Getting Involved with Coastline Housing Ltd
Why is customer involvement important?
Coastline is very serious about putting our customer's right at the heart of the services we provide.
We believe that customer involvement in Coastline Housing Ltd 's (CHL's) decision making processes is vital to our business development and is essential if customers are to truly influence service delivery, strategic priorities and ultimately the future direction of the business.
Why has the involvement structure changed?
In September 2006 our Tenant's Forum set up a working party to look at how customers could take an even more active role in deciding how CHL services are run in the future.
The working group looked carefully at all the ways that customers share their views and get involved with Coastline at present, and how in the future we could develop a new cohesive and comprehensive structure which would involve as many CHL customers as possible.
Both CHL customers and staff members believe in good, open and honest participation and after extensive consultation all parties agreed that the aims of our participation and consultation structure must be to:
. protect the rights and interests of all tenants and other customers
. provide a consultative structure, focusing on strategy, policy and major issues
. promote equality and diversity
. assist in the improvement of services
. be open all tenants and other customers
. provide a training programme offered to all tenants and other customers
. seek funding from any source in order to improve participation, consultation and communication
. provide value-for-money
. feed back to tenants and other customers via a variety of processes
. ensure the proper management of resource centres
After a lot of hard work from the working party, the Tenants Forum and Coastline Staff Members, CHL are pleased to announce a number of new ways in which our customers can become involved with us.
A 'New Direction' in Customer Involvement.
The 'New Direction' customer involvement structure has been developed in consultation with CHL customers every step of the way making sure it has been specifically tailored to the needs and preferences of our customers.
The variety of new involvement methods will allow our customers to choose how they are involved with us and allow our customers to be involved with us in a way that suits their lifestyle.
So, how can I be involved?
CHL customers can now be involved with us 'Strategically' or via the 'Community Development' route.
'Strategically' - Sounding Boards allow customers to work in partnership with CHL to directly influence service delivery at the earliest stage.
For example:
Mr B has an interest in environment issues and energy efficiency on estates and within CHL homes. He joined the Environmental Management Sounding Board as he wanted to read the policies, consider service changes and make suggestions for improvements.
'Community Development' - Community involvement groups working in partnership with CHL identifying issues affecting their own local area (this includes area panels, resident associations and area representatives).
For example:
Mrs A voiced the views of the tenants and other customers in her area at an Area Panel, regarding traffic speeding through their estate. The Area Panel supported by CHL worked with the Highways Department to survey and install traffic calming to reduce the speed of the traffic.
Who will monitor this new structure?
Overseeing the new structure is the Monitoring and Review Panel. The primary function of the monitoring and review panel is to scrutinise CHL's participation, consultation and communication work to ensure that they meet the needs of tenants and other customers.
How does this affect me as a customer?
As you can see from the flexibility of new structure CHL is committed to placing customers at the heart of the business and to do this we need you!!
We need customer involvement to help us develop community involvement projects which will continue to provide safe and secure neighbourhoods.
We also need customer involvement on the Strategic Sounding Boards; we need customers to voice their views and tell us their opinion as no-one else knows our services better than you!!
The New Community Involvement Strategy can be downloaded below and explains in full the new involvement structure, CHL's commitment to embedding customer involvement at the heart of the business and what part you can play.
If you would like to join one of the new methods of involvement or have any queries or questions, please contact the team on 08082 027728 or email us at getinvolved@coastlinehousing.co.uk
We are all looking forward to the new and exciting challenges ahead and we hope you will join us on our journey.
Impact assessments are an internal improvement tool that CHL have to produce annually. It is a 'live' document so when one task is complete another task is added to it. The impact assessments work towards monitoring CHL Customer Involvement performance. It is important that the assessment is appropriate to the outcome it is measuring and agreed by Customers & Staff members. The latest version of the Impact Assessment can be found on the link below.
