Customer Annual Review
As we reflect on the past year, I’m delighted to share the remarkable progress Golding Homes has made in delivering an even better experience for our customers and communities. The 2024/25 period has been a year of significant improvement, innovation, and renewed commitment to putting our customers at the heart of everything we do.
Thanks to the dedication of our team and valuable feedback from you, our customers, we’ve achieved positive results across key areas. Our repairs and maintenance services have become more responsive, ensuring your homes are safe, comfortable, and well-maintained. We’ve also expanded our digital channels, making it easier for you to access services, report issues, and communicate with us conveniently from anywhere.
We’re proud of the progress made in customer engagement, with increased customer involvement in decision-making processes and new initiatives aimed at creating vibrant, inclusive neighbourhoods. Our commitment to sustainability and energy efficiency has also led to innovative projects that reduce environmental impact while lowering costs for our customers.
We’re open about how we’re performing and our overall customer satisfaction (based on surveys after a service or a call) has improved from 77% (2023/24) to 82% (2024/25). You can see our performance information every month on our website or review our Tenant Satisfaction Measures here, which have improved significantly over the last year.
We've drawn on customer feedback throughout the year in developing this customer annual review. It highlights not only our successes but also our drive for continuous improvement. We’re excited about the future and remain committed to delivering excellent customer service, fostering strong communities, and ensuring your voice is heard every step of the way.
Thank you for your trust and playing your part in our community.
Rachel McFarlane
Executive Director of Customer Experience
Your money – how do we spend your rent?
Every penny of our income is used to improve our services, build new homes and support our communities.
For every pound we receive, this is how it’s spent:
*Interest paid on bank loans to help us invest in our existing homes and build more new ones
**Housing management costs for customer-facing teams as well as central services like People Team, Finance, IT and Commercial
***Overheads, for example depreciation, bad debt and our office space
Total spend of repairs and maintenance = £22,356,000 (A breakdown of costs is below. All figures in the table are millions)
|
Description |
2025 |
2024 |
|
Routine maintenance (eg day-to-day responsive repairs) |
£15,317 |
£12,679 |
|
Cyclical maintenance (rolling maintenance schedule eg painting, decorating, lift maintenance) |
£2,823 |
£3,702 |
|
Planned maintenance (eg fire safety, compliance, health & safety incl asbestos, minor adaptions) |
£4,216 |
£4,517 |
|
Total |
£22,356 |
£20,898 |
Repairing and maintaining your home
Last year you told us you waited too long for repairs to be done, so we prioritised clearing overdue jobs and attending appointments on time. We’re now completing more repairs than ever on time, above target at 90.8% for March 2025. In the first four months of 2025/26 we’ve seen the average time to complete jobs fall from just under 26 days at the end of last year to 14.9 days, showing this great progress is continuing into 2025. We’ve also reduced failed appointments by bringing in more resource in areas like carpentry. Our team of repairs co-ordinators are helping with better communication, making sure you’re kept fully informed.
Ensuring our repairs are good quality remains important, we now quality check 5% of our work via a post-inspection to make sure we deliver to a high standard.
Our focus for this year is to build on these improvements and continue to prioritise customers that need us. We’re aiming to move to a more proactive repairs service for you and your home.
We review feedback from regular repairs surveys which are sent after every job to help inform our plans. Last year 2,800 customers gave us feedback via these surveys and an overall satisfaction score of 82%.
How we're performing
- 82% of customers were satisfied with their most recent repair. (target 80%)
- We completed 8,953 emergency repairs in 2024/25, this was 285 less than 2023/24
- 16,560 routine repairs were carried out by a combination of our own operatives and sub-contractors for more specialist works, 1,613 more than 2023/24
- *79.5% of our repairs were completed on the first visit, up from 71.2% in 2023/24
*During 2024/25 we changed the way we monitor First Time Fix. As a result, the figures here differ from our 2023/24 report.
Keeping you safe
Keeping you safe remains our number one priority, so we’re proud that 100% of the checks we legally make as your landlord, are up to date*. This includes gas safety checks, fire, asbestos, water and lifts. We’ll continue to work to maintain this.
Tackling damp and mould quickly and effectively is a priority and we’ve invested in the team to enable us to be more proactive. This year we received 1,034 new damp and mould cases from our customers and resolved 1,507 cases. We’re working to prepare for new legislation in October 2025, introducing a new system to track cases and ensure a timely response to customers raising issues which may impact their health.
We know feeling safe in your home is important, so last year we replaced 16 communal doors in our blocks to keep you and your home secure. We have plans in place this year to complete a further 10 communal blocks. We’ve also recruited a locksmith to make sure repairs to secure doors and windows are completed quickly when you report them.
Last Autumn we talked to customers living in our tall buildings, with teams conducting both online and door to door surveys. We used this feedback to produce engagement plans to let these customers know how we’ll keep them updated, as well as improve our website information on fire safety.
We’ll continue to prioritise your safety and are establishing a new Building Safety and Quality customer panel. These customers will provide valuable feedback on all matters of safety and quality of our homes and buildings.
*At 31 March 2025
Improving your homes
Last year we invested just under £20m into improving our homes with new kitchens, bathrooms, windows, doors and more. This year we’re continuing to make homes better, by investing a further £23.5m into our existing homes.
You can read what we’ve achieved in year one and more here - Asset Management Strategy
99.9% of our homes meet the Government’s Decent Homes Standards* the national standard expected of all landlords to keep homes in a reasonable state of repair.
*As at 31 March 2025
We know sustainability is important to our customers and more sustainable homes mean more affordable utility bills. 97.6% of our homes have an energy performance certificate (or EPC) and just under 76% of these are at our target rating of EPC C or above. We have plans in place for the coming year to tackle homes scoring below level C.
How we're performing
Last year we improved our existing homes with new features which included:
Delivering quality customer service
Our customer services team have proudly improved their performance throughout the year, prioritising answering your call more quickly, something which you have told us hasn’t always been the case when you’ve contacted us in the past. At the same time, our advisors have continued to focus on providing a warm, friendly, empathetic and solution focused service.
In early 2025, we introduced our new telephony platform as part of our Golding Connect project. Subsequently, we’ve made improvements to how quickly we handle emails, especially those which need to be treated as a priority. In line with our published Customer Offer, the customer services team have responded to 98% of your emails in five working days.
You’ve also provided significant feedback on your experience when contacting the team. We’ve responded to this and are pleased to see that satisfaction with customer services is improving. The team also received over 2,000 compliments this year.
You can read what we’ve achieved in year one and more here - Customer Strategy
How we’re performing
- 88% of calls answered (80.6%*)
- Average wait time of 4 minutes 12 seconds (6 minutes 38 seconds*)
- 84% customer services satisfaction (79%*)
- 73% of calls resolved at first point of contact (76%*) - Improvements made to address performance has improved first point of contact, exceeding our 80% target in August 2025.
*2023/24
Putting things right
We’re pleased to be moving in the right direction, improving our handling of your complaints and using these opportunities to learn and improve.
Last year we introduced a new policy and process to make it easier for you to let us know if we’ve got something wrong and quicker for us to put right. The team has changed the way we manage complaints, making sure we take a solution-focussed approach. They’ve worked hard to resolve older complaints and responded to 100% of complaints within our target timescales.
We know there’s more for us to do and we’ve introduced some ways to make sure we’re being open and transparent with how we’re performing, as well as embedding lessons learned across the organisation.
These include a new customer friendly annual complaints report and monthly reporting on response times, as well as regular sessions with our Executive Team and business areas to help learn lessons and drive any changes needed.
Local and listening
We’re committed to being local and listening and out in your neighbourhoods helping to make a positive difference.
Last year we increased the size of our tenancy team (now our neighbourhood team) by 40%. Since then, we’ve moved to new ways of working, introducing our neighbourhood commitment on 1 April 2025. We’ve changed our teams using your feedback to make sure we have the right people in place to meet your needs and be visible in your communities.
You can learn more about our new neighbourhood model here
Supporting your tenancy
Our customer support team help customers to live and thrive in their homes, from specific older person support to tenancy sustainment, welfare benefits advice and employment support.
We continue to work closely with Maidstone Borough Council and other partners to help customers that have been struggling financially to access support so we can help them keep their tenancy.
How we're performing
- We supported 374 safeguarding cases, supporting referrals for welfare checks, mental health, neglect (property condition) and self-neglect
- We gave £69,102 in hardship grants, supporting 579 customer applications for financial assistance (in 2023/24 we gave £52,213 in hardship funds to 489 people)
- Referrals to our Welfare Benefits team averaged at 65 per month in comparison to 62 per month (2023/24)
- We helped customers access £949,445 in benefits (£444,154*)
- We collected 99.56% of rental income (99.26%*)
- Rent arrears for March 2024 was 2.40% (2.6%*)
- Total number of arrears cases in the year to March 2025 was down by 735
- Our Employment Advisors supported 153 people (162*)
- We helped 54 (55*) people find employment and supported 55 (50*) people into training
- We supported 24 (37*) people with a Personal Development Grant, totalling £3,809 (£4,808*) for help with training and learning
- Our Onboarding Team supported 459 customers into new homes via the local housing registers and internal offers, including contractual successions
- We support customers living in eligible housing to mutually exchange their homes. 296 mutual exchange applications were submitted on Home Swapper with 121 completed exchanges within our stock
- We completed 310 minor adaptations and 26 major adaptations to our homes
*2023/24
Positive contributions to neighbourhoods
We’ve listened to local priorities and what matters most to you to deliver events and initiatives in your neighbourhoods. This has included housing hubs, estate inspections, pet awareness days and litter picks
We invested £26,161 in community initiatives with match funding for projects from third parties of £56,100. These initiatives included one to one digital training courses for customers, FishFEST a fishing initiative to reduce illegal fishing and anti-social behaviour in one of our neighbourhoods and a money matters course for students at a local secondary school.
Safer Neighbourhoods
We continue to listen and work with you and our partners to improve the areas where you live.
In response to customer feedback, we set up our safer neighbourhood team who are helping to improve our response to anti-social behaviour, domestic abuse, tenancy fraud, access, and property condition. We also used feedback from your neighbourhood surveys to deliver events and tackle issues which mattered most to you, working alongside our local partners.
We delivered
- 6 housing hub events
- 54 neighbourhood action days
- 35 estate inspections
- 6 surgeries
- 2 responsible pet days
- 5 clean safe green litter picks
- 2 shed amnesty days
We also supported other agencies with 20 local events, engaging with customers and local communities at each of these events.
Anti Social Behaviour (ASB) Support
We work in partnership to deter and tackle ASB and hate incidents in the neighbourhoods where we have homes. Through our joint working with Maidstone Borough Council we issued six fixed Penalty Notices for fly tipping and 19 Community Protection Warnings.
We responded to 237 ASB reports from customers and five hate crime incidents. The top five reported ASB issues were:
- Verbal abuse / Harassment / Intimidation / Threatening behaviour– 61
- Noise – 43
- Drugs / substance misuse/drug dealing – 35
- Pets and animal nuisance – 20
- Physical violence - 18
We obtained four injunctions for tenancy breaches, investigated six tenancy fraud referrals and responded to 378 safeguarding cases.
Our TSM satisfaction score for our handling of anti-social behaviour reports has improved from 47.1% (2023/24) to 56.4% (2024/25). We’re continuing to make improvements in this area and held a customer bootcamp dedicated to ASB and improving our understanding of customers needs in March 2025. This feedback has formed part of our action plans to support better resolution of ASB.
Domestic Abuse Support
We continue to work closely with (Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance) DAHA and local partners to improve our response to domestic abuse. Last year we responded to 93 Domestic Abuse cases and supported 13 customers through our ‘placesafe’ scheme to assess and support security needs at the home.
As part of the national campaign ‘16 Days of Action Against Domestic Abuse 2024’, we joined forces with Maidstone Borough Council (MBC) to create the ‘Purple Sunflower Campaign’.
The aim was to create a purple sunflower to depict every one of the 2,956 survivors of domestic abuse within the Maidstone borough between January 2023 and January 2024. The sunflowers were displayed in The Mall, Maidstone between 25 November to 10 December and caused quite a stir. People were encouraged to leave messages on our tree of hope.
“Never give up. There is light at the end of the tunnel, I am proof”
“From being broken and bruised she turned out to be a warrior and stronger than she could ever imagine”
To support victims and survivors of domestic abuse we continue to attend ‘one stop shop’ for domestic abuse and housing advice in partnership with Maidstone Borough Council. We have monthly representation at Multi Agency Risk Assessment Conferences (MARAC) and Maidstone Domestic Abuse Forum.
Working together with you
Keeping customers at the heart of everything we do is essential, so we’ll continue to involve you in our decisions and build trust by doing what we say we’ll do. We report regularly and engage with you on delivery of our corporate plan and key strategies, as well as how we’ve listened and acted on your feedback, both on the website and in our customer newsletter, Home Matters.
We've improved in all areas of our Tenant Satisfaction scores, including customer engagement. Customer satisfaction in how we keep you informed about things that matter to you, went up by more than 10% (from 2023/24) and satisfaction that we listen to your views and act on them went up 9% (from 2023/24).
We gather feedback from customers all the time to learn, improve our services and get input into our new strategies. Engagement opportunities include; at our neighbourhood action days, through complaints and compliments, our customer voice panel and our customer bootcamps which have included, rents, repairs, ASB and damp and mould. We held our first Big Door Knock in April 2025. Visiting over 1,800 homes and talking to over 700 customers in one day.
You can find out more about the positive difference customers are making through our engagement groups here including reading our Customer Insight Group’s first scrutiny reports. You can also read what we’ve achieved in customer engagement in year one and more here - Customer Engagement Strategy
Our new fair access policy was introduced last year, shaped by over 400 customers. It aims to make sure we recognise and respond to your needs and provide equal access to our services. Through our customer compass survey we now know more about you and have listened, as a result we’ve:
- Introduced a door knock pledge to flag homes where a customer has told us they need more time to get to the door
- Improved services for customers with autism or learning needs by adapting our communications to be clear, respectful and do what we say we’ll do
- Began working towards accreditation with National Autism Society and trained colleague champions
- Improved understanding of dementia and how we can support customers and carers