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Getting Involved- Sub Categories
The Board of Management directs the work of the Association. It sets the key objectives and ensures that they are met. It meets four times a year in the evening at the Association’s offices in Surbiton. Board members will also be asked to join one of two Sub-Committees (which also meet four times a year in the evening in Surbiton), and to attend other occasional meetings or training events. At the moment all Board and Sub-Committee meetings are on a Monday evening at 6.30pm and almost always finish by 8.30pm. There is no remuneration for the role, but out of pocket expenses are paid for standard meetings or other events.
Board members must share the aims and values of KCHA, be willing to give a commitment of time and share responsibility for decisions. In addition, the Board must possess a range of skills and experience needed to run the business.
If you feel that you would like to help us build on our achievements to date, we will ask you to fill in a short application form to tell us a little more about yourself and your background and experience. The next step would be to invite you to meet informally with the Chairman and Chief Executive to discuss your application.
Our mission is to provide high quality permanent social housing at affordable rents, and responsive and effective services to our tenants. We think we are reasonably good at this, and this has been borne out by independent customer satisfaction surveys. However, there is certainly no room for complacency, and we are continually looking for better ways to collect feedback from our tenants and other stakeholders so as to improve our performance.
This website describes the Tenants’ Panel we have set up to try to get our tenants to play more of a part in how we manage and provide our services.
As a registered housing association, we are governed by a voluntary Board of Management, which sets our overall strategic objectives and monitors our performance. The Board also seeks to ensure that new members are recruited on a systematic and continuous basis to maintain membership at the agreed optimum level and with the rights mix of skills and experience. If you think you might be interested in joining the Board, the website tells you more.
Last but not least, we are supported by fundraising donations from many of the Churches in Kingston and from others. You can read more about what we do with these contributions and how to donate if you wish.
We’re always looking for better ways of enabling our residents to play their part in decision-making. Previous tenant satisfaction surveys carried out in 2000 and 2003 confirmed a much higher than average level of satisfaction with the way we keep residents informed and with your involvement in management decisions. Regrettably the latest survey in 2006 showed a lower level of satisfaction closer to the average for other housing associations, so the time is right to move forward.
in response we have now set up a Residents’ Panel, which had its first meeting in September 2007 and plans to continue on a regular basis. The overall aim is to provide a forum for discussing:
• How we can be more responsive to your views and priorities
• How we can give residents more opportunities to comment on our performance
• How we can enable you to play more of a part in how we manage and provide our services
In due course the Panel might want to choose a resident or residents to join the Association’s Board of Management or Housing Management & Maintenance Committee.
Membership continues to be open to any residents interested in taking part. If you do want to join the Panel, we'll be only too happy to pay your travel and other out-of-pocket expenses. But maybe attending meetings is not your cup of tea, and you can think of other ways you'd prefer to tell us what you think - including contacting us through this website? If so, we'd also be happy to hear from you.
So, if you think you might be at all interested in joining the Panel, or have any other suggestions, please get in touch. You can write, phone or email us. The two people to talk to are either the Chief Executive, John Castelberg, or the Housing Services Manager, Carol Ashton.
We continue to receive generous donations to our Fundraising Appeal both from many of the Churches in Kingston and from individuals. The money has been used to help our work with the homeless in Kingston and to contribute to our general tenants’ welfare fund. For example, we spent £6,500 installing a much-needed new central heating system for the single homeless project which we run jointly with Kingston Churches Action on Homeless (KCAH). And in 2005 we launched a scheme to help our older and disabled tenants with decorations to their homes (all our tenants are normally responsible for their own internal decorations).
There are many more opportunities like this to help our work. For example, the fund helped us launch this updated website in 2006 to allow tenants to find out more easily about our work and plans for the future, to report repairs online, to let us know their views and so forth.
So thanks to all the churches and individuals who have given so generously to date – but if you would like to contribute to our continuing Fundraising Appeal please complete the yellow slip enclosed with this Annual Report, or contact us directly at our offices.
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