Creating strong partnerships

On 1 April 2020, we joined together with Equity Housing Group to create a ‘new’ Great Places. Together, our ambition is to provide better services for customers, build more affordable housing and invest more into our communities across the north-west, Yorkshire and Staffordshire.

Planning for the merger was focused on making sure there was a smooth transition for colleagues and customers, with teams from both legacy organisations working together to create our plans for the future.

By the end of our two-year plan, we aim to be working as one organisation which will bring many benefits to customers including:

• Delivering on our ambitious development programme to build new affordable homes to help tackle the housing crisis.
• Offering improved customer services and an enhanced digital offer.
• Developing further partnership opportunities with local community and voluntary sector organisations that can deliver more for customers.
• Delivering value for money, ensuring we can invest more back into our homes, neighbourhoods and communities.

Since merger, we have created and launched our new three-year Customer Experience Strategy, which reflects customer feedback and explains how we will improve our services. This includes:

• Changes to how we respond to and deal with complaints so our customers’ voice is better heard, ensuring improved resolution times, ownership and learning.
• Working with our partners to provide more services, activities and support for customers, including helping to maintain tenancies and access to education and training.
• Improving communications so we give the right messages, about the right things at the right time. This will include a new website and tailored information campaigns including printed newsletters for our non digital customers.
• Investing in digital services with a 24/7 responsive service for customers who want quick access at any time for simple transactions.

We have also undertaken an independent review of how we deal with anti-social behaviour and developed an improvement plan that will be implemented over coming months.