This short-notice inspection looked at how the association delivers day-to-day repairs, manages empty properties and lettings and involves customers. Overall, there is a balance of strengths and weaknesses in these services. We found it is easy for customers to access services and they are consulted on the activities of the association. However, it is taking too long to carry out repairs and allocate empty properties to people on the housing waiting list. Gas servicing is effective but monitoring of the programme is flawed.
A number of recommendations were made including, reviewing the delivery of day-to-day repairs and empty property maintenance to identify improvements and developing services around the tenants and leaseholder needs identified though customer profiling.
Equity Housing Group has consulted its tenants on how to implement the recommendations and produce a robust action plan. The future prospects for improvement have been assessed as promising. It is making improvements to provide a more customer focused responsive repairs service and challenging efficiency targets are met. The recently appointed Chief Executive has clear priorities to review business objectives and understand customer priorities and leadership through the board has been strengthened to support delivery of these aspirations.