Clean and Green Estate Management
At Settle, we're committed to creating initiatives that are led by residents, for residents. Together we want to define "what good looks like" and make sure the outcomes are shaped by your ideas, experiences and priorities.
April
Thank you for all the feedback you shared on our grounds maintenance and communal cleaning services. We’re pleased to share we received a total of 627 comments from 125 survey responses. Your contributions are essential to improving our services, and creating an improvement action plan based on your suggestions.
📢 Here's what we heard:
There were three main themes raised by residents when asked ‘what do you find most frustrating about our grounds and communal maintenance service?’ These were:
- Inconsistent and poor quality of work
- Lack of action and follow through on promises
- Dirty and unkempt communal spaces.
A note from Julian Chapman - Neighbourhood Maintenance Manager
"I’d like to thank all residents who shared valuable feedback on our grounds and communal maintenance service. We’ve listened to what you’ve said, and we’ll use these insights to make immediate changes and influence our plans for future improvements. Take a look below at our plan to see what we've been doing so far, and what's to come!"
Providing an easier reporting process
| You Said... | What we're doing now... | What's next... |
|---|---|---|
| It's hard to report issues like fly-tipping | We're working with our digital team to make it easier to report neighbourhood issues through your Settle portal. | |
| You're unsure who to contact when the land isn't owned by Settle | We're improving our in-house mapping services to help you understand which land Settle is responsible for maintaining. | We're looking to work with our partners to ensure our maps and boundaries have up-to-date ownership information. |
Improving partnership working
| You Said... | What we're doing now... | What's next... |
|---|---|---|
| You often see contractors in your neighbourhood but not actively working | We're working on sharing the results of our audits and inspections to improve transparency about our contractors' work. | We're looking to collaborate with our partners to ensure you receive the same quality of service from them as you do from Settle colleagues. |
| You'd like a breakdown of the services provided by our partners | We're working with our partners to publish their services and attendance schedules in the same way Settle does. | We're exploring ways to better align our services and schedules with our partners. |
Understanding the services we offer
| You Said... | What we're doing now... | What's next... |
|---|---|---|
| Grass cutting is inconsistent | We're working on displaying a schedule for both grass cutting and cleaning in our blocks and publishing it on our website. | We're exploring an interactive scheduling tool so residents can check grass cutting and communal cleaning schedules anytime online. |
| Communal cleaning is inconsistent | ||
| You'd like a breakdown of what services you receive | We're working with our digital team to update our website with a clear breakdown of all the services we provide. | We're continuing to refine our service offering and improve how we communicate it to residents. |
These actions are still in the planning stage and may change over time.
Previously...
Between April and October 2024, we received valuable feedback from residents, helping us identify the grounds and communal maintenance areas that matter most to you. We gained this feedback through Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSM's), transactional surveys, complaints, Big Door Knocks, Neighbourhood Action Weeks, and more.
📊 Our scores as of January 2025:
We understand that 25% of residents are dissatisfied with our grounds maintenance and communal cleaning services, and we’re already working on making improvements. Residents have told us that it's not always easy to report issues with grounds or communal spaces, or to find clear information about cyclical maintenance. That’s why we’re committed to strengthening our partnerships and helping residents better understand our service offering, so we can create a better experience for everyone.
🔍 Here are the three key themes that were previously highlighted from residents' feedback:
- Provide an easier reporting process
- Improved partnership working
- Understanding the services we offer to you and your communities
We asked residents to let us know if they agreed with the five key areas above, or if they'd like us to focus elsewhere.
A message from Julian Chapman, Neighbourhood Maintenance Manager
"With the opportunity to improve, we are committed to working with you to better understand your expectations for the cleaning of our internal communal spaces and external landscape areas. Together, we will explore the best ways to deliver this service, ensuring we work within the resources available to us and meet your needs moving forward."
At Settle we are relentlessly resident focused. Our aim is to provide homes residents are proud of and build communities that are welcoming to all.
Our 2030 plan has been developed by feedback from residents, colleagues, and local partners with priorities and commitments shaped by what we know is important to you. Improvement Plans empower you to have a say in how we deliver our 2030 vision.
We believe that working together with residents, colleagues and the community we can create real opportunities for positive, lasting change.🐣
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Gardening and maintenance services update
We know how important it is to residents that we keep communal areas clean, and grounds well maintained. Through the tenant satisfaction measures surveys for the period April ’24 to September ’24, 25% of residents told us they were dissatisfied with how well we keep communal areas clean and well maintained.
We aim to make sure dissatisfaction is less than 20% and we continue to work through our neighbourhood improvement plan to act on the feedback we’ve received to improve our service.
What the feedback told us
Most of the feedback was around the cleanliness of communal blocks with fewer regarding grounds maintenance. We have also identified residents may be responding to this question in areas where Settle is not responsible for the communal space. We are working to ensure that more regular inspections are taking place before and after contractor visits to ensure the standards being delivered are those we and our residents aspire to.
What we’re doing
We’re continuing to review our cleaning of internal communal spaces, amending service frequencies, cleaning materials etc. to ensure our services continue to improve and are delivered in an environmentally efficient manner. We also want to ensure that residents have access to easier reporting when they want to report an issue.
Some of the other improvements we have introduced recently include:
- Our three- yearly cyclical tree survey has recently started in Letchworth to ensure that our communal tree stock is safe for residents and the public. We will be rolling this out to across our schemes in the coming 6-9 months.
- We are taking a new window cleaning and tree maintenance contract to tender in the coming weeks and hope these will be in place to carry out the early 2025 window clean and to deliver tree works from April 2025.
- During the winter we will make further investment in our landscape areas, including additional tree planting in Baldock, replacement of dead planting in Ashwell and Bedford and additional shrub planting in the Westmill neighbourhood in Hitchin.
- We are working alongside our contractors to improve the condition of outlying pathways and areas which do not receive any regular maintenance.
- We continue to work alongside our colleagues, partners and residents to carry out neighbourhood action days and other environmental projects and look to expand this work alongside North Herts Council and our contractors into 2025 and beyond.
More information about our responsibilities can be found on our communal areas and facilities page.
You can report a repair needed in a communal area, without using an online account – just go to www.settlegroup.org.uk/report-a-communal-repair
Who's Listening
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JC
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