CityWest Homes
Strategy 2015-2020
Foreword from our Chief Executive,
Jonathan Cowie
Jonathan Cowie
Chief Executive
I’m very pleased to be sharing our new strategic plan
taking us to 2020. CityWest Homes was created in 2002
as Westminster City Council’s arms’ length management
organisation (ALMO), to improve both the housing stock
and the quality of housing services. CityWest Homes has
built a solid reputation for delivering housing services in
Westminster and that will remain my focus.
The next five years will provide new challenges - the Government has set out an ambitious programme of legislation
and welfare reforms, which will affect our homes, our services and the lives of our residents and we will continue to
work hard to adapt to this changing environment.
In 2015 the Council published its draft housing
strategy, setting out an aim ‘to create great places to
live, work and enjoy’. We have taken that aim to create
a new mission for CityWest Homes:
‘creating places where people are
proud to live’
This embodies our commitment to the communities
we work within to deliver high quality homes in safe
neighbourhoods and to support the needs of our
g association
1451.jpg
tenants
and lessees.
The Council is facing tough challenges across its
services and needs to meet increasing demand with
reducing resources. The need for affordable housing
has never been greater and we will do all we can to
help the Council deliver its ‘City for All’ vision.
I welcome the opportunity for CityWest Homes to work
with the Council to find ways to streamline service
delivery, cut out waste and achieve better outcomes
for the people of Westminster. CityWest Homes’ vision
to 2020 is:
’to be trusted and recommended
by our customers in Westminster,
based on our reputation for
quality, value and service’
To achieve this we will modernise service delivery and
reduce costs.
We have probably the most diverse customer profile
of any ALMO, our customers range from multiple
property owning companies to some vulnerable
Foreword • CityWest Homes Strategy
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tenants with complex needs and we must tailor our
services to their differing requirements. Our proposals
for new service delivery arrangements will increase
choice and consistency and make it easier for
customers to contact us, and use our services
effortlessly. We will also deliver greater transparency
in costs for lessees.
We provide services in a complex environment and
we rely on our relationships with our residents, the
Council, contractors and other partners to improve
the quality and experience of these services. We can
achieve far more through working together and we
thank all of the residents and organisations who work
with us to strengthen our communities.
We rely on the work that our staff do every day to
deliver great results. As part of this strategy we commit
to developing, supporting and training our people so
that they can go on to deliver our vision.
This strategy sets out a demanding set of objectives
which will be incredibly stretching for us. However,
I believe that if we are successful, it will take us into
another league for performance and service delivery.
Over the next five years we will measure customer
satisfaction with our services and we will introduce a
measure of Councillor satisfaction to check that we are
successfully delivering the strategy. I look forward to
working jointly with residents to shape the services
that matter most.
New apprentice Chris at work
Foreword • CityWest Homes Strategy
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Background and context
CityWest Homes (CWH) provides property services to nearly 30% of
the resident population of Westminster, accommodated in over 21,000
properties. Nearly half of our properties are in conservation areas and
around one in seven are in listed buildings.
Our customer profile includes 12,000 social housing
tenants and 9,000 lessees, of whom 39% bought under
the Right to Buy and 61% bought on the open market.
Our lessees include 400 companies and 40% of
leasehold properties are now rented privately.
In this document, when we refer to customers we
mean tenants and lessees of the Council and when we
refer to residents we mean all the people who live in
the properties we manage.
We have gained a reputation for providing high quality
services and we are proud of our customer satisfaction
ratings which are amongst the highest in the sector.
Our achievements include:
•
88% tenant satisfaction and 69% lessee
satisfaction with landlord services in 2015
•
Creation of a respected brand and reputation
demonstrated through consistently high
performance compared with other
London boroughs
•
Exceptional rent and service charge
recovery rates
•
Achieving 49th place in Sunday Times Top
100 Companies to work for
•
Creating and embedding a values based
culture and achieving the Investors in
People gold standard
In 2013 we signed a second management agreement
with the Council to manage its housing stock, covering
the period to 31 March 2022. The agreement seeks
to protect the excellent service standards now being
delivered and to improve our effectiveness in three
key areas:
•
Providing a long term approach to asset
management and investment
•
Improving services for lessees
•
Improving value for money
Our progress in meeting the Council’s objectives is
measured through annual Performance Framework
targets. The expectations of our tenants and lessees
are changing at a rapid pace and are shaped by their
experience of the very best service providers. To keep
up with the best, we need to invest in our customer
service. Our challenge is to continuously adapt and
innovate to respond to changing customer needs,
technologies and new business models to achieve
high levels of satisfaction.
The Government has announced a range of housing
and welfare plans which are aimed at reducing the
benefit bill, supporting home ownership and increasing
housing supply. The proposals will be delivered over
the Government’s five year term, which coincides with
the life of this strategy. The proposals include:
Background and Context • CityWest Homes Strategy
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•
The sale of empty high value council owned
properties to fund the extension of the Right
to Buy to housing association tenants
•
A 1% cut in social housing rents for four years
from 2016
•
Higher rents for social housing tenants
earning more than £40,000 a year and a
review of lifetime tenancies
•
A reduction in the benefit cap from £26,000
a year to £23,000 a year in London
These proposals will fundamentally change how we
manage tenancies in Westminster and how we work
with our communities. They will also reduce the
funding available to manage the housing service.
Our strategy seeks to respond to these challenges by
delivering services in new more effective ways which
offer value for money. We will work with the Council
to ensure our response to the changes aligns with
their requirements and those of our tenants.
•
Removal of Housing Benefit for 18-21 year olds
and limiting the amount of Housing Benefit
payable to social housing tenants to Local Housing
Allowance rates
•
Reductions to a range of welfare benefits, and
a four year freeze on benefit levels which will
result in some tenants seeing a reduction in
their weekly income
•
A commitment to start 200,000 Starter Homes
nationally by 2020 which will be sold to first time
buyers at a 20% discount on the market value
Our new strategy brings together the Council’s
ambitions of ‘City for All’ and its requirements for
housing services, combined with our own ambitions for
modernising and improving our services. It sets out our
objectives for the next five years, and explains how we
will measure our achievements.
Green Flag event - Mozart estate
Background and Context • CityWest Homes Strategy
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Our strategic framework
This document sets out our
mission, vision and strategy to
2020 and specifies the strategic
objectives that will ensure we
achieve the vision. Everything we
do is underpinned by our values
which remain alive and relevant to
the business. Together these
elements combine to provide us
with clarity of purpose and a
coherent framework within which
to work.
Our mission:
We believe that providing good quality affordable
housing has a profound influence on people’s lives,
aspirations and achievements. We aim to provide high
quality homes in safe attractive neighbourhoods and
to support our residents. We have captured this
purpose in our new mission:
‘creating places where people are
proud to live’
Viewing the major works portal - Great Communities Day
Our Strategic Framework • CityWest Homes Strategy
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Our values:
Our strategic objectives:
We introduced our values in 2009 and we believe they
have stood the test of time. They are an integral part of
our Human Resources processes and used to recruit
and reward our people. As we plan to deliver the
strategy we will refocus our people on the values to
ensure they are reflected in everything we do.
To deliver our vision we have set out five strategic
objectives, each with a set of actions and measures so
that we can track our progress over the next five years.
Each objective focuses on new proposals and initiatives
and does not include every area of activity, especially
where things are already working well.
• All about our customers
• A great and safe place to work
• Responsible with money
• Finding better ways
• Keeping our promises
Our vision to 2020:
We have created a new vision to describe what we need
to achieve by 2020. The focus is on driving up service
quality whilst reducing costs. We will do this by becoming
more efficient and cutting out waste and processes that
do not add value. We will demonstrate our progress
towards achieving the vision through a set of targets
against which we will be held to account. Our vision to
2020 is:
’to be trusted and recommended
by our customers in Westminster,
based on our reputation for
quality, value and service’
Our five strategic objectives are:
Our services: providing services that meet our
customers’ changing needs and make it easier to
achieve swift and effective outcomes
Places: delivering a sustainable long term investment
plan for land and property
Communities: creating and supporting healthy, safe
and economically active communities
People: attracting and developing our talented people
to deliver the strategy
Performance: a more commercially focussed
performance driven organisation
These strategic objectives will become our focus and
the strategic plan will remain a live document to be
reviewed regularly.
Our Strategic Framework • CityWest Homes Strategy
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Our services – providing services that meet our
customers’ changing needs and make it easier
to achieve swift and effective outcomes
This means:
1. Simplifying how we deliver services to make it
easier for customers to contact us and for us
to deliver right first time services
2. Continuing to offer services by phone and face
to face and introducing online services, to
increase choice
3. Making better use of complaints and customer
satisfaction data to focus service
improvements where they are most needed
and increasing consistency in satisfaction
across services
Achieve the Institute
of Customer
Service certification
by 2018
4. New arrangements for resident engagement
that provide better and more varied
opportunities to be involved in influencing
CWH activities
5. Redefining our service standards with tenants and
lessees and publishing them so that customers
know what they can expect from us
6. Supporting tenants through change as we
implement new housing legislation
Parsons House
7. Offering a range of tenancy and tenure types to
better meet the needs of residents and to support
the ambitions of the Council
Our Services • CityWest Homes Strategy
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To achieve this we will:
1. Change our service delivery structure, establish
clear new roles and responsibilities and simplify
customer access
8. Devise a new set of customer satisfaction measures
which allow us to compare our performance with
leading service providers
2. Introduce new systems to manage customer
requests and information better so that we can
provide improved customer experiences
9. Review our resident engagement structures with
customers and design new arrangements that
increase the opportunities to become involved in
how we develop and deliver services
3. Provide mobile working technology to enable
staff to work at any location to resolve
queries faster
4. Continue to provide face to face services locally
and offer greater support to vulnerable tenants
5. Provide a full range of online services for
tenants and lessees to use quickly and easily,
anywhere and at any time
6. Offer access to our online services at our local
offices and provide help and support to
customers wishing to use them
10. Work with our tenants and lessees to update our
service standards, to align with their changing needs
11. Work with the Council to implement new housing
legislation and support tenants through a period
of change
12. Work collaboratively with the Council to implement
tenancy management changes and develop new
housing products in response to new legislation
and the Council’s housing strategy
7. Use complaints and customer feedback to
identify issues more quickly and provide
faster resolution.
Resident consultation – Great communities Day
Our Services • CityWest Homes Strategy
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The ways in which we will measure our success are:
1. 85% of tenants and 70% of lessees saying we
are easy to do business with by 2020
2. At least 90% of services to be available online,
with 40% of all customer contacts to be online
via self-service by 2019
3. Over 90% of complaints resolved at stage one
of our complaints process from 2017
4. Fewer than 5% of tenants and 15% of lessees
to be dissatisfied with opportunities for
resident involvement by 2020
6. Increased consistency in satisfaction across services,
with no service scoring less than 70% in post-service
surveys, or annual survey if no other measure
available by 2020
7. New service standards in place and our
performance against them reported online and in
our offices by 2017
8. Meet all targets set by the Council for tenancy
management changes and the introduction of new
housing products
5. Achieve the Institute of Customer Service
certification by 2018, putting CWH into the
top 20% of service organisations in the UK
Young residents at Lillington and Longmoore community space
Our Services • CityWest Homes Strategy
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Places – delivering a sustainable long term
investment plan for land and property
This means:
1. Establishing a city-wide 30 year business plan
for asset strategy and regeneration to provide
clarity on the long term investment needs of
the housing stock
2. Publishing a rolling 5 year major works
programme and delivering the agreed
programme to 2020
Build or acquire
1,000 homes
by 2020
3. Supporting the Council to deliver a range of high
quality new and replacement properties, including
over 1,000 new homes of mixed tenure types
by 2020
4. Reviewing our contracts for major work and repairs
services and repackaging works into new contracts
that deliver building maintenance services in a way
that meets our customers’ needs
5. Working with our lessees to provide clarity on the
future investment needs of their properties
Tresham Crescent
6. Assisting the Council to deliver its strategy for
housing supply and renewal so that the homes we
manage meet modern standards
Places • CityWest Homes Strategy
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To achieve it we will:
1. Develop our asset strategy capability so that
we provide the Council with expert advice and
guidance on business planning, asset strategy
and property investment decisions
2. Develop and maintain a financially viable 30
year capital investment plan, capturing all
known liabilities and seeking to maximise
value within our funding limits
10. Work with the Council to review older people’s
housing to ensure it meets future demands
11. Support the Council with new initiatives to increase
the supply of temporary accommodation to help
meet demand
12. Invest £12 million to tackle condensation
3. Create estate-wide plans for every
neighbourhood to inform the 30 year
business plan
4. Dispose of poor performing empty homes and
assets and use the proceeds to invest in new
housing supply
5. Further develop and maintain professional
teams capable of delivering our major works
and development programmes, meeting or
exceeding quality and value-for-money targets
6. Streamline procurement processes and build
the professionalism of our teams to minimise
procurement times, obtain better value for
money in contracts and deliver our programmes
7. Develop new repairs services that are easy for
customers to use, deliver value for money and
provide a reliable service
8. Provide realistic options for lessees when
consulting on major works to increase their say
in managing and maintaining their properties
9. Provide a lessee cost calculator, with the ability
to estimate personal liabilities for major works
Better homes roadshow - Marylebone
Places • CityWest Homes Strategy
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The ways in which we will measure our success are:
1. Maintain a financially viable Housing Revenue
Account business plan
3. Achieve 88% tenant satisfaction with the quality of
our homes by 2020
2. Achieve 86% tenant satisfaction and 70%
lessee satisfaction on completion of major
works, with no scheme scoring less than 70%
by 2020
4. As part of the Council’s City for All targets, we
will deliver at least 1,000 new homes by 2020.
At least 550 of these will be new energy-efficient
homes as part of the Council’s regeneration
schemes, with at least a further 150 homes on
“infill” sites. We will additionally build or acquire
at least 300 homes elsewhere
5. Reduce CWH internal project management fees for
delivering major works to an average of less than
12% per project
6. Achieve ISO55001 by 2020 (the international
standard for an effective asset management system)
7. Major works cost calculator available for all lessees
by 2017
8. Achieve 75% lessee satisfaction with major works
consultation by 2020
9. Achieve the requirements for our business to be
regulated by the Royal Institution of Chartered
Surveyors by 2018
10. Purchase 50 units of temporary accommodation
for the Council by 2017
11. Repairs services meeting agreed key targets from
implementation in 2017
12. Meet all targets set for CWH by the Council for the
review of older people’s housing
13. £12 million spent by 2020 on reducing
condensation in 5,800 homes
Orsett Terrace
Places • CityWest Homes Strategy
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Communities – creating and supporting healthy,
safe and economically active communities
This means:
1. Supporting tenants to sustain their tenancies
and prevent them becoming homeless
2. Helping our residents to find work through
signposting and new employment initiatives
3. Improving the safety of our neighbourhoods
for residents, staff and visitors
4. Providing homes and services which have a
positive impact on the health of our residents
90% resident
satisfaction with the
neighbourhood as a
place to live
5. Working in partnership to build thriving,
cohesive communities
To achieve it we will:
1. Support tenants through welfare reforms by
providing information, advice and help to
develop the skills needed to manage their
money, pay their rent and stay out of debt
2. Work with the Council and other partners to
ensure staff understand the range of services
available to vulnerable people and are able to
offer broader support to customers
3. Ensure tenancy support services deliver
positive outcomes and value for money
6. Support older people to live independently in their
own homes for longer
4. Support the Council to achieve its City for All
ambition for employment through new
initiatives agreed with the Council
7. Provide positive interventions for tenants at risk
of poor health and work with them to improve
their homes
5. Work in partnership with the Council, police
and others to tackle tenancy fraud and the
root causes of crime and antisocial behaviour
using all of the tools and remedies available
8. Support young people to make sustainable
changes to their lives, through working with
partners to provide youth activities, sport, training
and employment opportunities
Communities • CityWest Homes Strategy
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9. Work with our communities and partners to make
better use of community buildings and estate
offices, offering a broader range of services in
order to meet residents’ needs in one place
10. Recognise the heritage of our estates and build
pride in our communities
11. Work with residents to develop, implement and
enforce local community standards which
encourage residents to be good neighbours
12. Introduce a social impact reporting scorecard
which covers all of our community strategic
objectives
The ways in which we will measure our success are:
1. Publish the social impact scorecard performance
on our website from December 2016
11. Creation of a living archive about the people who
created and lived in our communities by 2020
2. Rent collection targets met and upper quartile
performance achieved for minimising evictions
12. Deliver local community standards for five estates
by 2018 and issue our standards to new tenants
and lessees
3. Provide online training to our front line staff on
an annual basis on the services available to
vulnerable people
4. Target and help a minimum of 100 residents
per year towards employment
5. Meet all targets set for CWH for the delivery of
employment opportunities
6. Achieve 88% satisfaction with ASB case
handling from closed case surveys by 2020
7. 90% of tenants and 85% of lessees to agree
that our neighbourhoods feel safe by 2020
8. Fewer than 10% of tenants reporting that
their home has a negative impact on their
health by 2020
9. 100 positive housing interventions every
year specifically designed to improve the
health of tenants
10.Maintain 90% customer satisfaction with the
neighbourhood as a place to live
Green flag award - Lillington Gardens estate
Communites • CityWest Homes Strategy
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People – Attracting and developing our
talented people to deliver the strategy
This means:
1. Developing people at every level to perform
to their full potential to deliver the strategy
2. Creating an aspirational corporate brand that
inspires and attracts the best people
3. A new strategic approach to talent
management and inspirational leadership
which values the range of skills and talents
of our people and develops them to achieve
outstanding performance
Strong feedback
from our ‘Your Say’
employee survey with
results over 85%
4. Providing vibrant workplaces for all of our
people that encourage creativity and flexible
cross team working
Investors in people Gold ceremony 2015
P eople • CityWest Homes Strategy
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To achieve it we will:
1. Develop a new learning and development
strategy and undertake a skills audit to
identify gaps
2. Provide tailored induction and training to all of
our people to deliver consistent services and
great customer experiences
3. Support our people to achieve professional
qualifications
4. Establish apprenticeship schemes within CWH
and review our supplier requirements
wherever possible to include apprenticeships
5. Provide opportunities for our people to
develop their skills and provide clear career
paths to inspire and retain high performers
6. Involve our people in developing and delivering
our vision and strategy so that all of our
people are committed to our mission
7. Achieve awards that demonstrate our brand and
attract talented people to join and stay
8. Refresh our definition of leadership and continue to
invest in a leadership development programme
9. Lead and support our people to enable
their wellbeing
10. Establish a high performance culture with clear
plans for talent management, performance
management and succession planning
11. Provide opportunities for our people to give back to
the community through corporate social
responsibility initiatives
12. Design all of our offices to a consistent standard
and ensure all of our people are supported in their
working environment to achieve results through
collaborative working
The ways in which we will measure our success are:
1. Retain Investors in People gold status
2. Strong feedback from our ‘Your Say’ employee
survey, with results over 85% and no single
measure or business function scoring less
than 70%
4. Year on year improvement in how our people rate
leadership from our 2015 baseline
5. Contribute the equivalent of one day per
employee per year to corporate social
responsibility initiatives
3. Top 30 in Sunday Times 100 Best Companies
to work for and achieving Best Company three
star certification
People • CityWest Homes Strategy
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Performance – a more commercially focussed,
performance driven organisation
This means:
1. Our services represent value for money
2. Reducing our Housing Revenue Account costs
by £5.2 million over five years
3. New commercial company structure and
governance arrangements
4. Increasing our commercial (non-housing
revenue account) income by 100% over five
years from a base of £1 million
Achieve 70% lessee
satisfaction with value
for money of service
charges by 2020
5. Partnering with the Council where it improves
value for money
6. Producing performance measurements across
our business, at all levels aligned to our
strategic objectives and targets
To achieve it we will:
1. Benchmark our cost and quality performance
against similar organisations to inform our
savings targets
5. Embed standards, systems and processes with clear
ownership to achieve service consistency, reduce
costs and reduce risk
2. Benchmark our lessee management charges
against private landlords and London councils
and set a target for reduction, to be achieved
by 2020
6. Regularly and systematically review core processes
to ensure our services are effective and offer value
for money
3. Review our office portfolio and accommodation
needs, in the light of the new service delivery
model including head office, call centre, area
and estate offices
4. Take more responsibility for the housing
revenue account as a whole to help the Council
meet its financial and corporate targets
7. Implement a knowledge management strategy to
improve information storage and retrieval
8. Provide an alternative to the local government
‘defined benefits’ pension scheme for new
employees by 2017 to make the business
more competitive
Performance • CityWest Homes Strategy
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9. Review our governance structures and agree new
arrangements for implementation in 2016
10. Put in place a five year delivery plan for growth and
savings with all new business activities checked for
shareholder value and business fit by 2017
11. Manage any new business with no adverse impact
on our core housing operations for the Council
12. Strengthen relationships with triborough
partners to share opportunities for efficiencies
and new business
13. Assist the Council in its plans to make savings
through synergies in delivering services
14. Put in place a strategic plan monitoring regime with
clear milestones and reporting to ensure this
strategy is delivered
The ways in which we will measure our success are:
1. Achievement of the targets set out in our plan
for growth of commercial revenue
9. Achievement of the Performance Framework targets
set by the Council
2. Achievement of annual savings plans to reduce
operating costs by £5.2 million by 2020
10. Six monthly progress reporting to the board on the
delivery of this strategy from April 2016
3. New pension scheme in place for new
employees by 2017
11. New governance structures in place by end of 2016
4. Achievement of ISO9001 by 2015 (the
international standard for organisational
quality management systems)
5. Achievement of ISO18001 by 2018 (the new
international standard for health and safety
management systems)
6. All processes mapped and reviewed to a
5 year cycle
7. Achieve 70% lessee satisfaction with value for
money of service charges and 90% tenant
satisfaction with value for money of rent by 2020
8. Knowledge management system established
by 2019
Pimlico District Heating Undertaking Churchill Gardens
Performance • CityWest Homes Strategy
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CityWest Homes
T: 020 7245 2000
21 Grosvenor Place
E: [email protected]
London, SW1X 7EA
W: www.cwh.org.uk
: @CityWestHomes
: CityWest Homes
CityWest Homes is Westminster’s leading housing manager, managing over 21,000 homes on behalf of Westminster City Council, since 2002.