The Audit Commission no longer carries out research on housing-related issues. This briefing summarises the key findings of our research that related to delivering a safe and pleasant environment for residents.
Effective estate management helps reduce tenancy turnover and increase resident satisfaction
An effective estate management service ensures clean, tidy and attractive estates.
Responding quickly to problems on estates or work requests increases levels of resident satisfaction.
Good landlords deal with abandoned cars, graffiti, and vandalism swiftly. They develop measures to reduce crime and improve residents' views of safety.
Effective estate management raises service standards
Good landlords clearly and regularly promote estate management service standards and report their performance.
Estate inspections can be an effective way for landlords to identify issues and involve residents in checking standards where they live. Good organisations carry these out regularly and systematically across all estates. Inspections look for illegal parking, poor grounds maintenance, the condition of communal facilities such as play equipment, anti-social behaviour (ASB) hot spots, and graffiti.
The best landlords routinely provide direct feedback to residents on how they have dealt with issues. Good landlords log issues and record responses: this shows accountability. Innovative organisations make estate inspections more popular by involving children and other groups and agencies. Developing an action plan and setting out the work required shows how the landlord has responded to failures as well as feeding back on improving services.
The management of garages and parking facilities are important issues for residents. Mismanagement or unfair allocations can lead to complaints, anti-social behaviour, and significant loss of rental income.
Timely and responsive services can deliver value for money
Most landlords make it easy for residents to contact staff and report estate management issues, but many don't yet respond in a timely and suitable manner.
Housing officers spending time on their estates help prevent problems from becoming acute. Some landlords have used caretakers to do this effectively and have also extended their role to advising residents about utility bills and meter reading; dealing with emergencies; arranging furniture recycling; and directing residents on low incomes to local food banks.
Involving residents and delivering customer focus helps meet the diverse needs of residents
Involving residents leads to improved services and better value for money. Residents can play a central role in highlighting priorities for spending and the potential benefits of work. This is especially the case in making the best use of areas around estate residents' homes.
Landlords that deliver effective estate services usually achieve good levels of satisfaction on the quality of their estates, communal areas and responsiveness to complaints about environmental issues. Good landlords routinely ask the views of residents, including hard-to-reach groups, on what they want from their estates. They work to ensure residents feel their input is valued and acted on. They also use residents to review, monitor and identify areas for improvement.
Landlords can use robust and up-to-date customer profile information to ensure they tailor estate management to meet local need, prioritise resources appropriately and adapt services. Effective data profiling includes an accurate breakdown of residents by age, ethnicity, disability, gender, sexual orientation and faith, as well as other locally relevant factors. Some of the best organisations use this information to map specific local issues, patterns of problems and incidents and configure estate management services in the most appropriate and effective manner.
To ensure their estate services meet the diverse needs of residents, good organisations make comprehensive arrangements for disabled access to communal areas of estates and homes, considering both physical and sensory impairment needs. Extra services may also be offered where residents are unable to maintain the expected environmental standards around their home, such as tree pruning or general gardening services.
Partnership has delivered improvements to estate management services and the safety of estates
Effective and innovative partnership working has also enabled access to new or extra funding streams.
Good landlords work with the police and community forums to deliver smarter and more effective responses to difficult ASB challenges.
Good landlords work with other agencies to make it easy for residents to recycle household waste and furniture.
Value for money is still a challenge
Landlords need an improved approach to value for money and innovative working to deliver safe, clean and tidy estates in a financially restricted environment. Resident involvement needs to be more robust if fewer resources are to meet demands.
Good landlords know and market test their costs and use the best procurement options to deliver efficiencies. Tenants want to know that any service charges they pay are value for money.
Audit Commission resources
Councils, registered social landlords, and other agencies can use previous Audit Commission reports to assess and develop their arrangements