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Hello from your Customer and Neighbourhood Officer
You will be receiving in the coming days a letter introducing your Customer and Neighbourhood Officer – their role is to make sure you get the service you need from all of us at Paradigm, whether that’s extra support to maintain your tenancy, help with repairs in your home or any other matters related to your tenancy.
They will also be working with you to create a plan for improving your neighbourhood – look out for more information soon about how you can get involved.
Ending fixed term tenancies
We understand at this time of rising prices, having security of tenancy in your home is more important than ever.
We have listened to your views and so from 1 April we are offering our new customers lifetime tenancies in place of fixed term agreements.
Over the next 12 months, if you have a fixed term tenancy, we will be getting in touch to offer you a new lifetime tenancy agreement. This will provide you with greater security of tenure and peace of mind.
However, if you are in breach of your tenancy conditions, we will be talking to you about what you can do to qualify for a new lifetime tenancy agreement and helping you to manage your tenancy better.
You don’t need to do anything at the moment – we will contact you. If you have any questions, please call our customer service team on 0300 303 1010.
Resident Services Panel update
A ‘challenging’ time - Resident Services Panel members explain why
Resident Services Panel (RSP) Chairman George, Vice Chair Gordon, and members Carol and Kathrine tell us about their latest challenge to Paradigm.
What was your 2021 Challenge to Paradigm?
We wanted to look at how repairs are booked and see if adjustments are made from the ‘normal’ repairs service and timescales for customers with disabilities or vulnerabilities. “We aimed to understand in greater depth why delays were taking place,” Kathrine clarifies, “and what could be done to address this”.
Why did you choose this challenge?
"We felt that sometimes Paradigm could be inflexible, overly regulated, and didn’t always take account of individual customer needs," Gordon explained. Issues with repairs for people with disabilities came up through our complaints and performance monitoring, and the Panel’s own experience. George said: “As repairs are a large and important service which all residents may use, it was decided this was a good challenge to Paradigm.”
What did you find out?
The repair booking processes for customers overall is well handled, and we were pleased that in general it is very good, however we did find that sometimes for people with disabilities who needed to go outside of the standard repairs booking process, it was not always uniform - “customer services book in repairs but they are scheduled by a different team and communications between the two could be improved, as could capturing information on disabilities and support needs,” Carol makes clear.
Members met with Sandra Geraghty-Kerr, Customer Service Manager and gave recommendations for improvement. Sandra has put in place plans for these improvements.
What happens next?
Sandra will keep the Panel updated and the group will continue to monitor progress. Kathrine told us: “As a panel, we have always aimed to provide a valuable contribution through our involvement and commitment to raising standards for all”.
The Panel are currently deciding on what the challenge will be for 2022-23.
Join our Resident Services Panel
An excellent Resident Services Panel meeting was hosted by Tpas (England’s leading tenant engagement experts) where new terms of reference were agreed and George Assibey was voted back in for another year as Chair.
George's message to you..
“We have room for more members to join us, and would love you to consider becoming a member of the RSP. You will be given the right training, equipment and incentives to help you become an effective member. It is challenging but rewarding.”
If you would like to find out more about the RSP please email customer.involvement@paradigmhousing.co.uk or visit How can I get involved? – Paradigm Housing
Watch our video to find out more about our RSP and how you can get involved.
Improvements at Glebe House
Recent changes at Glebe House have improved the communal areas for residents
Customer and Neighbourhood Officers Barbara Savage and Gill Bevan have been out and about rebuilding relationships with residents in our older people's schemes.
At housing drop in sessions with the residents they identified some small projects that the group felt would improve the scheme and make it a nicer place to live.
The peach-coloured communal lounge looked dated, the carpets and upholstery needed cleaning and the room needed painting. Residents also wanted to screen the bin store, which several flats look out onto, and it was agreed that some large planters would be good. Barbara and Gill engaged contractors to do the work and now the lounge is much lighter and brighter and a pleasant place to be. The bin store is screened from view and the residents are pleased with the results.
Have you recently moved into a re-let property?
If so, you will shortly receive an email to ask for your feedback on how your moving process went. We would appreciate it if you can complete this short survey to help us to improve our service in future.
We will be offering you a £25 Tesco voucher per household as an incentive to fill in the survey. All we will need from you is your name, surname, full address, and email so we can post you your voucher.
You can still complete the survey without accepting the voucher and, if you prefer this option, we won’t even ask for any personal information.
We can assure you that the survey is completely confidential and we will analyse the data on a collective basis and not isolate responses to a specific person or household.
Customer engagement news
It is a very exciting time for us in customer engagement and we are looking forward to getting more of you involved! To find out more, please contact Customer.Involvement@paradigmhousing.co.uk
Getting involved
We recently asked customers to get involved in the @Make-a-Difference@paradigm campaign and to join the Customer Oversight Group which will run alongside our transformation programme.
We had a great response with 45 customers signing up with eight people getting involved in the Customer Oversight Group.
Our first involved customer webinar was so well attended that we will definitely be doing more of these in future!
Giving your views
Thanks to all who took part in recent interviews – your feedback will really make a difference. We interviewed:
- customers who have recently complained to find out how we can improve our service
- customers who have air source heat pumps to find out how they are getting on with them and how we can help them understand the best and most efficient way of using them. They are quite different to current gas heating and hot water systems and are expected to eventually replace gas boilers.
Virtual Voice prize draw winner
Congratulations go to £20 Virtual Voices winner Denise Burton!
Denise hasn’t been involved with us for very long, but has already put herself forward for a few things such as the New Paradigm Transformation Customer Oversight Group.
Denise gave us a great slogan which is "Different perspectives, fairness, respect, honesty, care and teamwork is key to community, happiness and growth".
It’s brilliant to have Denise involved and we thank her, and all of the other involved customers who are really Making-a-Difference@paradigm.
New Paradigm Customer Oversight group is up and running!
We held our first session with the New Paradigm Transformation Customer Oversight Group, which is sponsored and supported by Jane Blackman, Head of Business Transformation.
We’re asking the group how we can deliver our services better and consult with them as we develop new processes, e.g. testing things out for us and advising on how best to communicate our plans and progress to other customers.
One member of the group said: “I am interested in joining the group because Paradigm seems to be a forward-looking company which respects customer service”.
Coming up in customer involvement...
How do you rate our Customer Contact Centre?
We will be asking what you think about our customer contact centre, and what you would expect from the contact centre of the future. A survey will be available for customers in the next newsletter and via the consultation page on the website throughout May and June. Or maybe joining a focus group or discussion is more your style so watch this space for more information!.
#HereToHelp...
Meet Emma
"Hi, I’m Emma, I’m a Customer Service Advisor in the Housing team and I have been at Paradigm since May last year.
My job gives me the ability to communicate with every other department constantly in order to benefit our customers. The best part of my role is being able to talk to new people every day, but also having the chance to build rapport with our regular callers.
I love my colleagues and learn new things from them every day.
Recently, I had the opportunity to see my brother for the first time since the pandemic started (he lives in Australia) and that has really helped to lift my mood with everything else that is going on right now.
Check out our support hub...
...And for more information on any of the topics below, please go to the Support Hub on our website here.
- Foodbanks
- Help into work
- Managing your home
- Managing your money
- Your energy
- Your family
- Your wellbeing
Want to work for us?
We're hiring
If you are interesting in working for Paradigm, check out our job vacancies on our website here. It could be the start of a whole new career!
We are currently looking for skilled technicians, customer service advisors, finance staff and more!
and finally - a spring quiz to test your knowledge!
Spring is a wonderful time of the year when everything comes to life again after a long and cold winter. To celebrate it, we have compiled a list of 10 trivia spring quiz questions for you to test your knowledge. Answers in the next edition!
- According to the UK Met Office, on what day does Spring commence?
- Who is the Roman Goddess of Spring?
- When does a Spring Tide occur?
- In British horse racing which two races make up the Spring Double?
- What do we in the UK call the vegetables known as scallions in the US?
- Popular in SE Asia, what do we call the filled pastry appetiser of meat or vegetables?
- What type of animal is the Spring Peeper (Pseudacris Crucifer)?
- Which town in central Australia takes its name from the wife of an ex-Postmaster General of South Australia?
- The song 'Younger Than Springtime' features in which Rodgers and Hammerstein musical?
- What happens in the North Pole when spring comes?
