Operations Directorate update
Published: 6 Jan 2017
Time to look back briefly before we launch into 2017…
The last year saw increasing challenges as Local Authorities looked for efficiency savings, pressure was maintained on our rental income, and we continued to work with our customers to maintain their independence.
Against this backdrop we were pleased to win new business in Hampshire and the London Borough of Hillingdon and open new accommodation based services in Woking and Farnham. Sadly we have bid farewell to our service in West Sussex as the commissioners could no longer afford to fund services to people not eligible for Social Care.
Ability’s Q-Team swept the board to win ‘Excellence in tenant inspection and mystery shopping’, at the Customer Scrutiny Inspection (CSI) Awards in October, the judges describing our entry as “overwhelmingly excellent”.
Care Quality Commission registered services remained fully compliant. Services in Hillingdon and Slough were deemed to be “good” across the board. The resulting reports contained plenty of positive news, particularly about how we promote choice, dignity and independent living.
There have also been Local Authority review visits and we have consistently been deemed to be high quality. Special mention should go to our service which was considered “Outstanding” following a quality monitoring visit by the Local Authority in Hillingdon.
Most importantly our care and support services have consistently supported vulnerable people to maintain independent living. Only a very small handful of our customers ended their experience with Ability negatively and we should all be very proud of that statistic.
2016 also saw us enter into a new repairs contract with Morgan Sindall. At time of writing, we are continuing to work hard to improve the customer service, and I hope that progress is now being made, particularly with the gas boiler servicing programme.
We also welcomed a number of new staff as part of our “Intensive Housing Management” offer to tenants. They have already been a real benefit to individual tenants facing a wide variety of issues to ensure they can live independently and maintain their tenancies.
I am sure that 2017 will contain a lot of similar challenges, but for now, I’d like to pass on best wishes for the New Year from all of the Operations Management Team.
All the best,
Tim Hall
Operations Director