Supporting You
It’s really important to us that our residents are safe and comfortable in their homes. We want everyone to feel like they can be themselves, no matter their background or life experience.
That's why we've been working to make sure our schemes are inclusive and welcoming for everyone. Our tenants highlighted to us that some of our Retirement Living Schemes didn’t appeal to some of our more diverse communities.
We put a number of actions in place to change the look and feel of our schemes, with local action plans aimed at diversifying some of our services. We’re really pleased to see that as a result of these changes, 92% of Retirement Living Plus residents agreed their scheme is inclusive and welcoming in a recent survey. An increase from 85% in 2021.
How we can improve:
We’ve heard a lot from our tenants this year about the use of technology. Some of you have told us that you don’t use the internet because you worry about security, or because you’re not sure how to use it. You’ve asked that we offer more support when communicating with those who aren’t online to make sure nobody misses out on anything important. We know this doesn’t necessarily mean sending you lots of information in the post and so we’ll be holding some focus groups with tenants over the next year to help understand what we can do to get our communication right.
New affordable Retirement Living homes
In May 2022, we opened a brand-new Retirement Living scheme. We worked in partnership with Lichfield District Council to make sure local people were prioritised for these new homes. One year on we revisited Bluebell Court to ask how residents had settled in and 92% said they were proud to call Bluebell Court their home, and felt that they were treated with fairness and respect.
“no complaints at all, every single MH staff member is great and very supportive”
How we can improve:
Help through challenging times: We know that for many of our tenants the rising cost of living has had a big impact. In September last year, we asked for your thoughts on how we could support you with proposed increases to your rents, alongside your concerns over the rising cost of fuel, food and energy. In the survey 74% of you told us you didn’t know we had an in-house money advice service who could offer free, confidential support with your finances. Over the last year we have done more to promote this service, including through our leaflets, website, social media and in person meetings in our schemes. We’ve also increased the size of our team so that you can get the support you need without having to wait.
customer referrals to our Money Advice team
worth of shopping vouchers issued
worth of fuel vouchers issued
food bank vouchers issued
awarded in Universal Credit
in Discretionary Housing Payment
in housing benefit
in attendance allowance
