This content was last updated on 20th August 2024.
Look Ahead is both a landlord and a care and support provider. We are committed to delivering high quality, safe, housing and care and support to our customers and continuously improving the services that we provide.
To meet this commitment, we set ourselves a number of service targets. We report on these to our customers through our scrutiny panels, as well as to our Board, Housing and Care regulators and commissioners. One of our “Customer Insight Strategies” is to provide transparency for customers, their friends and family, and advocates.
This page is one way that we share how we are performing against our targets. It also allows us to share our plans to improve performance and communicate what we are doing differently in response to customer feedback. This empowers our customers to hold us to account.
This page gives you an up-to-date picture of our current performance and is updated every four months. You can see when it was last updated at the top of this page. However, some of these statistics are only reported on once or twice a year and where this is the case it will be indicated next to the data by a *
Each service area is accompanied by a Traffic Light Indicator which shows how we are performing against the target.
A Green Light = We are doing well and meeting our targets.
An Amber Light = We are just below target and have plans in place to improve and achieve our targets. Any amber indicator will have an associated action.*
A Red Light = We have failed to meet our target and should have robust plans in place to address the underperformance. Any red indicator will have an associated action.*
*For any Amber or Red indicator – the named lead will be responsible for creating an internal action plan and reporting progress to our Senior Leadership Team and Board.
Service Performance Areas
Building Safety, Repairs, Customer Contact Centre & Housing Services
Building Safety
We have a legal and regulatory responsibility to provide decent and safe homes for all of our tenants.
To ensure that we are doing this, we carry out safety compliance checks across all of our properties and buildings. These checks might be completed by either a member of our dedicated compliance team, our contractors or our Housing or Support staff.
The building safety performance traffic lights demonstrate current performance with regulatory standards in relation to gas, electrical and fire safety. The data relating to fire drills will be updated twice yearly, and the rest of the performance indicators will be updated quarterly.
For more information, click here to read about our commitment to compliance.
Responsible: Liam Canning, Head of Compliance and Building Safety
Repairs and Maintenance
We have a legal responsibility to ensure that the homes that we provide are maintained to a decent standard.
The traffic light performance indicator focuses on general day-to-day repairs, renewals and replacement of furniture and white goods (where we have a responsibility) and minor gas, water or electric repairs.
When a repair is reported it is categorised in terms of severity – routine, urgent or emergency. Each of these categories have a different target for how quickly they need to be completed. The first three traffic performance indicators show how many of our repairs were completed within these targets
We offer a 24 hour repairs service and outside of normal office hours and weekends emergency repairs our managed through our Out of Hours (OOH) service. The OOH performance indicator shows how many out of hours emergency repairs are responded to outside of normal business hours and completed (completion includes a temporary make safe solution). All of these statistics will be updated once quarterly.
For more information about repairs and maintenance, click here for our dedicated page.
Responsible: Michael Atiba, Head of Repairs and Voids Maintenance
Customer Contact Centre
We have a dedicated Customer Contact Centre which is often the first point of contact for stakeholders and prospective customers, as well as being a central contact for existing customers. The service handles all inbound calls and email communications through [email protected].
They also support administrative repairs requests and answer queries, solve problems or get the right Look Ahead colleague or department involved.
It is important that calls are responded to quickly. The performance traffic indicator shows the average waiting time and will be updated once quarterly.
For details of how to get in touch with our contact centre, click here.
Responsible: Nav Klair, Customer Contact Centre Service Lead
Housing Services
We are committed to providing high quality homes and housing management services to all of our tenants. We have a dedicated team of Housing Officers that provide housing management services to our tenants that live in our non care and support services. We refer to this as “unsupported”.
As part of our unsupported offer we are committed to undertaking regular tenancy reviews and estate inspections to ensure estates and properties are safe, clean and to manage any anti-social behaviour or tenancy issues.
The traffic light performance indicator shows the percentage of estate visits carried out in line with the target. These will be updated once quarterly.
For more information about our housing management offer, click here.
Responsible: Shell Bryant – Head of Housing
Service Quality, Diversity and Inclusion, and Staffing
Service Quality
At least once every two years we inspect our Care and Support Services and assess them against our quality framework.
The framework is broken down into 5 key areas:
- Safe
- Effective
- Caring
- Responsive
- Well led
Services are rated as either:
- Outstanding
- Good
- Inadequate
- Poor
We have a set an organisational target that at least 88% of our services should meet the “Good” or “Outstanding” quality standard.
The performance traffic light indicator shows what percentage of our services have currently achieved a ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ rating. This will be updated once quarterly.
If you want more information about our Quality Audits, please click here for our Quality and Safeguarding page.
Each service should have a poster displaying performance in their last audit, talk to a member of staff if you are not able to see this in your service.
For information please email [email protected]
Responsible: Mike Bansback, Director of Practice Development, Safeguarding and Quality
Diversity and Inclusion
We are committed to diversity and inclusion, and recognise the diversity of our customers. We will ensure that we deliver accessible services and equitable outcomes across all of our customer groups.
We know that without understanding the individual needs of our service users, we cannot tailor service delivery to meet the needs of our customers.
We introduced a Diversity and Inclusion question in our 2020 Annual Customer survey and we are committed to including this going forward. We asked customers whether they “feel satisfied that Look Ahead treats them fairly regardless of age, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, religion or disability”.
We have not set a target and the traffic light performance indicator shows the percentage of customers that felt Look Ahead treated them fairly. The data comes from our annual customer survey responses and is updated once a year.
For more information about our commitment to diversity and inclusion and how we are actively tackling discrimination and disadvantage, click here.
Responsible: Nicole Njie, Director of Customer Services and Housing – Customer Diversity & Inclusion Lead
Responsible: Nicole Njie, Executive Director of Group Operations (Interim) – Customer Diversity & Inclusion Lead. Claudia Bartram, Director of People is also responsible for the overall Look Ahead Diversity Strategy
Look Ahead Staff
Our staff are a core part of enabling us to deliver high quality care, support and housing services. We know that customers value continuity and stability, particularly when it comes to their designated key worker or Housing Officer.
This indicator refers to the percentage of all staff turnover, meaning the number of staff that have left Look Ahead. This will be updated once quarterly.
Responsible: Claudia Bartram, Director of People
Customer Satisfaction, Complaints, Customer Involvement in Recruitment
Customer Satisfaction
We provide our customers with regular opportunities to share their feedback on how we are performing, whether this is through an annual satisfaction survey or smaller thematic targeted surveys. We are committed to excellence in everything we do and see customer feedback as fundamental to helping us understand and improve the services we provide.
As part of annual survey process we always ask our customers “Taking everything into account, how satisfied are you with the overall quality of service you receive from Look Ahead?” and set an overall satisfaction target of 90%.
For our customers that live in Look Ahead-owned buildings, we ask them to complete an annual satisfaction survey. Results of this survey can be found below.
This data is updated once a year and is also published in our annual customer report.
Responsible: Nicole Njie, Executive Director of Group Operations (Interim)
Annual Satisfaction Survey results
- Overall Satisfaction – 77.5%
This statistic is from our Tenant’s only survey, when we have results from our other annual customer surveys, we will share them here.
Complaints
The success of our organisation depends on our ability to deliver excellent services that exceed expectations: we can only do this if we receive, listen to and act on feedback.
The statistics above show how well we are performing in relation to formal complaints handling – primarily how responsive our service is. These will be updated quarterly.
We undertake an annual self assessment which you can find on our complaints and feedback page. The assessment details our compliance with the Housing Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code. It shows how well we are performing against the code, the areas that we need to improve on and evidence of the ways that we are doing this.
For more information click here for our dedicated Complaints and Feedback page.
Responsible: Ola Taiwo: Head of Customer Services
Customer Involvement in Selection and Recruitment
Customer involvement within recruitment and selection of our staff and Board members is one example of the choice and control we give to customers across all levels to enable and empower them to be an active part of decision making at Look Ahead.
This performance traffic light indicator shows what percentage of all vacant roles across Look Ahead filled, which had customer involvement in the recruitment process. This will be updated once quarterly.
We have committed to reaching a target of 80% by the end of March 2022. For more information about how you can get involved with recruitment and selection, click here.
Responsible: Kate Mahoney, Head of Customer Experience
Our TSM Results
In April 2023 the housing regulator introduced a new set of Tenant Satisfaction Measures, also known as ‘TSMs’.
This means that social landlords, including Look Ahead, now have to report against certain areas, known as ‘measures’ to demonstrate how well we are providing quality homes and services to tenants.
You can read more about TSMs on the Regulator of Social Housing’s website: GOV.UK – Tenant Satisfaction Measures – Summary of RSH requirements
A key part of this is running a tenant’s survey once a year to find out how we’re doing, and what we can improve. We ran our last TSM survey between November 2023 and March 2024. Customers were able to respond via post, online, and over the phone. You can view these documents here.
You can see our TSM survey results for 2023/24 below:
· Overall Satisfaction – 77.5%
· Satisfaction with repairs –76.3%
· Satisfaction with time taken to complete repairs – 73%
· Satisfaction that the home is well maintained – 77.4%
· Satisfaction that the home is safe – 80%
· Satisfaction that the landlord listens to tenant views and acts upon them – 73.2%
· Satisfaction that the landlord keeps them informed about things that matter – 76.6%
· Agrees that the landlord treats tenants fairly and with respect – 82.1%
· Satisfaction with landlord’s approach to handling complaints – 49.2%
· Satisfaction that the landlord keeps communal areas clean and well maintained – 78.1%
· Satisfaction that the landlord makes a positive contribution to neighbourhoods – 66.7%
· Satisfaction with the landlord’s approach to anti-social behaviour – 75.8%
As well as reporting on tenant satisfaction, we are required to report on key management information for Look Ahead properties. Our results for 2023/24 are below:
| Measure | Denominator | Numerator | TSM Value |
| Stage 1 complaints received per 1k | 1124 | 80 | 7.12% |
| Stage 2 complaints received per 1k | 1124 | 3 | 0.27% |
| Stage 1 complaints responded to within target | 84 | 52 | 61.90% |
| Stage 2 complaints responded to within target | 3 | 3 | 100% |
| Total ASB instances received per 1k | 1124 | 39 | 34.7 |
| Total hate crime instances received per 1k | 1124 | 2 | 1.78 |
| % homes not meeting the Decent Homes Standard | 1124 | 13 | 1.16% |
| Non-emergency repairs completed within target | 3007 | 2818 | 93.71% |
| Emergency repairs completed within target | 945 | 936 | 99.05% |
| Gas safety checks | 1124 | 1124 | 100% |
| Fire safety checks | 1124 | 1124 | 100% |
| Asbestos safety checks | 827 | 827 | 100% |
| Water safety checks | 138 | 138 | 100% |
| Lift safety checks | 276 | 276 | 100% |
You said, we did
When you share your ideas, feedback or concerns, it is important that we not only listen but act. Here are some examples of some of the changes we’ve made as a result of tenant feedback:
- Following recent customer surveys, our Tenant and Landlord Panel asked us to run some focus groups to find out more about the key issues behind the survey results. We ran several focus groups across our services in June and July to find out more information. We also held organisational-wide workshops with operational staff to find out what they are hearing from their customers. The insight from all of these focus groups and workshops has been used to formulate our action plans which will be approved by the Board in September.
- Our Customer Incidents Panel told us that they wanted opportunities to share their findings and work together with staff to improve our safeguarding response. A Safeguarding Learning event is being organised for Board, Senior managers, Staff and customers in November, as suggested by the Panel. The Co-Chair of the panel, Tyler, has also addressed Senior Leaders and Board members directly with the Panel’s comments and feedback as part of our Board Quality and Safety Committee.
- Following a review of recent financial safeguarding incidents with our Customer Incidents Panel, customers told us that they felt we should have designated financial protection plans in place for customers at risk of financial abuse. Finance Protection Plans now being incorporated into our Policy as suggested by the Panel.
- You would like more opportunities to take part in activities both at home and in the community. Look Ahead launched its ‘Summer Small Service Grants’ which services could apply for to support summer activities with customers. Our judging panel of staff and customers were pleased to award £5000 of grants to 27 services across Look Ahead to be held across August and September!
- Learning from their incident reviews, our Customer Incidents Panel felt that Look Ahead could do more to increase customers awareness around abuse and boundaries. We are kicking off a year-long campaign focused on customer safety with our next edition of Heads Up (our customer magazine). We are working with the Panel to co-produce the magazine, and they will steer our approach for the remainder of the campaign, including our joint safeguarding event in the autumn.
For more detail or to further scrutinise our performance, customers can join our Tenant and Landlord Panel, Customer Care and Support Forum or Customer Incidents Panel– email [email protected] for more information or click here.