Knowing our Customers
Chevin Housing is committed to continuously improving the services that we provide. We collect information from our customers so that we can make sure that our services are tailored to their individual needs.
We own and manage approximately 7,000 rented homes, and manage a further 1,600 leasehold homes which include 890 private sector flats and we operate across 19 local authority areas. We recognise that the needs of our customers will be very varied.
We also collect information from our staff so that we can cater for the individual needs of all those who are employed by Chevin.
What information do we collect?
- How you prefer to be contacted
- Your written and spoken language needs
- Whether you need information in other formats such as large print, Braille, audio cassette, or any other format
- Whether you have a long-term illness or disability that affects your housing needs
- Age
- Gender (including transgender)
- Ethnicity
- Religion or Belief
- Sexual Orientation
How do we collect the information?
- We are building up a profile of our residents through ‘CENSUS' surveys carried out every two to three years. Our most recent survey took place during 2009. We collect information relating to the profile of the whole household and the information helps us to understand what characteristics make up those households that we serve. It also enables us to target the most appropriate service to the most appropriate client group.
- We collect information at the application stage - via the housing application form.
- We collect information via all satisfaction surveys sent out to residents.
- We collect information from staff via our staff survey and job application form.
How have we used the information?
Some ways that we use the information we collect to tailor and improve our services include:
- We use our customer profiling information relating to age, gender, ethnicity, disability / illness, religion and sexual orientation to compare the delivery of Chevin's key housing services. This data allows us to see who is, and also who is not, using our services. It also enables us to track satisfaction with each service area by diversity. It serves as an alert to us if there are differences in service take up or in satisfaction. These can then be analysed to ensure this is not as a result of discrimination and what action we can take to improve service take up by a particular group if necessary or improve satisfaction levels.
- We send out information in formats that are appropriate for our tenants, for example in large print or a different language.
- We advise our Direct Labour Organisation (DLO) staff and our contractors if any of our residents have an illness or disability that may affect the work they do in their home.
- We have planned young persons' events in areas where we know there is a high proportion of families with children.
- We can focus interpretation and translation services.
- We send tenants' profiling details such as disability to our refurbishment partner in advance of improvement work.
- We have identified specific tenancies to carry out a door to door survey of our Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) tenants.
- We have identified schemes where we have groups of tenants who are under-represented in our involvement work and organise scheme events to gain feedback on services or simply to start engagement with them.
- We have invited tenants with a disability to events to develop our disability equality work and to join our Disability Focus group.
- We have invited younger tenants to take part in involvement events.
