Hi everyone – welcome to my latest blog, bringing you the key updates from July’s meeting of the Community Gateway Board.
The Board receives regularly performance updates, and at this meeting it was great to see the impact our Service Transformation Strategy and our Customer Insight Framework are making. Service improvement is a lengthy and ongoing journey, but we have seen a distinct improvement across several areas of the business, including call waiting times and reducing staff turnover and sickness absence. All of this is having a positive effect on customer service levels, and customer satisfaction is strong when it comes to gas servicing and property improvements. We’ve also had positive feedback on complaints handling and the way we deal with anti-social behaviour.
You will recall that we launched our Corporate Plan for 2024-2030 in the Spring. During this meeting, the Board considered a range of strategies that will support the delivery of services. We looked at our new strategies for Community Empowerment, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, Community Investment, Data, Digital and Technology, and Vulnerability. These have all been informed significantly by insight and consultation with tenants and will contribute to improving service levels.
The Board also looked at the last quarter’s community empowerment initiatives, including how much community interaction our teams have carried out with tenants and other residents – this will be presented in full at our Annual General Meeting (AGM) in September.
We approved the 2023-24 Directors’ report and financial statements – again these will be presented to Members at our AGM and published on our website.
We had an update on the performance of our charitable subsidiary, Preston Vocational Centre (PVC), which continues to go from strength to strength. An awards evening was held in July to mark the achievements of the young learners over the last year - it was wonderful to see them receiving their certificates and trophies, celebrating with their families and hearing about the impact PVC has had on them. You can read more about the evening here.
Discussions were had about the work we’re doing with Preston City Council’s Empty Homes and Homes for Refugees schemes, and it was great to hear how we’re helping house those in the most need.
To finish, I’m delighted to let you know that we have successfully recruited two new members to the Board. This recruitment was approved by Board, and we will also be recruiting a new Tenant Board Member in the coming months. We said goodbye and thank you to long-serving Board member, Allan Ramsay, who is stepping down after serving nine years on the Board.
Thanks for reading – I hope you find my updates interesting. I’ll be back with more following our next Board meeting in October. I look forward to seeing you at the AGM on 14th September.
Phil Parramore
Chair of the Board
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