Aire Valley Homes' tenants get a 'good' service - Audit Commission

Published by Jon Land for Audit Commission in Housing

The housing management and maintenance service provided by Aire Valley Homes is ‘good’ and has ‘promising prospects for improvement’, according to an independent report released today by the Audit Commission.

On a scale from zero to three stars, the Audit Commission inspection team gave the service a ‘good’ two star rating. This was because its estates are well managed and significant improvements are being made to thousands of homes to bring them up to modern standards.   
 
Graeme Foster, the Audit Commission’s Lead Housing Inspector for Yorkshire and Humberside, said: "Aire Valley Homes is delivering good quality housing management services, while also carrying out large scale improvements to its homes.

"Its governing body, managers and staff demonstrate a strong commitment to service improvement and customers can have confidence that services will continue to get better."

Strengths include:

• Aire Valley Homes is generally customer-focused and offers opportunities for customers to get involved in decision making.
• There are strong and effective partnerships in place to improve financial inclusion and manage anti-social behaviour on estates.
• The organisation is delivering home improvements in line with government targets.
• Estates are well maintained and environmental improvements are underway.

Weaknesses include:

• Some sheltered schemes are not yet accessible for disabled customers.
• Its performance in delivering repairs is below average.
• Although the organisation has made some significant efficiencies since being set up eighteen months ago, more could be done to improve value for money.

To help the service improve, inspectors made a number of recommendations. These include:

• Aire Valley Homes should review, with customers, a number of areas of weaker performance and make various procedural improvements.
• The organisation should review, with the council, a number of areas of policy weakness and address them.
• It should develop a clear approach to how it buys services and should have a clear timetable for market testing existing arrangements.
• Aire Valley homes should also review weaknesses in how customers access service, paying attention to out-of-hours services and the handling of customer complaints.

Copies of the report are available from Aire Valley Homes or from the Audit Commission website at www.audit-commission.gov.uk/reports.