Current Work
Cloch have been involved in a range of activities in recent years, with our FACE Project a great success – Focus on Achieving Customer Excellence. Our commitment in this area has been recognised by the Customer Excellence Service Accreditation. We are also committed to developing young people in the workplace, with various Trainee and Graduate roles within the organisations, and our work in this area has been recognised by the Investors in Young People Award.
Our last new build development site, Kings Glen in Greenock, was completed in 2021, increasing our property numbers by 57. As part of this project, we offered furnished lets. Unlike the private sector, social housing does not normally put furniture into general needs properties, however, with the start of our Cloch Plus project, designed to tackle furniture poverty, this is a test to see how successful these properties can be.
Due to the economic crisis, which has impacted the cost of building new homes, Cloch has changed tack to focus on providing more homes by buying suitable properties from the local housing market. This project has been supported by the Scottish Government, which provided £300k of funding towards this project in 2023/24.
In 2023, our Cloch Plus project was also expanded further, facilitated by circa £325k of Scottish Government funding, which allowed us to set up a new staff team, our Community Support Team, to focus on supporting mental health and well-being, ensuring this is prioritised at a community and local level. We are also delighted that this project financially supports Starter Packs, who provide essential items for setting up a new home. This project also funds a handyperson service to help people turn their houses into homes.
Our community activities were also expanded during 2023 due to the establishment of our Customer Involvement Team and several successful funding applications. Throughout 2022/23 we secured £100k of funding to provide additional welfare benefits advice and support, and issue energy and food vouchers and warm packs to many of our customers. We also worked in partnership with Financial Fitness, who are Inverclyde’s independent welfare benefit and money advice charity, setting up a new appointment service from our offices.
During 2023, we have also been heavily focused on improving our reactive repairs service and from August 2023 we have been delivering the service through a combination of separate contractors for the core trades such as joiners, plumbers, and electricians, rather than using one large, multi-trade contractor. Many of our smaller contractors are local to Greenock and the impact of the new contracts has also led to new apprenticeship opportunities being created.
In 2023, we also carried out a tenant satisfaction survey, with over 800 responses, which highlighted improved satisfaction levels across the board, however we will continue to focus on improving services and will use the feedback received to set out our priorities for 2024/25. This will also be supported by our investment in new survey software to help gather feedback and views on our services. We are already realising the benefits of this with circa 35% responses to our 2024/25 rent consultation, which is an increase from 12% last year.
