Your Neighbourhood and Community

What can you expect from us?

This guide sets out the service you can expect to receive from us in relation to your neighbourhood. This includes shared play areas, car parking areas, communal areas in blocks of flats and shared grassed areas that we are responsible for. It describes what we do, the standards of service you can expect and how we will check we are meeting them.  It also sets out the things we expect you to do to help us ensure your neighbourhood remains a great place to live.

Our responsibilities

We will:

• Regularly inspect your estate to ensure they remain clean, safe and free of graffiti and hazards.
• Clean the communal areas in blocks of flats. This will include cleaning all floors and stairs, windows and checking the emergency lighting. If we come across any damage or a fault, we will fix it to ensure you remain safe. If personal items are found in a communal area, you will be asked to remove them within 7 days. If you fail to do so, we will remove and dispose of the items.
• Work with you, the Council, tenant and residents’ associations, community groups and other agencies to help improve the look and feel of your neighbourhood.
• Refer you to other organisations and other sources of help should you need support with such things as welfare benefits advice or debt.  
• Encourage and support community events, projects and improvements that benefit your neighbourhood.
• Remove or arrange for the Council to remove fly tipping that is dumped in your neighbourhood. We will do this after investigating the matter and prosecute offenders if we are able to identify them.

What we expect in return

Your responsibilities:

• To adhere to the conditions of your tenancy agreement, including looking after your home and garden.
• To recycle / dispose of your rubbish properly and report any problems with waste management to the Council.
• To report any problems you see promptly, including repairs, graffiti and any hazards.
• To keep any communal areas, including shared entrances, hallways, landings and staircases clean and clear of any objects.

Measuring success

We will know if we are getting things right by:

• Monitoring and reporting our performance against our agreed performance measures.
• Asking you how happy you are with the service we have provided.
• Publishing details on the work we do in our customer newsletter and website.

We will report our performance against these standards in our annual report to tenants. Regular updates will also be provided to our Customer Review Group, who are responsible for reviewing how well we are doing and offering constructive challenge.