Our performance

Look Ahead is both a landlord and a support provider and we are committed to delivering good quality safe housing and care and support to our Customers and Tenants and continuously improving the services that we provide.

This content was last updated on 15th August 2023.

To meet this commitment, we set ourselves a number of service targets and report on these to our Customers through our scrutiny panels, our Board, and our Housing and Care regulators and commissioners. One of our “Customer Insight Strategies” is to provide transparency for Customers, their friends and Family, and their advocates”.

This page is one of the ways that we share how we are performing against our targets; share our plans to improve performance; and communicate what we are doing differently in response to customer feedback. It also enables customers to hold us to account.

This page gives you an up-to-date picture of our current performance and is updated every four months (April, July, October and January). You can see when it was last updated at the top of this page.  However, some of these statistics are only reported on once or twice a year and where this is the case it will be indicated next to the data by a *

Each service area is accompanied by a Traffic Light Indicator which shows how we are performing against the target.

A Green Light = We are doing well and meeting our targets.

An Amber Light = We are just below target and have plans in place to improve and achieve our targets. Any amber indicator will have an associated action.

A Red Light = We have failed to meet our target and should have robust plans in place to address the underperformance. Any red indicator will have an associated action.

Service Performance Areas

Building Safety

We have a legal and regulatory responsibility to provide decent and safe homes for all of our tenants.

To ensure that we are doing this, we carry out safety compliance checks across all of our properties and buildings. These checks might be completed by either a member of our dedicated compliance team, our contractors or our Housing or Support staff.

The building safety performance traffic lights demonstrate current performance with regulatory standards in relation to gas, electrical and fire safety. The data relating to fire drills will be updated twice yearly, and the rest of the performance indicators will be updated quarterly.

For more information, click here to read about our commitment to compliance.

Responsible: Liam Canning, Head of Compliance and Building Safety

Gas compliance - 100% (Target 100%)
Electrical compliance -100% (Target 100%)
Fire Compliance - 100% (Target 100%)
Fire Drills* - 79.8% (Target 100%)

Repairs and Maintenance

We have a legal responsibility to ensure that the homes that we provide are maintained to a decent standard.

The traffic light performance indicator focuses on general day-to-day repairs, renewals and replacement of furniture and white goods (where we have a responsibility) and minor gas, water or electric repairs.

When a repair is reported it is categorised in terms of severity – routine, urgent or emergency. Each of these categories have a different target for how quickly they need to be completed. The first three traffic performance indicators show how many of our repairs were completed within these targets

We offer a 24 hour repairs service and outside of normal office hours and weekends emergency repairs our managed through our Out of Hours (OOH) service. The OOH performance indicator shows how many out of hours emergency repairs are responded to outside of normal business hours and completed (completion includes a temporary make safe solution). All of these statistics will be updated once quarterly.

For more information about repairs and maintenance, click here for our dedicated page.

Responsible: Michael Atiba, Repairs and Maintenance Manager

What percentage of all responsive repairs are completed within the timescale? - 96.6%  (Target 90%)

Customer Contact Centre

We have a dedicated Customer Contact Centre which is often the first point of contact for stakeholders and prospective customers, as well as being a central contact for existing customers. The service handles all inbound calls and email communications through getintouch@lookahead.org.uk.

They also support administrative repairs requests and answer queries, solve problems or get the right Look Ahead colleague or department involved.

It is important that calls are responded to quickly.  The performance traffic indicator shows the average waiting time and will be updated once quarterly.

For details of how to get in touch with our contact centre, click here.

Responsible: Brigita Kovger, Customer Contact Centre Service Lead

Housing Services

We are committed to providing high quality homes and housing management services to all of our tenants. We have a dedicated team of Housing Officers that provide housing management services to our tenants that live in our non care and support services. We refer to this as “unsupported”.

As part of our unsupported offer we are committed to undertaking regular tenancy reviews and estate inspections to ensure estates and properties are safe, clean and to manage any anti-social behaviour or tenancy issues.

The traffic light performance indicator shows the percentage of estate visits carried out in line with the target. These will be updated once quarterly.

For more information about our housing management offer, click here.

Responsible: Jackie Kelly – Director of Housing Related Support

Service Quality

At least once every two years we inspect our Care and Support Services and assess them against our quality framework.

The framework is broken down into 5 key areas:

  1. Safe
  2. Effective
  3. Caring
  4. Responsive
  5. Well led

 

Services are rated as either:

  • Outstanding
  • Good
  • Inadequate
  • Poor

 

We have a set an organisational target that at least 88% of our services should meet the “Good” or “Outstanding” quality standard.

The performance traffic light indicator shows what percentage of our services have currently achieved a ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ rating. This will be updated once quarterly.

If you want more information about our Quality Audits, please click here for our Quality and Safeguarding page.

Each service should have a poster displaying performance in their last audit, talk to a member of staff if you are not able to see this in your service.

For information please email quality@lookahead.org.uk

Responsible: Mike Bansback, Head of Safeguarding and Quality

How many of our services are rated as good or outstanding following an internal quality check? - 65.8% (Target 90%)

Diversity and Inclusion

We are committed to diversity and inclusion, and recognise the diversity of our customers. We will ensure that we deliver accessible services and equitable outcomes across all of our customer groups.

We know that without understanding the individual needs of our service users, we cannot tailor service delivery to meet the needs of our customers.

We introduced a Diversity and Inclusion question in our 2020 Annual Customer survey and we are committed to including this going forward. We asked customers whether they “feel satisfied that Look Ahead treats them fairly regardless of age, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, religion or disability”.

We have not set a target and the traffic light performance indicator shows the percentage of customers that felt Look Ahead treated them fairly. The data comes from our annual customer survey responses and is updated once a year.

For more information about our commitment to diversity and inclusion and how we are actively tackling discrimination and disadvantage, click here.

Responsible: Nicole Njie, Director of Customer Services and Housing – Customer Diversity & Inclusion Lead

Claudia Bartram, Director of People Is responsible for the overall Look Ahead Diversity Strategy

What percentage of customers feel satisfied that Look Ahead treats them fairly regardless of their age, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, religion or disability? - 89%

Look Ahead Staff

Our staff are a core part of enabling us to deliver high quality care, support and housing services. We know that customers value continuity and stability, particularly when it comes to their designated key worker or Housing Officer.

This indicator refers to the percentage of all staff turnover, meaning the number of staff that have left Look Ahead. This will be updated once quarterly.

Responsible: Claudia Bartram, Director of People

Percentage of staff turnover - 28.8% (Target 30%)

Customer Satisfaction

We provide our customers with regular opportunities to share their feedback on how we are performing, whether this is through an annual satisfaction survey or smaller thematic targeted surveys. We are committed to excellence in everything we do and see customer feedback as fundamental to helping us understand and improve the services we provide.

As part of annual survey process we always ask our customers “Taking everything into account, how satisfied are you with the overall quality of service you receive from Look Ahead?” and set an overall satisfaction target of 90%.

This data is updated once a year and is also published in our annual customer report.

Responsible: Nicole Njie, Director of Customer Services and Housing

What percentage of Look Ahead customers were satisfied with the overall quality of services provided by Look Ahead? * 86% (Target 90%)

Complaints

The success of our organisation depends on our ability to deliver excellent services that exceed expectations: we can only do this if we receive, listen to and act on feedback.

The statistics above show how well we are performing in relation to formal complaints handling – primarily how responsive our service is. These will be updated quarterly.

We undertake an annual self assessment which you can find on our complaints and feedback page. The assessment details our compliance with the Housing Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code. It shows how well we are performing against the code, the areas that we need to improve on and evidence of the ways that we are doing this.

For more information click here for our dedicated Complaints and Feedback page.

Responsible: Complaints and Feedback Lead

What percentage of stage 1 complaints are resolved within 13 working days? - 77% (Target 75%)
What percentage of stage 2 complaints are resolved within 18 working days? - 100% (Target 95%)
What percentage of stage 3 complaints panels conclude within 25 working days? - N/A

Customer Involvement in Selection and Recruitment

Customer involvement within recruitment and selection of our staff and Board members is one example of the choice and control we give to customers across all levels to enable and empower them to be an active part of decision making at Look Ahead.

This performance traffic light indicator shows what percentage of all vacant roles across Look Ahead filled, which had customer involvement in the recruitment process. This will be updated once quarterly.

We have committed to reaching a target of 80% by the end of March 2022. For more information about how you can get involved with recruitment and selection, click here.

Responsible: Kate Mahoney, Customer Experience Manager

What percentage of all staff and Board recruitment and selection involves Look Ahead customers? 59% (Target 80%)

When you share your ideas, feedback or concerns, it is important that we not only listen but act. Here are some examples of some of the changes we’ve made as a result of tenant feedback:

You said…

You told us how important digital inclusion is and that you need access to Wi-Fi.

We did…

The Director of IT has attended several Tenant and Landlord Panel meetings to provide updates on how we are progressing with installing Wi-Fi into our services. Customer Wi-Fi continues to be a key commitment.

You said…

That you weren’t happy with the repairs and maintenance service, particularly the quality of repairs, communication and consistency.

We did…

We involved customers in the procurement of our new repairs and maintenance contracts. Customer feedback influenced our specification, and a customer panel assisted with interviews – asking their own questions directly to prospective contractors.  Their feedback formed a core part of our decision on which contractors to choose. The contractors have since attended our Tenant and Landlord Panel to meet directly with customers to discuss progress.

You said…

That you felt that we could improve the way that some staff responded to incidents.

We did…

We co-produced a new Customer Incidents Panel where customers from across all of our services come together to discuss anonymised incident reports and draw out learning for how we could have improved our response. Customers have been a part of designing this new panel from the very beginning, having choice and control over all aspects of the group. Customer representative from this has given feedback to our Safeguarding panel.

You Said…

That you weren’t happy with the level of service that you were receiving from our contact centre, particularly the wait time.

We Did…

We restructured our contact centre team and brought in new staff. As a result we’ve seen a big improvement in performance against as seen in the above KPI’s.

You Said…

That you were unhappy with the quality of some of your communal spaces and gardens, and that you wanted to be able to access more activities in your service.

We Did…

We launched our ‘Love Your Home’ competition, giving both supported services and our unsupported tenants the chance to apply for funding or volunteers to support a project to enhance their home. This was across three categories – Great Green Spaces (for gardens), Creative Spaces (to support arts), and Healthy Homes (to support health and wellbeing). Over 30 services and customers applied and were awarded grants of £350 to deliver their projects.

For more detail or to further scrutinise our performance, customers can join our Tenant and Landlord Panel, Customer Care and Support Forum or Customer Incidents Panel– email gettinginvolved@lookahead.org.uk for more information or click here.