Speed of Property Relet Times Scrutiny Review

The Customer Scrutiny Panel reviewed the process for reletting empty homes to identify opportunities to reduce delays, minimise rent loss and improve the experience for customers moving into a new home. The review considered customer feedback, operational processes and how services work together to prepare homes for new tenants.

The scrutiny review looked at several key areas, including:

• The time taken to let empty homes.
• Customer complaints and feedback.
• Customers' experiences of moving into their new home.
• Documents, processes and discussions with staff involved in reletting homes.

What's working well

The review highlighted a number of strengths in Citizen's approach to reletting homes:

• A committed team focused on improving performance.
• Flexible processes with clear accountability.
• Positive changes already underway to improve relet times.

Areas for improvement

The review also identified opportunities to strengthen the service by:

• Reducing the time homes remain empty before being relet.
• Addressing delays caused by larger repair works.
• Improving coordination across every stage of the reletting process.
• Providing customers with clearer updates throughout their journey.
• Making property adverts more informative and accurate.
• Ensuring homes are better prepared before customers move in.
• Replacing outdated tracking systems.
• Developing stronger partnerships to provide additional customer support.
• Improving collaboration with local teams.

The Customer Scrutiny Panel made 23 recommendations to improve how empty homes are relet.

Improving communication

We'll:

• Keep customers better informed throughout the reletting process.
• Make property adverts and property information clearer and more detailed.
• Improve the information recorded when customers leave a property to help prepare homes more effectively.

Strengthening the reletting process

We'll also:

• Check homes and identify repairs earlier, before customers move out where possible.
• Improve collaboration between teams to reduce delays.
• Increase support from housing officers when customers move into their new home.
• Strengthen links with community partners to provide additional support.
• Continue improving property matching to help customers sustain their tenancies.

Since the review, a number of improvements have already been made:

• Better teamwork across services is helping speed up the reletting process.
• Improved matching and additional customer support are helping more people successfully settle into their new homes.
• Clearer communication is improving the customer experience.
• Better property adverts and moving support are helping customers make informed choices.
• Simpler processes are reducing delays and enabling homes to be relet more quickly.
• Faster reletting and improved support are delivering both financial and social value for Citizen and its customers.