An Evening with Aire Valley Homes was held at the John Charles Centre for Sport on the evening of Tuesday 21 June 2011.
Simon Costigan, Chief Exectutive of Aire Valley Homes, said "I was so pleased to see a number of 'new faces' that I hadn't met before. I hope that everyone attended enjoyed the evening with us, and learned a lot about Aire Valley Homes, our value and mission, our current plans, and plans for the future. We learnt a lot from all the comments and feedback, which has certainly become 'food for thought'.
I was delighted that so many of our tenants that attended passed on their suggestions and thoughts. All 25 tenants who posted comments in our comment box, and had given us their contact details, have been responded to personally.
Much of the feedback covers concerns about environmental, anti-social behaviour and home improvement issues, which we will be looking at closely, and reviewing how we can address these concerns in a postitive and proactive way. A lot of the projects and work we carry out in these areas will be featuring on our website and in our Aire Living newsletter over the next few months'.
I personally really enjoyed the presentations to Freddie Jones, Tina Fielden and Joyce Hutchinson. In Freddie's case, you can say he's a true tenant champion, capturing all that is good about tenants being at the heart of matters, challenging what we do, but also giving praise when necessary.
We are lucky to have so many tenants who give up their time voluntarily to attend various focus groups and consultation panels, as well as those tenants and residents who run community groups. I would like to take this opportunity to thank them all. Without the valuable contributions from our tenants, Aire Valley Homes would not be able to offer the services that we do."
A copy of the comments, feedback and suggestions from the evening can be found on the right hand side of this page.
Here's how the evening went...
Everyone who attended was given an information pack, which contained copies of all the evenings presentations, our new service standard promotional poster, a letter from Councillor Peter Gruen, and a flyer for our new Handy Help service.
The opening comments were made by Ian Montgomery, Aire Valley Homes' Customer Communication Manager. Ian welcomed everyone to the event, recapped on the Decembers' get-together and the introduction of the tenant scrutiny panel, he let everyone know hat the plan for the evening was, and pointed them in the direction of the buffet!
Simon Costigan, our ‘guest star’ and newly appointed Chief Executive was next up. Simon spoke about the priorities Aire Valley Homes have for the short term and long term, and these included;
- improve customer involvement;
- improve customer satisfaction;
- continue to improve performance across the business;
- national leader in the social housing sector; and
- position the business to be the market leader in any future merger.
Simon answered questions from the audience.
Next came the workshop. Tenants were asked to consider whether the priorities Simon has discussed for Aire Valley Homes were the same priorities that tenants consider the most important.
Some tenants who attended told us that they agreed with the presentation about making staff from Aire Valley Homes more ‘out and about’ and visible on the estates.
Jennie Vaughan, one of the members of Aire Valley Homes’ Scrutiny Steering Group, very bravely gave an update about what the group had been doing. This included finalising the application process to become part of the Scrutiny Panel.
The other ‘guest star’ was Andrew Roddison, Regional Community and Communications Manager for Yorkshire, gave a presentation about their commitment to Aire Valley Homes’ tenants as the new repairs partner. Andrew spoke about who Morrison are, about the money they have to invest in our communities, and the different aspects of the contracts they hold with Aire Valley Homes.
Andrew then took questions from the audience.
The closing part of the event was hosted by Andrew Feldhaus, Chair of Aire Valley Homes’ Board. Andrew presented two awards; the first being to Joyce Hutchinson and Tina Fielden, for their time and commitment to two big procurement projects. Joyce and Tina were presented with beautiful bouquets.
Last, but certainly not least, was the ‘Life Time Achievement Award’, which was presented to Freddie Jones. A few weeks before the event, Freddie had informed Aire Valley Homes that he was formally retiring from his involvement commitments.
The evening was a great success, with lots of feedback and suggestions left by tenants. A copy of the comments, feedback and suggestions from the evening can be found on the right hand side of this page, or if you would like a copy posting to you, please contact Alan Thorpe t: 0113 214 1936.