OCHA Oxford Citizens Housing Association

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Resident Involvement

We are committed to working in partnership with our residents and making sure your views and needs influence the way we provide our services.

We know that people prefer different methods of getting involved and have different amounts of time available. We have worked with our residents to develop a range of methods and we hope that at least one of these will suit you. You don’t have to be an expert in housing – we value your experience as a resident and a member of your community. You will know that you’ve helped to improve the way we work.

Click here to express your interest in Resident Involvement.

Our service standards – what you can expect from us

Resident board members

Four residents will be full members of our management board. The management board make the most important decisions about how we are organised and what services we provide. One resident will be a member of the GreenSquare Group management board.

Scrutiny panel

Since April 2009, there has been a Scrutiny Panel of ten residents – five residents from our association and five from Westlea. The panel assesses our performance and the performance of Westlea and GreenSquare, monitors complaints, decides on areas of service that need investigating, and arranges for reports. If the panel is not happy about performance, they can ask the GreenSquare board to take action.

Mystery shopping and resident inspectors

GreenSquare will train residents as mystery shoppers and resident inspectors to test how good our services are. Mystery shoppers will phone the Customer Service Team with questions and record the responses they get. Resident inspectors will inspect services that we, Westlea and GreenSquare provide. Mystery shoppers and resident inspectors will be given vouchers as a thank you.

Citizens’ panel

We will have a panel of 100 residents who we ask to respond to 12 surveys each year by e-mail or phone. Each survey will last no more than 10 minutes. We will consult the panel on what services we provide, how we provide them, and what we could do better. Panel members who respond to at least six surveys will receive a £25 voucher as a thank you.

Retirement housing forum

We will have a retirement housing forum. Our older residents will work with staff to improve the retirement housing that we provide.

GreenSquare design and development group

A group of residents from our association and Westlea will work with staff to improve the design and development of new housing. It will meet every three months.

Repairs and maintenance group

A group of residents, contractors and our staff will work together to improve the repairs service. It will meet every three months.

Residents’ associations

We will provide support for you to set up formal residents’ associations. We will help by providing start-up grants and ongoing grants, drawing up constitutions and arranging meetings.

Informal residents’ meetings

We will organise residents’ meetings in schemes where residents or housing staff show there is a need for them. These meetings will discuss issues such as gardening, social activities, tackling antisocial behaviour or making an agreement on what we are expected to do to provide services.

Residents’ focus groups and teleconferences

We will hold residents’ focus groups and teleconferences to get feedback on specific services. Staff and residents will work together to improve our services.

‘Citizens’, our newsletter for residents

We will send out four residents’ newsletters each year. We will ask you to contribute material and suggest news items or features. At least four residents will be members of the editorial panel that meets to decide what should appear in the newsletter.

Estate improvement fund

We will make £50,000 available each year for improvements to the shared areas of our housing estates and schemes. We will ask you to make suggestions on what improvements we should make and how we should spend the money. We will spend around £30,000 on two schemes under the ‘One Community’ project.

Residents’ suggestion scheme

We will encourage you to suggest ideas for how we can do our work better. If we think your idea will improve the way we run our association, we will give you up to £50 in vouchers.

Further Information

If you’d like to know more about how you can become involved in the way we run OCHA, please contact Michelle O'Donohue, the Resident Involvement Officer, on 01865 782546 or email michelle.odonohue@ocha.org.uk

Please click below to view our Resident Involvement Statement which outlines our commitment to Resident Involvement throughout the GreenSquare group:

Resident_Involvement_Statement.pdf

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Oxford Citizens Housing Association

Housing People - Building Communities