Feedback from our Audit Commission Inspection
The Audit Commission have rated our service as ‘good’ with ‘promising prospects for improvement’.
On a scale from zero to three stars, the Audit Commission inspection team gave our service a ‘good’ two star rating. This was because it said we managed our estates well and significant improvements are being made to thousands of homes to bring them up to modern standards.
Graeme Foster, the Audit Commission’s Lead Housing Inspector for Yorkshire and Humberside, said: "Aire Valley Homes is delivering good quality housing management services, while also carrying out large scale improvements to its homes.
"Its governing body, managers and staff demonstrate a strong commitment to service improvement and customers can have confidence that services will continue to get better."
A summary of our strengths include:
- Aire Valley Homes is generally customer-focused and offers opportunities for customers to get involved in decision making.
- There are strong and effective partnerships in place to improve financial inclusion and manage anti-social behavior on estates.
- The organisation is delivering home improvements in line with government targets.
- Estates are well maintained and environmental improvements are underway.
Weaknesses include:
- Some sheltered schemes are not yet accessible for disabled customers.
- Its performance in delivering repairs is below average.
- Although the organisation has made some significant efficiencies since being set up eighteen months ago, more could be done to improve value for money.
To help the service improve, the Audit Commission has made a number of recommendations. These include that we should:
- review, with customers, a number of areas of weaker performance and make various procedural improvements.
- review, with the council, a number of areas of policy weakness and address them.
- develop a clear approach to how we buy services and set a clear timetable for market testing existing arrangements.
- We should also review weaknesses in how customers access our service, paying attention to out-of-hours services and the handling of customer complaints.
Full copies of the report are available from the Audit Commission website, please use the link on the right or view our Audit Commission Inspection Report