Dear Residents,
As the Executive Member for Housing and Development in Manchester, I am proud to introduce Manchester City Council’s Housing Services Annual Report for 2022/23.
It was a busy year for Housing Services’ determined team, which has continued on a journey of improvement while responding to significant changes in our sector.
We formed our new Housing Advisory Board, which I chair. The Board is made up of 14 people including volunteer residents, housing professionals, and local councillors. We are dedicated to improving the community and the lives of residents in north Manchester.
We meet every two months, and in our first year of operation we have reviewed the performance in all areas of housing services and overseen new policies around anti-social behaviour, tenant satisfaction measures, and damp and mould.
While we continued to embed the principles of our Place Called Home vision, new regulations were announced around building safety and tenant involvement within the housing sector.
In January 2023, new fire-safety regulations for landlords of mid-rise and high-rise blocks of flats were announced. Consequently, we are working closely with Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service, as well as carrying out regular checks on the fire-safety equipment in place.
The Regulator of Social Housing introduced new requirements around tenant satisfaction measures. Look out for your customer-satisfaction survey, which will arrive soon. This is your opportunity to give us your feedback on the services that matter to you.
From 1 April 2023, all registered providers of social housing were asked to collect and publish a range of comparable information on repairs, safety checks and complaints. We developed a new section on our website, and you can see our latest performance report here.
Elsewhere in the business, housing services continued their improvement journey, and 93% of repairs were completed on time. Although this is lower than we would like, we are heading in the right direction. We have improved throughout the year and are in a good position to meet our target of 98%.
Over three-quarters (78%) of residents were satisfied with their repairs. Our target is 95%, so we’re not quite where we want to be. This year we implemented a quick and easy way to get feedback from residents on their repairs, and the lessons we are learning here are helping us to improve further.
We gave out £10,000 of funding via our Hobin’s Community Fund. We supported projects across north Manchester, including family cooking classes, wildflower planting schemes, and community yoga sessions.
Our resident involvement team delivered a bumper programme this year, arranging more than forty community events. They included summer fun days in our local parks, jubilee celebrations, and community clean-up days, attracting over 3,000 residents in total. Thank you to everyone who got involved – you’re all helping to improve your community.
Improvements costing £16 million were delivered to residents’ homes. These included 90 air-source heat pumps, which will eventually replace traditional gas boilers to make homes more energy-efficient and cheaper for residents to heat.
Our estates services team cut the grass in 1,915 gardens where the residents were unable to do it themselves and we worked closely with Neighbourhoods colleagues to ensure estates are well maintained. Our collaborative approach includes estate walkabouts and joint site visits to tackle environmental hot spots. Taking part in joint resident public events as well as close working in partnership meetings contributes to creating welcoming, safe and vibrant neighbourhoods.
We can also boast that two of our homes produce zero carbon! Retrofitting traditionally built homes to save energy isn’t easy – but we did it. Two properties in Higher Blackley and Harpurhey were fully insulated, and solar PV panels were added to the roofs; the boilers were replaced with air-source heat pumps, and triple-glazed windows were fitted, helping us on our way to our city’s zero-carbon target in 2038.
Our focus for 2023/24 centres on delivering the priorities set out in our vision, A Place Called Home, which sets out to improve service delivery through:
- Resident-led services – putting you at the heart of everything we do
- High-quality housing services and home improvements – for secure, warm, sustainable homes
- Welcoming, safe and vibrant neighbourhoods.
We will welcome residents moving into our 69 new council homes on Silk Street in Newton Heath; 21 of the homes will be zero carbon, as will our 130 new council homes in Collyhurst. We look forward to watching these communities develop and thrive.
We will continue the improvement of our core business for residents, most notably repairs and maintenance, as well as the prevention and remediation of damp and mould, compliance, and improving the time to relet our properties.
We are also focusing on preparing and embedding the new social housing regulatory framework in Manchester, including tenant satisfaction measures, the Social Housing Act, Awaab’s Law, and the Building Safety Act.
We will keep up our work consulting and implementing the new operating model for Housing Services to support the delivery of the strategic priorities set out above in A Place Called Home.
In addition, we will deliver targeted support to residents most adversely impacted by the cost-of-living crisis through the sector leading £1million HRA support fund. You can read more on this later in the report. In spite of the challenges our sector faces, our core purpose remains: to provide safe, decent, affordable homes for residents. I can’t wait to see what we achieve next year.
With my best wishes,
Councillor Gavin White
Executive Member for Housing and Development
Manchester City Council
Annual Report 2022/23
You
Your home
Your neighbourhood
You
Resident-led services, putting you at the heart of everything we do.
- Our Money Matters team helped residents receive £865,000 of financial support.
- Our energy adviser helped 375 people save around 53 tons of carbon and £74,463.
- We answered 73% of the calls that came into our Customer Contact Centre.
- 76% of residents were satisfied with the service.
Your home
High-quality housing services and home improvements for secure, warm, sustainable homes.
- 100% of council homes had a gas safety check.
- We spent £16 million on home improvements.
- 93% of repairs were completed on time
- 78% of residents were satisfied with their repair
- Owing to the implementation of our new feedback tool, our repairs satisfaction figures run from June 22 to April 23.
Your neighbourhood
Welcoming, safe and vibrant neighbourhoods.
- We investigated 145 cases of anti-social behaviour.
- We held over 40 community events, which were enjoyed by more than 3,600 residents.
- Our waste and recycling team investigated 67 cases of fly-tipping.
- We gave £10,000 to local groups via the Hobin's Community Fund.
Where your rent goes?
Our rent collection rates are 99.2%. Times are tough. We are in a cost-of-living crisis. Energy and food are more expensive than they’ve ever been. Thank you to everyone who has prioritised rent payments during this difficult time.
Because things are so tough, we have increased our Community Living Fund so we can help more people in financial hardship. We can give a one-off cash award to tenants who meet the criteria. If you think thiscould help you, visit our website to fill in the application: mcchousingservices.co.uk/clf/
We have also increased the capacity of our Money Matters Team, so we can help even more of you to access the benefits and support you are entitled to. This friendly and understanding team supported more than 3,000 tenants last year, and we hope to reach even more this year.
- Private Finance Initiative* 31%
- Home Improvements 23%
- Repairs and Maintenance 17%
- Employee Costs 15%
- Other management 6%
- Communal heating 3%
- Interest and other charges 3%
- Other expenditure 1%
- Contribution to bad debts 1%
*Covers the management of homes in Plymouth Grove, Miles Platting and Brunswick
What’s next?
There’s lots to look forward to in 2023/24. We are about to welcome a new strategic leadership team to support our improvement journey further.
We’ve also boosted our numbers. We have more customer-service advisers ready to deal with your enquiries, so you can look forward to a quicker service when you contact us.
We’re reviewing our complaint handling process. We want to improve our performance here by learning lessons from complaints to help improve our services.
We’re also launching our new customer satisfaction survey. Do look out for it, it’s your opportunity to tell us what you think. We’ll carry out a full analysis of the results to drive further improvement.
Moreover, we have employed more neighbourhood housing officers, who will be working closely within your communities to address neighbourhood issues and support people.
We’re launching new ways for residents to get involved with our services. Your Voice is our new scrutiny panel which will make recommendations for improvement – helping to ensure we are offering the best services possible for everyone.
View the PDF version of the Annual Report here:
