Living in your home
At Home With English Rural
English Rural aims to provide all residents with a decent home in pleasant surroundings and believes that our residents have the right to a quiet enjoyment of their home. Your Tenancy Agreement or Lease sets out what we expect from you as a resident and our responsibilities as a landlord.
As of April 2023, the Regulator for Social Housing requires that all housing associations, including English Rural, must collect data on a new set of Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs). These are part of a new system to assess how well social housing landlords are doing at providing good quality homes and services.
The measures are aimed at helping improve standards for people living in social housing, by:
Providing visibility, letting tenants see how well their landlord is doing, and enabling tenants to hold their landlords to account,
Giving the Regulator insight into which landlords might need to improve things for their tenants.
The TSMs are grouped around five themes;
How well landlords are doing at keeping properties in good repair,
Maintaining building safety,
Respectful and helpful engagement,
Effective handling of complaints,
Responsible neighbourhood management.
All registered social housing providers will have to collect and report annually on their performance on a core set of defined measures to provide tenants with greater transparency about their landlord’s performance.
In addition, English Rural publishes and regularly updates a set of policies and procedures we operate under. All policies are available on request or can be downloaded from our website.
Resident Involvement
English Rural takes resident involvement very seriously and believes that we can only improve our services by listening to feedback and information from residents.
Our Resident Consultation and Involvement Policy and Procedure sets out how we listen to residents via regular surveys, regularly notified scheme visits by Housing Managers and repairs staff, the Residents Portal, the Resident Scrutiny Group, and Resident Board Participation.
Additionally, we will encourage and support residents who wish to introduce a Resident Association to their scheme by offering guidance, attending meetings, and where appropriate providing financial assistance. Please contact your Housing Manager for further information and guidance.
If you would like to be involved in shaping and improving the services you receive as a resident, we would love to hear from you, please call us on 020 7820 7930 or email info@englishrural.org.uk to find out more about how you can get involved.
Pets
We generally do not have any objections to you keeping pets within your home, so long as they do not cause a nuisance to your neighbours.
You do not need to request permission to keep small pets such as birds, fish, or other small caged animals but you do need to ask us before keeping a cat, a dog, or other larger animal. You will need to ensure that you have read our Pet Policy, completed the Pet Permission Form and await permission before keeping an animal at your home. Unfortunately, we cannot grant permission for pets to be kept in upstairs flats.
If complaints are received and it is deemed that your animal is causing a nuisance to your neighbours, you may be asked to find an alternative home for your pet.
Changes to your Household
Throughout your time as a resident of English Rural, it is likely your household composition may likely change. We must hold up-to-date information about members of your household and if anyone no longer lives at the property, is moving in, or has passed away.
If there are any changes to your household, you must advise us of these in writing; an email or text message to your housing manager or contacting us via the Residents Portal will suffice. We may occasionally contact you to ensure your details are up to date.
Should these household changes involve changes to your tenancy or lease, you may need to provide further information and complete a Deed of Release or undertake a Transfer of Equity – your housing manager will be able to advise you further. Your housing manager can also advise on matters relating to succession should you wish to know more.
Should the needs of your household change, for example on medical grounds, you should also let us know so that we can adapt our services if necessary and make any changes or provide advice and support. Please note that we do not add new tenants to existing tenancy agreements.
Reasonable adjustments to our services will be made to accommodate and support disabled residents.
As your household grows you may desire additional space. Unfortunately, English Rural does not allow extensions or loft conversions to any of its properties. This is to ensure that all developments continue to provide a mix of property sizes to meet the needs of future residents and that shared ownership properties remain affordable. Should you wish to consider moving to a larger property, further information on moving home is provided later in this handbook.
Nuisance and Antisocial Behaviour
English Rural will not tolerate behaviour from any resident that is racist, violent, threatening, intimidating, criminal, unreasonable, or unacceptable. Any reports of anti-social behaviour will be investigated fully in line with English Rural's Anti-Social Behaviour Policy and appropriate action will be taken to restore the quality of life for those affected.
To that end, English Rural will work with other agencies such as the Police, Anti-Social Behaviour Officers, and Environmental Health to adopt a combined approach to preventing and tackling anti-social behaviour.
All residents are asked to be considerate to their neighbours and behave in a way that does not cause a nuisance or distress to those living around them If you are experiencing any form of nuisance, please advise your Housing Manager of this. You may be asked to record incidents in diary sheets to provide further evidence.
Parking
One of the biggest issues of friction can be parking. When you move into your home you will have been allocated parking spaces (please ask your Housing Manager if you are unsure about your allocated or any visitors' parking spaces), and it is important that you only park in the spaces provided for your property and do not obstruct other parking bays or neighbours’ driveways. We understand that parking spaces are limited but please ensure that you and your visitors are always considerate to your neighbours and park appropriately in your own spaces.
Broken down, unroadworthy, or untaxed vehicles must not be parked permanently within English Rural’s developments. Such vehicles may be removed and the cost of doing so re-charged to the offending resident. Additionally, parking bays should only be used for roadworthy motor vehicles, and we cannot allow caravans, boats, trailers, or any other item to be stored in the parking spaces provided.
Advice & support
We understand that circumstances can change, whether financially or otherwise. If you are struggling or need some advice, please do feel free to contact your Housing Manager to talk over any issues that we may be able to help with.
In some situations even if we are unable to help directly, we may be able to signpost you to other services or organisations that can offer assistance, help, or support which may be available to you.
Complaints
English Rural is committed to providing quality services and support to all residents. If you are not entirely satisfied with our services, a robust Complaints Policy is in operation to help resolve any concerns you may have.
A simplified summary of our complaints policy is outlined below. However, please consult the full complaints policy for more detailed information:
A complaint is when a complainant expresses dissatisfaction with a service we have provided or have provided on behalf of others, or how a member of our staff/Board of Management has conducted themselves.
The Association will accept complaints made in any format, including letters, emails, phone, or personal contact.
We will handle complaints about neighbour nuisance and anti-social behaviour in line with our Anti-Social Behaviour policies and procedures.
Complaints must be raised within a reasonable time scale of the event.
The Association aims to respond to and resolve complaints as quickly as possible; our targets for response times to complaints are five working days for an acknowledgement, and ten working days to review and respond, which can be extended by another ten working days if required. Once you have received your response if you are not satisfied this can be escalated to a stage 2 complaint which has a period of 20 working days for a response.
All complaints received by the association will be logged in and monitored via a Complaints Register held by the association.
Should the association be unable to resolve a complaint and the complainant appeals against the decision reached, a Complaints Panel will be assembled to review the case and make a final judgment.
Complaints about Board Members of the Association will be dealt with by a complaints panel in the first instance.
If it is impossible to reach an acceptable conclusion with a member of staff or a neighbour, mediation may be offered as a means of resolving an impasse.
If you have exhausted English Rural’s complaints process and you remain dissatisfied then you can refer the matter to the Housing Ombudsman Service, more information on the Housing Ombudsman process can be found on their website.
