Housing Improvement Plan
How we're improving housing services
As part of our Corporate Strategy, we want all residents to have access to safe, well-maintained, and high-quality homes. Our Housing Improvement Plan is designed to ensure our services meet those needs, offer good value for money, and provide a safe and secure home for everyone.
What we're doing
We're making changes based on recommendations from SOLACE, an independent housing review from the Housing Quality Network, regulatory standards, and feedback from staff and residents. Our goal is to improve the quality of housing services across Guildford.
What we've achieved so far
- faster complaint handling: We've updated our complaints policy to align with the Housing Ombudsman's guidance. You can report a complaint on our dedicated webpage
- tackling damp and mould: We've invested in addressing damp and mould. Find out more about tackling damp and mould.
- stronger governance: We've established a Housing Operations Board to allow councillors to oversee the housing strategy and performance
- regulatory compliance: We're working closely with the Regulator of Social Housing to ensure we meet safety and quality standards
- listening to residents: The Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs) have been introduced by the Regulator of Social Housing in England to assess how well landlords are doing in providing good quality homes and services. Over 600 tenants took part in 2024 and their feedback is helping us make improvements. View the Tenant Satisfaction Measures report and action plan
What's next?
We're refreshing our plan to focus on four key commitments to residents:
1. quality, safety, and compliance: Ensuring our residents live in compliant, safe, and healthy homes
2. service improvement and delivery: Ensuring our residents receive better services and outstanding housing management
3. resident engagement and empowerment: We will listen to residents and shape services together.
4. organisational excellence and modernisation: We will provide a resilient and well managed service
How can you get involved?
Do you have ideas on how we can improve our housing services? Whether you can spare a few hours or want to be involved regularly, we'd love to hear from you.
Contact us at tenants.group@guildford.gov.uk.
How are we measuring our performance?
- we have appointed an Independent Assurance Panel to be a critical friend to us, and challenge and support us over the next three years. This Panel has a housing specialist who works with the Housing Service on developing our Housing Improvement Plan
- our progress will be reported every six months. Read the first progress updates. Our next update will be July 2025
- the Housing Operations Board receive progress updates on the Housing Improvement Plan, Housing service performance and other Housing matters
- detailed Financial Monitoring reports will be published regularly. These reports set out our progress against our budgets
- we will measure our performance through the annual Tenant Satisfaction Measures and incorporate learnings and feedback into the Housing Improvement Plan
- key Housing Performance Indicators are reported through our quarterly Corporate Performance Monitoring reports that are presented at Overview & Scrutiny Committee
More information
Our Housing Improvement Plan is part of a wider commitment to improve our governance, operations and culture across the whole organisation so we become a well-managed and resilient Council.
Read more about Our Journey to Improvement Plan.
