Plymouth Community Homes (PCH) has retained its Customer Service Excellence accreditation for a fifth consecutive year in recognition of having a customer-focused culture.
PCH again met the standard across all 57 areas of compliance, also earning the additional awards of ‘Compliance Plus’ for going above and beyond in its work in two areas, whilst retaining another three Compliance Plus awards from previous audits.
The CSE award is a well-regarded national quality mark awarded to organisations following a rigorous assessment and audit process, including an on-site auditing visit during which an impartial assessor meets with staff and residents.
To earn the CSE mark, an organisation must demonstrate that it meets the requirements of the scheme and has a truly customer-focused culture, supporting residents and listening to their views.
An assessor visited PCH for two days in June, meeting with residents at the Tea and Toast session at The Beacon, as well as meeting staff from departments including Tenancy Management, Customer Experience, Communities, Communications, Marketing and External Engagement and more.
Topics were discussed including our improvement initiatives to support changes around anti-social behaviour, the MyPCH portal, the growth of our Health and Housing Project in Partnership with Livewell Southwest, the introduction of Service Standards and an update on our Green Fleet progress.
PCH retained the additional award of Compliance Plus for three areas – Customer Insight, Culture of the Organisation, Information and Access, and won the recognition of Compliance Plus for a fourth area, Delivery and a second Compliance Plus award within Information and Access.
The assessor visited the murals painted by SpraySaint at Flora Court and were identified to have a positive impact on the residents and has reduced graffiti and ASB, which is an area of Compliance Plus.
Our Health and Housing Project had been recognised in previous CSE assessments, but the assessor identified that its breadth and scale lifts its impact into an area of Compliance Plus.
The report found that “the complaints process has been enhanced since the 2024 visit and whilst the process is similar there is now a single point of contact. This is a robust complaints process… Staff are empowered to put things right at the first instance but report any informal complaints that they resolve.”
The new ASB toolkit was highlighted as ‘an excellent example of how the website has been enhanced to improve the service to tenants and residents.’
Natasha Kirkham, Quality Assurance Manager at PCH, said: “The CSE assessment is a very thorough process involving teams across PCH, with many staff giving up their time to meet with the assessor to share what we are doing across the organisation to support our residents.
“We are delighted that PCH has retained its Customer Service Excellence status, and to increase the number of areas where we’ve earned the ‘Compliance Plus’ recognition from three to five. This wouldn’t be possible without the care, consideration and thought that staff are putting in daily to ensure that we deliver excellent services for our residents.
“As well as a great recognition of what we are doing well, the CSE process is also designed to promote continuous improvement, and we welcome the feedback from this report which we’ll work on over the coming year so we can keep putting customers first and meet our business plan objective of ‘delivering outstanding services for residents.”
