Over the past 12 months Riverside Scotland have really listened to their tenants and there have been significant changes and improvements to their customer satisfaction and an increase in the number of customers who feel that their views are being listened to.

Background

Established in 1993 as Irvine Housing Association, Riverside Scotland has been housing and supporting people in local communities across Southwest Scotland for over 30 years. People are at the heart of Riverside Scotland, with more than 2,500 properties housing thousands of people.

The Big Conversation

Riverside are committed to transforming lives by providing well maintained, good quality, affordable housing. After a large consultation with their tenants in 2022, The Big Conversation, they have recently implemented some key changes to how they engage and communicate with their tenants. 

This focused on asking customers for their views on the type of services they required, receiving over 600 responses. They wanted a greater local presence from Riverside, and for Riverside to listen to views of tenants and show that they were prepared to implement what mattered to the community.

Some of these changes and actions included:

• Service Improvement Group (SIG): Established a new Group consisting of 5 tenants, who are committed to working in partnership with Riverside Scotland to deliver positive changes. SIG have recently completed their first project, focused on their approach to Void Management, making a total of 17 recommendations in their SIG Void Management Report, which they also took to the Board.
• Estate walkabouts with their communities: With ongoing fly-tipping, waste disposal and gardening issues in Pennyburn Estate in Kilwinning, Riverside took action with their estate walkabouts with tenants, residents, local authority partners, elected members and Riverside Scotland all being invited along to listen to the concerns of residents.
• Big Pennyburn Clean Up event: providing skips for residents to dispose of any household items safely, staff also carried out an estate wide litter pick and ran advice workshops in partnership with the local authority to provide advice to customers on a range of issues.
• Garden Equipment Lending Scheme: which allows customers to borrow garden equipment to take care of their gardens. This was launched on the back of feedback that residents may need assistance to manage their garden, especially because of the cost-of-living crisis.
• Training to improve DIY skills: provided customers with skills and experience that they could use to further their employment opportunities. As part of this training, they also offered four tenants driving lessons – with Riverside Scotland covering the associated costs, and a device lending scheme – in partnership with Connecting Scotland, to combat digital exclusion.
• Implementation of the new ‘Tenant Partner’ model: which is focused on making staff more visible across estates and enables greater availability to support customers.

Bi-monthly newsletters “Word on the Street”: This has been well received and customers appreciate more regular updates on the work being done.

Listening to You: Customer Feedback in Action

Riverside Scotland has recently introduced a “You Said, We Did” style page on their website to showcase how they are listening to and acting on customer feedback. Each month, the team gathers input from customers and highlights the top five actions taken in response to this feedback.

You can view the latest updates and actions in the “Listening to You” section of Riverside Scotland’s website.

Gavin Wiffen – Customer & Community Engagement Officer at Riverside Scotland shared:

“We’re committed to engaging with customers to drive forward improvements to our services to ensure we’re providing the best possible service to our customers – and our approach to tenant led scrutiny is a testament to this. 

We’re keen to continue this positive work, and we are extremely grateful to TIS for their support, and to our tenant-led Service Improvement Group, who volunteer their time to get involved with us and have already highlighted several areas in which we could improve our approach to void management.”