2021-22 saw us continuing to deal with the Covid pandemic, supporting customers and maintaining service delivery despite the challenges and restrictions.
CHS systems that were set up in response to the pandemic in 2020 continued to be used in 2021-22 to provide services safely. In July 2021 most government coronavirus restrictions were lifted. However, coronavirus cases in our county continued to be high and to have an impact, for example, repair appointments were often rearranged due to tenants having symptoms or operatives’ sickness absence. Many CHS staff continued to provide services to customers remotely, working from home and Covid put intense pressure on our care services. Although we had small outbreaks of Covid in some of our supported housing services and one of our care homes, our care staff worked extremely hard to safeguard our residents to bring the outbreaks under control. In October 2021 the government published its Heat and Buildings Strategy. CHS worked with a building consultant on assessing how much we will have to spend on our homes to make them more energy efficient and reach net zero carbon. We have continued to replace old gas boilers with new ones because for now they are the most cost-efficient heating system. We know global warming is a huge problem, and CHS is committed to improving the quality of our new homes and retrofitting our existing homes to make them more energy efficient.
The cost-of-living crisis began to be felt in late 2021 as real incomes fell, caused by high inflation outstripping wage and benefit increases. The removal of the Universal Credit (UC) uplift of £20 per week from October 2021 and the end of the furlough scheme increased financial pressure on many households. The impact of rising prices was felt by most households, but rising bills had the biggest impact on lower-income households because the price rises took up a greater share of disposable income. CHS is seriously concerned about the impact of high energy and food prices on our tenants. CHS as an organisation faces significant cost increases, the rate of inflation for energy and building material costs for our contractors and suppliers are far higher than the headline rate of inflation. That puts pressure on our ability to provide services to our customers.
The longer term solution is to reduce energy costs by insulating homes, contributing towards our work on zero carbon. In the meantime, we are looking at what we can do now to help tenants through what’s going to be a very difficult period for them. In 2021-22 Money Matters Advisors helped 369 CHS tenants with money, benefits and debt management as well as looking at ways to maximise their income.
The number of new homes that we developed in the year was slightly lower than planned because we are still suffering from the impact on our developers of the pandemic slowdown in the construction industry. Although Brexit also had a negative effect on the supply and cost of building materials, we successfully completed 31 affordable rented homes and 32 shared ownership homes during the year.
Despite all these challenges, we are still committed to providing housing and care services in Cambridgeshire for people on lower incomes or who may be vulnerable
‘STAR’ is the Survey of Tenants and Residents that is sent to every CHS household every two years and we use these results to improve our services. In 2021-22 overall satisfaction increased by 0.1% to 77.4% (6.8% of customers were dissatisfied). There were small improvements in how people felt about the rent they pay and having their say. The satisfaction measures that fell slightly were around the quality of homes, the repairs service, service charges and how easy CHS is to deal with. Complaint handing satisfaction was down by 3% and satisfaction with the neighbourhood was slightly down due to issues with parking and anti-social behaviour (ASB). Shared Owners were our least satisfied group of customers, who told us this is often about service charges.
The Tenant Committee had a busy year and we held our meetings online due to Covid. We have a number of standing items that we update members on regularly, such as the work of the Complaints and Scrutiny panels, feedback from our Core Groups with Gasway and Fosters, and quarterly meetings with Mark Walker Grounds Maintenance, Fire Safety and our Community Investment Strategy and Social Housing Network Group. This year we were fortunate to have had presentations from Gasway, Corona House (our women only supported housing) and Mehwash Hussain, one of our housing Officers. We discussed the new Virtual Complaints team, created a new Volunteer leaflet, conducted an Effectiveness Survey and approved numerous policy updates. The Heads of Service and Chief Executive Nigel Howlett keep us appraised of what is going on around Covid, Brexit, budgets, Community Investment and Customer Engagement.
We started a new contract with Mark Walker Grounds Maintenance (MWGM) in November 2021, which led to significant improvements in tenant satisfaction in the gardening service. In the first 6 months we were happy that the new contract was working well and MWGM were very responsive to any issues we identified. Regular reports of their visits were available via the portal and these included details of the work carried out, with before and after photos. Quarterly meetings with MWGM including a CHS tenant were held in 2022.
The overall repairs and maintenance spend was £4,372,397, and included:
Gasway Services Ltd deliver our domestic gas safety checks, heating repairs, boiler and other heating type system replacements. Their contract is in place until 31 March 2024 and we have fixed the costs of day-to-day repairs and gas safety checks until then. CHS maintained our landlord gas safety compliance above 99%. CHS agreed a contract with a new contractor (ABCA Systems Ltd) to service and maintain fire alarms and emergency lighting, from 1 April 2022 for four years.
Mrs AP is a CHS tenant living alone in a rural village. She is pension age and was in receipt of a state pension and a small private pension. She was referred into Money Matters by her Housing Officer. When she first spoke to CHS Money Matters Advisor, Sally, she said “I don’t think I am eligible for anything. I am struggling financially, and I worry about my future.”
The New Horizons project helped 85 people in 2021-22. New Horizons helps people make sense of their money, get on-line and get closer to the job market. The project is aimed at those who are struggling to make ends meet or are facing financial changes. Participants each receive an average of 20 hours of one to one support from a coach, who helps them to set realistic goals and take the necessary steps to meet them. Whilst the primary focus for most participants is around managing their money, participants also receive help to get on-line, and to start to look for work, or get into training or education. Those who need can also have access to debt management services.
We’re all hearing how living standards will fall further than ever in the coming year. Our CLAS champions tell us that they’re increasingly seeing people who are panicked, feeling desperate and hopeless at the likelihood of things getting even worse. In February we wrote to senior managers and Councillors at Cambridgeshire County Council to share our concerns about the cost-of-living crisis and the challenges that CLAS is facing in 2022-23.
CHS won the Hopkins Homes Cambridgeshire charity vote receiving the top donation of £7,000. Andrew Church, Head of Community Investment and Support at Cambridge Housing Society, said: “We are delighted to have won the public vote and feel very moved to have received so many votes from the people of Cambridgeshire. All the other charities do great work locally too, so to have finished top means so much. At Cambridge Housing Society, we believe it takes a village to raise a child so the £7,000 received through the vote will be spent on building a mentoring programme for young people at risk of homelessness.”
Cooking course grant
B has an enduring struggle with her mental health – she hears voices and has a diagnosis of schizophrenia. She lived at Corona House for 2 years and following that she moved into another supported housing service, where she remained for 3 years before recently moving into her own independent permanent accommodation.
CHS has two residential care homes in Cambridge offering 24 hour personal care and support for residents who are frail, elderly and may be living with dementia. We deliver a high standard of care, companionship and support to the tenants, whilst respecting the rights and dignity of the individual and promoting independent living skills. Our priority is maintaining a safe and good quality service and in a recent survey 88% of customers would recommend our homes, giving us a score of 8 or above out of 10.