National awards recognises partnership putting customers at the heart of decision making

Kier Stoke and Stoke-on-Trent City Council have won a national Tenant Participation Advisory Service (TPAS) Award. The partnership was announced the winner of the Excellence in Working Together category for its project ‘Reigniting the Customer Experience’ at the central region finals earlier in the year and has now gone on to win the category nationally.

The award recognises Kier Stoke and Stoke-on-Trent City Council’s work to ensure their responsive repairs service was both time efficient and cost effective, while meeting the needs of the local community.

The winning project began in May 2010 with Kier Stoke working in partnership with Stoke-on-Trent City Council to launch a ‘systems thinking’ review of its service provision. A team made up of representatives from the two organisations and residents monitored customer calls, visited the contact centre and followed the responsive repair logging process from the initial call through to completion.

In order to implement the recommendations made by the team, a new dedicated call centre was launched - initially as a trial including a small number of residents in August 2010 - and then rolled out across the city in January 2011. The centre has reduced call waiting times for residents from five minutes to an average of just one minute, and it now takes an average of only three minutes for the initial call to be logged.

The changes introduced improved performance dramatically; the average repair on a social housing property is now undertaken in four days (97 hours) and, on average, customers now rate the service as 9.9 when asked for a score out of 10.

Kier regional managing director, David Mawson, said: “We are delighted to have received national recognition for the hard work, commitment and enthusiasm that have been evident from both Kier Stoke and Stoke-on-Trent City Council through this project, which ensures we deliver an unsurpassed service. To receive a TPAS Award is a superb accolade and demonstrates the commitment from both organisations to true partnership working.”

Cabinet member for housing, neighbourhoods and community safety, Cllr Janine Bridges, said: “To receive national recognition for the good practices being undertaken by Stoke-on-Trent City Council, our tenants, and our partners Kier is a wonderful achievement for all concerned. We want to make Stoke-on-Trent a great place to live, as outlined in our Mandate for Change, and by ensuring our customer responses are more efficient and client driven we are making great strides to achieving that goal.”

Michelle Reid, chief executive of TPAS, warmly congratulated the project on its success: "Reigniting the Customer Experience was a project that showed genuine collaborative work between tenants, landlord and the contractor. It helped all involved learn to challenge old system shortcomings to tailor a new approach with excellent results.”

The TPAS Awards are open to social housing providers, tenants and contractors to give recognition to excellent work and, vitally, to share best practice among the sector so more people benefit.