The Big Get Together 2024 & Annual General Meeting
It was great to welcome over 100 tenants, family members, Board members, and partners to our head office at Harbour House for our Big Get Together and Annual General Meeting (AGM).
The day provided an invaluable opportunity for tenants to engage with us, reflect on the past year and contribute to shaping the future of Community Gateway.
The event kicked off with an opening address by CGA Board Chair, Phil Parramore, setting the stage for an engaging and productive day. Tenants then had the opportunity to watch our 2023/2024 Annual Report video, which provided a detailed look at our achievements and performance over the past 12 months. Tenants also voted on key corporate decisions, helping to ensure that we remain a tenant-led organisation. This was followed by a question-and-answer session where tenants held us accountable by asking important questions. You can read the answers and responses below.
Throughout the day, tenants were able to engage directly with our management team and with colleagues from various teams, offering feedback on our services and sharing their views on how we can improve.
For those who were unable to attend, you can still take part online through our Tenant Hub. We will be adding new surveys every fortnight, so be sure to keep an eye on our Facebook page for updates and take the opportunity to make your voice heard.
Once again, we would like to extend our thanks to everyone who joined us for such a successful day. If you haven’t already, you can watch our Annual Report video here and our Community Empowerment video here, which showcases what we have been doing over the last year.
We've put together a video showing the highlights of the day, which you can watch below.
Take a look at the responses from our Senior Leadership Teams to tenants' questions submitted on the day in person, in writing and post-AGM:
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As this topic comes up frequently, we held a consultation with tenants a few years ago. We explained that it costs more money to collect grass cuttings, which would be passed on to tenants through their service charge. The consensus from tenants at the time was that they’d be happy to adopt a ‘let lie’ approach rather than pay more.
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Your base rent covers the maintenance of your property and the core services that we deliver. Anything that is specific to a property or scheme has to be covered through service charges and we do need to recover that. If we don’t it means that others are paying costs towards a service that they aren’t receiving.
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We may have seen an increase in rental income, but we don’t make a profit from it. We get grants toward each of the new homes we build, but also need to borrow money from a bank through large mortgages. The amount we borrow, plus money from the government and the subsidy we put towards costs doesn’t cover the building costs, so we are not turning a profit.
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In place of the old-style estate walkabouts, we try and cover this in a range of different ways - our Grounds Maintenance teams have a responsibility to carry out visual inspections and report back anything that they notice. Our Operatives do the same, as well as members of the Rents team.
We introduced a new scheme last year called Speak Out – a reminder to staff that their role is to be the eyes and ears of the organisation when they’re out in your neighbourhoods. That might mean spotting a leaking gutter, an issue with slates, a broke window or a trip hazard. Speak Out has proven to be very well used and has been very beneficial. Staff are reporting important things that might have otherwise been missed. There’s still more to do, and we encourage tenants to report things too – if you see something, tell us.
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We have just launched our new Corporate Plan, which consists of seven objectives. The main focus is to continue to provide the core services you’ve told us you want, and to provide them well. We will continue to invest in your homes, by improving our repairs and maintenance service, as well as more significant investments. We will continue to work with you on improving your neighbourhoods and communities. We will invest in building new homes. We want to make sure that you benefit from really good customer service – we’ve had an internal focus on customer service with training and awareness sessions and are already receiving improved feedback.
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Building regulations and planning now require us to build without gas. Electricity is more ‘green-friendly’ than gas, so that’s the priority. Although the standing charge is more expensive for electric than gas, the way these new homes are built means they are more energy efficient, so it should be cheaper to run, compared to old gas boiler systems.
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In our Annual Report video, you can see some of the activities that our Tenancy Management Team has been involved with over the last year, including the reintroduction of community ‘Days of Action’ with the police. Our good working relationship with the police helps us agree where ‘Days of Action’ should be held, based on where issues are arising. We campaign, pressure and lobby the police about their presence on our estates. The number of community police officers has increased, which is great, and we’ve been able to work together to make sure that neighbourhood policing is targeted at our estates so tenants benefit.
Tenancy Management colleagues also work with lots of local multi-agency groups, as we can’t tackle anti-social behaviour and community safety alone. It’s really important that we continue to develop those relationships.
Through consultation activities, tenants have told us what they want us to focus on when it comes to anti-social behaviour. We have concentrated on priority areas, reviewed our policies and procedures, carried out further consultation and seen a lot of change which hopefully you’ve also seen in your neighbourhoods.
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Yes.
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Until you choose to leave or there is a breach in the tenancy agreement where we need to take enforcement action. Agreements are commonly known as lifetime tenancies.
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Yes.
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We already have a dedicated team that supports financial wellbeing. The Independent Living Team work hard to reduce social isolation for our older tenants. The Pathways Team work in partnership with the Council to support vulnerable customers to sustain tenancies. Our Vulnerability Policy has been developed in conjunction with Gateway Central, to signpost referrals to partners and other agencies.
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We will continue to take on board feedback and learning from our customer insight and update our processes and ways of working accordingly.
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We have recently launched our Community Empowerment Strategy, which sets out how we will make sure all tenants have the chance to get involved and influence how we deliver our housing services and our investment in communities.
Our tenant-led committee, Gateway Central, has full oversight of delivery against the Strategy to check we’re achieving its priorities, and making sure that the tenant voice is part of all decisions made.
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If a customer agrees to share that they ‘consider themselves to have a lifelong health condition that impacts on their everyday life’, we record this on our internal systems to help staff members to support them, and also the tenant, when we’re delivering services. We can also send letters in large print, liaise with support workers or only attend properties at certain times. We are currently changing the way we work, so we can capture the right information to tailor our services and meet tenants’ individual needs. We will ask ‘is there anything we can do to make this a better experience for you?’ and record this information. We realise everyone’s needs are different.
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CGA welcomes a diverse workforce, but we don’t currently have enough female operatives for this. This will hopefully be addressed through future apprenticeship schemes. We can arrange for a female Customer Liaison Officer to accompany a male operative, if requested at the time of booking.