-funded place available on the 2025 course which takes place in Oxford in May and June.
To support with travel costs, equipment, and clothing we also offer participants a £75 bursary. You can find out more and register an interest for someone in your home online - but hurry, the deadline is looming! FREE Mental Health First Aid England training - a customer’s story In the last edition of Cottsway Connect, we offered customers the chance to take part in free Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) training and we're pleased to share Karen's experience with you.
Karen, who is 49 and lives in a Cottsway home in Witney, said: “I signed up as I wanted to gain more understanding about mental health so I could help others, and myself if I’m honest. The course was amazing - very open, honest and set out in such a way that information was easy to absorb, and I didn’t feel out of place in any way when taking part.
"I now feel I can spot the signs and signals about mental health conditions, listen non-judgementally and encourage someone to seek further help should they need it. I am also more confident within myself and more willing to open up and accept help when needed. If you’re thinking of signing up, I’d say just go for it! You’ll learn so much about yourself and how to help others around you whether that’s friends, family or strangers out and about. I can’t thank Cottsway enough for the opportunity to take part it was absolutely fantastic!”
We still have funding available if you’d like to attend one of MHFA England’s training courses (either online or in person) so please get in touch. Funding for primary schools’ resources We’re delighted Travis Perkins Managed Services has given us a grant of £3,800. This will be used to provide learning resources to four primary schools in areas with a high proportion of Cottsway customers and children.
Provided by the Children’s Safety Education Foundation, 300 young people aged 9-11 years at Burford Primary School, Carterton Primary School, Woodstock Primary School and Our Lady of Lourdes Primary school in Witney will benefit from the ‘Respect your Life’ programme, a national citizenship / anti-social behaviour programme.
This programme engages with young people on serious issues that are causes of accidents, injuries and fatalities and has been very beneficial previously. We wish the young people involved and their teachers every success.
Service Charge Working Group We’re about to review our Service Charge Policy and would love to hear your views. The newly-formed Service Charge Working Group met for the first time in November 2024 to review the format of the service charge statements.
The group will soon be helping us to review the Service Charge Policy and we are recruiting more customers to help. Meetings are held online and if you’d like to take part please get in touch. Tenant Satisfaction Measures Introduced by the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) in April 2023, Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs) are intended to: - Enable social housing customers to scrutinise their landlord’s performance and hold them to account.
- Give landlords insights on where they need to improve their services.
- Allow the Regulator to see whether landlords are meeting required regulatory standards.
In November 2024, the RSH published the results for all landlords and you can see how we compare to other landlords on the RSH website. Made up of customer satisfaction survey results and management information measures, you can also see how we are performing on our website. And finally, a few quick links if you’re interested… | 
