Partners' briefing August 2005

Home > Developments > Publications > Partners' briefing August 2005

Partners Briefing August 2005

Time Bank draws more residents into community life

Hexagon is helping tenants to learn new skills and bring out their talents through an innovative Time Bank scheme which has attracted a great deal of interest, nationally and locally – including from the Mayor of Lewisham who visited it recently.

‘My Time Your Time’ is the first housing association led example of its kind and although it has been running for just one year, is proving to be much more than a forum for swapping spare time and skills. Time Banks, which started in the USA, are a way of getting communities together to help each other – for example, members provide other members with help with gardening, teaching a language, childminding, baking cakes, dog walking etc, earning time credits which they can spend on using another
member’s skills. My Time Your Time also arranges social events, where members can get to know one another. We set up the Time Bank following the success of our DIY skills courses, funded through a Housing Corporation Community Training and Enabling grant.

Tenants were able to learn basic skills to enable them to carry out repairs and decorate their homes. Some of the tenants who attended the courses are now Time Bank members, putting the skills they learned to good use. Several others have entered further training and employment thanks to the course. The benefits of the Time Bank cannot be counted in the hours swapped alone. For some members, it has literally transformed their lives, putting them in touch with a wider circle of people and building new confidence in their abilities. The scheme is organised by Time Bank Coordinator Jayne Williams who says: “My Time Your Time has a much deeper impact than just an exchange of skills. It gives people support that they may not have had before. “We are starting to notice how many silent people there are with support needs who we were unaware of before. For example, one lady who has memory problems was not really involved in any activities. We make sure she remembers to come along to events and she is now much less isolated, and more confident than before.” The project is cost effective to run, as just one person can organise the exchanges and Hexagon is now seeking some additional funding from partner organisations so that it can extend this very successful initiative, not just to our tenants, but to the wider community.

If you want to know more about Hexagon’s Time Bank activities, please contact Jayne Williams on 020 8768 7925
email: jewilliams@hexagon.org.uk

New partnership to deliver more homes for South London

Hexagon is stepping up its development and regeneration activities through an exciting new partnership with Threshold Housing
Association, launched at the Chartered Institute of Housing’s conference in June. This innovative partnership will enable us to pool our development expertise and resources, enabling us to deliver a more ambitious programme of construction and regeneration for South London. Both associations already have successful development programmes and a track record of delivering. Now we are jointly preparing for the next round of bidding for Housing Corporation development allocations.
Hexagon’s Development and Regeneration Director, Kevin Hartnett, said: “Our aim is to work together to deliver real results in terms of quality, efficiency and innovation. The two associations bring complementary strengths and values to the partnership, which aims to secure a long term development role for both, whilst working in innovative ways. We have worked together successfully across different services in the past, mainly as members of the L6 group, and there are sound strategic reasons for the partnership.”

As Housing Corporation “partners”, the partnership offers huge benefits:

Greater efficiency and value for money.
A deliverable programme of around 800 new homes.
Innovation in construction and procurement.
A dedicated point of contact for the Housing Corporation programme.
Combined expertise and experience.
Combined and strengthened community development resources to create a greater impact across South London.
Both associations have been landbanking and working up schemes in readiness for the next Housing Corporation bidding round. This is expected to result in our bidding for a total of 800 homes, the sites for most of which are already earmarked. If you want to know more about Hexagon’s regeneration activities, please contact Kerry Heath on 020 8768 7986
email: kheath@hexagon.org.uk

Drive for efficiency has benefits all round

Hexagon is taking up the challenge for the public sector to drive up efficiency and productivity, both within our organisation and through our new development partnership.

Getting Best Value has been at the top of Hexagon’s agenda for a number of years, and we carry out regular reviews of many areas of our work to ensure that we are operating to maximum effectiveness. By ‘working smarter’ and more cost effectively, we both raise service standards and channel any savings into homes and services. Information technology plays a crucial part in achieving this, and last year we reviewed all our systems. We are investing in improvements and looking at how IT can help us raise standards. For example, we have introduced hand-held tablet PCs for our area surveyors to record repair details and generate orders on site, enabling them to spend more time in the field. We have also looked at whether we are getting good value for money in buying everything from stationery to energy.

In some areas we found we can get a better deal by using purchasing clubs, now saving 15% on stationery alone. For our tenants, what matters most is that their housing queries or problems are sorted out quickly and to their satisfaction. Our one stop Customer Service Centre handles up to 6,000 calls a month and they need to be able to provide quality information and support to tenants, often under pressure. To achieve this, our IT systems help us to ensure that calls are answered speedily and all CSC staff receive regular training to keep them up to speed with any changes. We are trying to get away from the piles of paper when dealing with our repairs contractors. We have had in use for some while a system where our contractors can access via our website the repairs orders we place without us printing and sending them an order. We have now developed the system so that any subsequent changes to the order and the contractor’s invoice are also entirely electronic. Our new contractor was very pleasantly surprised to hear that we did not want a paper invoice at all! A similar system has been in place for our own directly-employed maintenance team for a while so we are confident that this system will help both ourselves and the contractor be more efficient in processing the 7,000 plus orders we deal with every year.

Greater efficiency will be one of the key advantages of Hexagon’s new development partnership with Threshold (see above) and one of the first activities for the new partnership will be to carry out a Best Value review of both organisations’procurement methods. Our intention is to appoint a small number of contractors and consultants, which both partners will use to maximise efficiency and achieve true strategic,long term partnering.

Greater involvement is the way ahead

Resident involvement runs through all Hexagon’s activities, and is something that all our staff and board members are firmly signed up to. To underline our commitment to this, we have produced a new Resident Involvement Policy, extending opportunities for residents to take part and influence how services are provided.

Resident Involvement Manager, Jessica Mitchell, says: “We want to be sure that there is open and effective communication with residents, especially those who may be vulnerable or hard to reach. This is important if we are to continuously improve our services, while being accountable to all our residents”.

“We recognise that it’s not always easy for people to give up their time for tenant meetings and events, so we are developing new ways for people to give their views and opinions.

“Some tenants may be prepared to take a more ‘hands on’ approach working alongside us to ensure services are provided in ways that suit tenants, while others just want to make sure that their voice is heard.”

Hexagon is responding by reducing the number of contractors we use and involving residents in choosing them. We are also getting residents to help us monitor the quality of contractors’ work. A tenant, or Estate Champion, will be appointed for each estate or group of estates to act as our ‘eyes and ears’ and to report back on whether contractors turn up, the quality of work done and any problems. Each Estate Champion will be trained for the job. Following a six month pilot, we hope to adopt this approach on all our estates.

If you want to know more about Hexagon’s work with residents, please contact Brian Hughes on 020 8768 7964.email: bhughes@hexagon.org.uk.

Printer Friendly Version