Tenant newsletter July 2026

Tenant Involvement and Complaints

The Regulator of Social Housing’s Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard expects us to take your views into account in our decision-making, ensure you understand what you can expect from us, allow tenants to hold us to account, and deal with complaints fairly and promptly.

This year, we have:

• Held six Strategic Tenant Advisory Panel meetings
• Held four Independent Living Forum meetings
• Worked with the Tenant Scrutiny Panel to complete a scrutiny exercise of housing communications and start a review of our approach to dealing with damp and mould.
• Sent out two newsletters and two bulletins.
• Dealt with 37 Stage 1 complaints

During 2025/26 we have launched two new groups: our Tenant Communications Group, who work with us on the content, look and feel of newsletters, bulletins and other materials, and also our Block and Estate Champions Group, who help us check that your communal areas and estates are being maintained to the required standard. We also introduced our Housing Fair Access Policy in July 2025. This sets out our commitment to ensuring all tenants can access our services fairly and receive any support they may need to do so.

Repairs and Maintenance

The Regulator of Social Housing’s Safety and Quality Standard expects us to provide you with a good quality home, ensure your health and safety and provide an effective, efficient and timely repairs and maintenance service.

This year, we have spent £8.6 million on work to improve your homes, including replacements of:

• 81 kitchens
• 85 bathrooms
• 141 external doors
• 270 entrance doors
• 29 house roofs
• 2 block roofs
• 75 boilers
• 52 major disabled adaptations
• 112 minor disabled adaptations
• 156 homes with new windows

In April 2025, we entered into a new contract with Mears. The mobilisation has been very smooth and efficient, with new offices established in Folkestone. Unfortunately we did not meet our target for all properties to have a valid gas safety certificate at the end of March 2026; this was due to just one property being overdue, which was completed in April.

Similarly, eight properties did not have a valid electrical certificate at the end of March 2026. Three of these had been inspected and we were awaiting the paperwork, and the other five were completed in April. We have also started a new gas contract with T Brown Group from April 2026, which we expect will result in improvements in heating repairs performance.

This year, we have:

• Introduced a new Housing Hate Crime and Incident Policy in January 2026. This sets out our approach to dealing with hate crime and hate-related incidents, and sits alongside our Housing Anti-Social Behaviour Policy.
• Introduced a new Housing Neighbourhood Management Policy in March 2026. This explains our commitments in key service areas relating to the management of housing communal areas and land. Tenant feedback on the draft policy led to several amendments to the content before the final version was adopted.
• Completed 520 wellbeing plans with tenants in our Independent Living schemes.

Find out how we’ve supported residents in challenging situations in our case study on page 9.

Our Annual Report to tenants 2025/26

Tenant satisfaction with the way we handle antisocial behaviour (ASB) has increased by 6% compared to last year. During the year, we created a new post of Neighbourhood Relations Officer, who investigates all serious ASB cases in our general needs stock. She has built positive relationships with tenants and is available to support any tenant who is experiencing ASB. During 2026, we will also continue our work to achieve Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance accreditation.

Tenancy

The Regulator of Social Housing’s Tenancy Standard expects us to let our homes fairly and transparently, and support residents to maintain their tenancy.

This year, we have:

• Introduced a revised tenancy agreement, which came into effect for all tenants in June 2025. The previous tenancy agreement had been in place since 2006 and needed updating. Tenants were consulted on the draft new agreement, and your feedback helped shape some amendments to the new terms and conditions.
• Let 200 homes: 33 to existing tenants transferring to another property, 129 to people on the housing waiting list, and 38 mutual exchanges.
• Reduced the current tenant rent arrears owed to the council by over £116,000 between September 2025 and March 2026.

We have met our targets for re-letting empty homes and for rent collection. During 2026/27 we will be reviewing our Tenancy Policy, which sets out the types of tenancies we offer and how we deal with tenancy-related issues. We will also be reviewing our Allocations Policy, which sets out how we allocate homes that become available for letting.

Neighbourhood and Community

The Regulator of Social Housing’s Neighbourhood and Community Standard expects us to ensure communal areas are kept safe, and to work with partners to promote wellbeing and tackle anti-social behaviour on estates that the council manages.

This year, we have:

• Investigated 112 anti-social behaviour (ASB) cases.

Money matters

The Regulator of Social Housing also requires us to give you details of our directors’ remuneration costs – this includes their salary, any fees and allowances and pension contributions. These are:

• Chief Executive: £201,510
• Director of Housing & Operations: £151,634
• Director of Strategy & Resources: £151,342
• Interim Director of Governance & Finance (left towards the end of the year): £135,929
• Director of Finance (started towards the end of the year): £5,460

Where our money comes from…

We received over £20 million of income in 2025/26. The chart shows how many pence in each pound came from each income source.

Tenant rent: 92p

Tenant service charge :5p

Leasehold service charge: 1p

Other eg. Garage rents 2p

...And how we spend it

For every £1 of rent you paid, we spent:

Repairs maintenance including planned works: 51p

Tenancy and estate management including staffing: 38p

Services specific to independent living schemes: 7p

Payments to other council department such as legal or ICT: 2p

Rent, tax and insurance: 1p

Other expenditure: 1p