Welcome to the Spring 2023 edition of My Great Place magazine.
With the winter months now behind us, we’re moving into lighter days and warmer temperatures – but whatever the weather, the cost of living crisis continues to present massive financial challenges to individuals, families and businesses.
We want to do everything we can to help you through these challenging times and you’ll find lots of hints and tips to help you make the most of your money on pages 6-7. If you are worried about anything related to your money, rent, food or other costs you should contact your Neighbourhood Services Manager or Independence and Wellbeing Manager or you can email moneymatters@greatplaces.org.uk
In the current economic climate we need to make sure that Great Places is financially strong so that we are able to continue to deliver good services to you, our customers. We are planning a merger with Mosscare St Vincent’s Housing Group (MSV) later this year, and you can find out more about this here.
If all goes to plan, the savings generated through the merger will allow £4m extra a year to Invest in delivering a more effective repairs service, improving customers’ homes, tackling fuel poverty and providing essential support services.
Customer safety will undoubtedly be the top priority for the newly merged business, and you’ll find a detailed article here on what you can expect from us in some key areas of gas, electrical and fire safety – as well as tips and advice you can put in place to protect yourself.
All of our customers deserve to live in safe, secure and well maintained properties that you are proud to call home. Ensuring that living conditions, in all Great Places properties, are of a good standard is something we’re absolutely committed to Damp and mould within social housing homes is now under the spotlight more than ever, and you can read more on how we’re working with customers to tackle damp and mould issues in our properties here.
You can view how we are doing on complaints here. We are listening to your feedback and working on improving services based on your experiences, including our repair service. In doing this we have experienced challenges such as the introduction of a new IT system, increased reporting of damp, mould and condensation issues and labour market challenges, meaning it is more difficult to attract and retain people to carry out work in your homes, but we continue to work hard to address these issues.
We rely on your feedback to help us improve, and have recently launched our new customer engagement tool, Our Voice, to make it even easier for you share your thoughts with us. There are lots of ways you can get in touch with us, but Our Voice is a fantastic new customer-friendly digital platform that you’ll be able to log into and tell us what’s working, what’s not and how we can work together to ensure we are delivering for our customers. Read more here, and please sign up and get sharing your views!
We hope you enjoy reading this edition of My Great Place; and if there’s anything you’d like us to cover in the next issue, please get in touch.
Yours
Matt Harrison
Chief Executive
Ways to contact us
You can visit our website www.greatplaces.org.uk and register for our customer portal.
The quickest way to get in touch with us is via Chatabot, our digital assistant.
You can also email us at customerhub@greatplaces.org.uk or for any repairs and maintenance enquiries email repairs@greatplaces.org.uk
If you do need to call us, contact 0300 123 1966.