Greenfields Repairs and Maintenance Service Amongst Best in the Country

Published by Donata Rio for Greenfields Community Housing in Housing

Greenfields Community Housing has gained a much sought-after Housing Quality Network (HQN) accreditation for its repairs and maintenance service and is one of only 11 housing associations in England to have this accreditation.

Greenfields applied for and achieved accreditation in three services: in-house repairs and maintenance, aids and adaptations, and gas servicing. The robust and challenging assessment involved a detailed examination of policies, procedures, service delivery, performance monitoring and reporting arrangements. During the assessment, HQN met with individual team members and focus groups of trades staff and residents.

The accreditation system recognises and rewards organisations which:

• Understand their customers and communities
• Deliver excellent services for residents
• Operate efficiently and make best use of the resources available
• Are committed to developing and sustaining strong partnerships
• Innovate and actively look for opportunities to improve

Greenfields carries out around 500 repairs amongst its 8,000 homes every week. Mr and Mrs Fenner from Halstead, had their electric meter moved in June 2012 and said: “The electrician has done a wonderful job and I can, at last, reach our meter if things go wrong.”

Kevin Bentley, Lead Assessor at HQN who led on Greenfields’ assessment, said: “We carried out a rigorous assessment of the response repairs service, gas servicing and maintenance and aids and adaptation work. We spoke to tenants and to repairs staff and visited tenants in their homes where works were being carried out. We quickly identified that Greenfields is delivering a very high quality service to customers whilst providing customers with good value for money and we were pleased to assess these services as satisfying the demanding standards of HQN accreditation.”

Phil Adams, Greenfields’ Chief Executive, said: “Our residents have said to us very clearly that they want us to deliver excellent services that offer real value for money. To achieve HQN accreditation across our repairs, gas, and aids and adaptations services is absolutely fantastic for our residents, who can have the confidence that our team will always go that extra mile to deliver them a first class service. I am so very proud and pleased for everyone involved in this achievement, who deserve this recognition for all their hard work over the last few years.”

Andrew Shortridge, Greenfields’ Operations Manager, said: “We will be using the outcome from the accreditation process as part of the continuing improvement and development of our services to both existing and new customers. We are all very proud of this achievement, which reflects the excellent leadership, commitment, motivation and enthusiasm we all have at Greenfields and it is great to be recognised in this way.”

Greenfields has already received HQN accreditation for its Income Management Service.