Our Value for Money (VFM) strategy aims to deliver:
- Increased investment in service priorities
- Reduced unit costs
- Improved customer satisfaction
by understanding residents’ priorities and giving them the opportunity to make informed decisions. It is based on Audit Commission guidance on value for money and includes the following:
- Inputs (Economy) – inputs are the costs, people and materials that we use to provide services. We compare these costs over time with other housing providers, by participating in the Housemark benchmarking process.
- Outputs (Efficiency) – outputs are the services that we produce; for example, the number of repairs we carry out. We use performance indicators to compare the costs of these outputs. Some indicators are directly comparable with other organisations. Local indicators cannot be compared with others, but can allow progress to be tracked over time.
- Effectiveness – A range of measures are used to assess the effectiveness of our services, but customer satisfaction is the most important of these, and is tested as follows:
- Annual tenants’ and leaseholders’ surveys;
- Service specific customer surveys;
- Mystery Shopping;
- Residents’ forums (for example Area Panels and the Repairs Forum);
- Council liaison meetings;
- Meetings with the Mayor and Council Members;
- Board Member feedback.
The Business Plan and budget processes co-ordinate these strands and ensure that resources are allocated in line with service priorities.
Core elements of our value for money strategy are set out below -
Enabling residents to determine priorities
We support residents in determining priorities for service delivery and improvement through:
- Resident business planning - this process helps residents to prioritise service improvements and develop a plan. It has identified new priorities that were not previously identified such as community building initiatives.
- Service review programme - enables residents to have more detailed input into service development, standards and what is achievable for a particular cost and how the service compares to other organisations.
- Service Improvement groups – these focus on specific services and allow residents to negotiate with staff about how services should be improved.
- Mystery shopping and resident inspections - this provides direct feedback to identify service weaknesses and strengths. There are meetings with resident inspectors to provide first hand feedback to the senior management team.
- Area Panels – these provide the formal structure for input from elected residents on budget proposals and service issues.
