Welcome to the latest edition of Cottsway Connect, our ezine for customers on our mailing list. This edition celebrates National Involvement Week 2025, showing how customers like you can make a real difference to the services you receive and the communities you live in. We hope you find something of interest! Tpas National Involvement Week 2025 Tpas are England’s leading experts in helping social housing residents get involved. Next week marks their second National Involvement Week, featuring 10 free online events. These cover a wide range of topics, from tenant-led neighbourhood improvements to digital tools, inclusion, and creative ways to get involved. As a Cottsway customer, you can sign up for a Tpas account to join these events and access all the resources on their website. Four Million Homes Programme You can also find a variety of resources, training, and events through the Four Million Homes programme. This is another way to learn more and get involved in improving housing services. Getting involved with Cottsway There are many ways to have your say about the services we provide and how well we perform. Surveys are one of our main tools for gathering feedback. They are quick, easy, and give us the information we need to make improvements. - The Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSM) survey is required by the Regulator of Social Housing. It allows residents to review our overall performance as a landlord. The survey is run independently by Acuity so you can answer honestly, and you can check our quarterly and annual results online.
- We also run transactional surveys, which ask about a specific service, such as a repair, complaint, or moving into a new home. These surveys help us understand your experience with individual services and make improvements where needed.
- Our Clean Space and Green Space surveys focus on communal cleaning and grounds maintenance. We contact customers shortly after these services are delivered so feedback is current and actionable. We then share this feedback with our contractors to resolve any problems quickly.
Estate inspections We are strengthening our approach to estate inspections following recent feedback and the work of our Scrutiny Group. Some customers have said they are not fully satisfied with communal cleaning or grounds maintenance, so we have recruited new staff in the Neighbourhood Team and are running more inspections in areas where issues have been identified. Anyone can attend an estate inspection, and dates are published on our website. We would love more customers to join us and see how services are delivered in their area. Consultations and customer engagement We’ll soon be consulting on our revised Repairs Policy which explains how we handle day-to-day repairs. We’ll also be consulting on our Customer Engagement Plan 2025–28 which turns your feedback into a clear plan to improve how we engage with customers. Your feedback on both is invaluable, and as a thank you for participating, you could win a £25 gift card in our prize draw. Look out for an email with more information over the next few weeks. Join our customer Scrutiny Group If you enjoy reviewing performance, our customer Scrutiny Group currently has one vacancy. This is a great opportunity to help monitor and shape the way services are delivered. Be alert to housing disrepair ‘claims farmers’ Some companies claim they can help with housing complaints or disrepair claims but may charge fees or take a cut of any compensation. The Housing Ombudsman offers free, independent dispute resolution. Or you can check whether a company is regulated via the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Local area coordinator - Chipping Norton Oxfordshire County Council are looking for a new Local Area Coordinator in Chipping Norton. The coordinator will work with local people and families, helping them find solutions to challenges and promoting connected, inclusive communities. And finally, a few quick links if you’re interested… | 
