Neighbourhoods and ASB

As well as providing homes, we want to help build communities where people feel safe, can be themselves, and feel connected to where they live.

We know how important things like bins, pets, fly-tipping, and communal spaces are to you. We handled 3,140 cases relating to your neighbourhoods in 2024/25, always listening to what you told us.

Community days

This year, we organised 10 community days across the country, where staff from across our teams visited to meet and speak directly with you.

They were a great opportunity to listen to your feedback, ideas, and suggestions for how we can improve both your local area and the services we provide.

Contractors joined us, along with local partners like the police, fire service, and waste removal teams.

Each location had its own action plan based on what you told us mattered most to you. These plans included things like:

  • Repainting car park lines.
  • Putting up clearer signs.
  • Improving shared spaces with paint, new noticeboards, and more.

All of the work was focused on making your experience of living in your community better, based on what you told us was important.

Thanks to your feedback and involvement, we delivered 10 area improvement projects and followed up on 210 individual customer enquiries raised during the events.

At Newlands Place, customers were the first in the local area to receive the new Love Food Hate Waste bins, helping to reduce waste and improve recycling in the community.

At Marton Heights and Wesley Court, following customer feedback, we improved the bin stores – helping to reduce fly-tipping and encourage better waste management. Local customers have told us the bin stores now stay tidy and are happy that we took action to tackle the concerns they raised with us.

Because our community days were so successful, we decided to continue them in 2025-26, focusing on different estates that can also benefit from this joined-up partnership approach.

Listening, learning, and improving - together

At the start of the year, we launched a new pilot project in Somerset, and it all began with your feedback.

You told us you wanted to see more of us in your community. That it wasn’t always clear who to speak to, and that our communication needed to improve. We heard you loud and clear.

So, we brought together a dedicated local team to work directly with customers and partners on tenancy and housing issues that couldn’t be resolved through our Customer Services Centre. Their mission? To make things simpler, faster, and more personal.

And it’s working.

By having a specialist team on the ground, we’ve been able to resolve issues more quickly, reduce hand-offs between teams, and build stronger relationships with local partners like the council and police. Most importantly, customers now have a named contact, someone they know and trust.

Thanks to this new approach, customer satisfaction in Somerset has improved by nearly 25%, as measured by the Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs). (Overall satisfaction in the TSMs for rental customers in Somerset.)

That’s a result we’re really proud of.

We’ve been working closely with our Scrutiny Panel to learn from the pilot and explore how we can roll out these improvements across all our communities. Here’s what we’ve learned:

  • Being local matters – visibility and presence make a real difference.
  • Simplicity is key – having a clear, named contact helps you know who’s responsible for what.
  • Stronger relationships lead to better outcomes – for customers and partners alike.
  • Better alignment across teams – so you don’t have to repeat yourself or speak to multiple people.
  • Improved oversight of contractor work – ensuring quality and accountability.

Over the next six months, we’ll be sharing how we’re putting these lessons into action and reshaping the way we work, with you at the heart of it.

Thank you for helping us improve. We’re excited about what’s ahead.

Working together to tackle anti-social behaviour (ASB)

"Gena really listened. I’m so grateful for her support"

Anon, Stonewater customer

We know that a safe and supportive neighbourhood is essential. That’s why tackling anti-social behaviour remains one of our top priorities. While we know there are things we can do better, we’re improving all the time.

In 2024–25, we managed 734 ASB cases across our communities. Thanks to your feedback, we’ve made meaningful changes to how we handle, respond to, and communicate about these cases.

Listening, learning, and taking action

This year, customers on our Customer Complaints Learning Panel (CCLP) reviewed complaints around ASB and created an action plan, which helped us make impactful changes to our ASB service.

“By working together to review real complaints and experiences, we were able to influence real change. Customers should feel confident that their voices are being heard – and that Stonewater is committed to learning and improving.”

CCLP member

They told us we need to be clear about what we can and can’t do, keep in touch with customers, act quickly on serious concerns, and explain our decisions. They also stressed the importance of taking ownership, avoiding complicated language, and making our responses more personal.

From the CCLP’s recommendations, we:

  • Improved how and when we communicate with customers during ASB cases.
  • Set clearer expectations and timescales for both customers and staff.
  • Delivered enhanced training to ensure staff respond with empathy and consistency.
  • Strengthened links with external partners such as the police, local authorities, and mental health services.

We will continue to track and check our progress on these actions!

"First-class service – I was kept updated every step of the way”

Anon, Stonewater customer

Real stories, real impact

These changes to tackle ASB made a real difference in our communities.

Emergency protection in Leamington Spa

When a vulnerable customer faced serious threats, we acted quickly to get a court order (called an injunction) requiring the offender to stay away. This included an exclusion zone, meaning they couldn’t enter an area, and a “power of arrest,” allowing the police to arrest them immediately if they broke the order. This brought safety and peace of mind for our customer overnight.

Safeguarding a community in Bristol

We dealt with a complicated case where people were living in a home without permission, causing concerns about the safety and well-being of the customer whose home it was. By working with the police and health services, we made sure both the individual and the wider community were kept safe.

A fair but firm approach

We acted quickly to deal with threats between neighbours. We got a court order (injunction) to stop the behaviour, and later reached a formal agreement where both sides agreed to certain conditions. This was a fair and balanced way to keep everyone safe.

Looking ahead

In 2025-26, we’ve already made changes to improve how we tackle anti-social behaviour. Some of these changes include: better collaboration between our teams to improve the quality of investigations, updated job titles, welcoming new team members who work locally to help build stronger local connections, training for our teams, and clearer processes.

These changes are all about making it easier to share information, take clear ownership of cases, and keep your experience at the heart of what we do!

"ASB can be stressful and destructive to our communities. Building a strong relationship with our customers; honest communication and a clear action plan are key to resolving ASB cases."

Alex Wrigley, ASB Service Lead