Social
Affordability and Security
C12
For properties that are subject to the rent regulation regime, report against one or more Affordability Metric:
1) Rent compared to average private rental sector (PRS) rent across the relevant Local Authority
C13
Share, and number, of existing homes (owned and/or managed) completed before the last financial year allocated to:
C14
Share, and number, of existing homes (owned and/or managed) completed before the last financial year allocated to:
C15
How is the housing provider trying to reduce the effect of high energy costs on its residents?
Energy Efficiency Upgrades
Wandle are retrofitting homes with:
- Insulation (walls, roofs, floors) to reduce heat loss.
- Double glaze windows to improve thermal performance.
- Efficient heating systems such as heat pumps
- Installing and repairing solar panels to generate clean electricity
Leveraging national funding such as:
- Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund, Energy Company Obligation (ECO4)
Resident Engagement & Support:
- Fuel vouchers and temporary credit for those struggling with prepayment meters
- Helping Hand Fund and Winter Heating Payments for low-income residents
C16
How does the housing provider provide security of tenure for residents?
Our general approach is to provide long term tenancies to our tenants, which are secure and compatible with the type of home (including any funding conditions), the needs of the household, and the efficient use of our homes.
In most cases, following an initial starter or assured periodic tenancy, we offer an assured lifetime tenancy when these tenancies come to an end.
It is important to us that the tenancies and tenure types we issue to our tenants are sustainable and allow us to avoid any unnecessary evictions. Ending a tenancy through eviction is always a last resort.
To meet this, we offer appropriate support and advice to our tenants to ensure they are able to meet the conditions set out in their tenancy agreements. This may include financial inclusion support or other tenancy sustainment support.
We will always take consideration of any specific needs or vulnerabilities within a household when making any decision regarding a tenancy, especially when considering terminate or seek possession.
Wandle is a founding and board member of Homes for Cathy, a national group committed to ending homelessness in the UK.
Building Safety and Quality
C17
Describe the condition of the housing provider's portfolio, with reference to:
of homes for which all required gas safety checks have been carried out for 2024/25.
of homes for which all required fire risk assessments have been carried out for 2024/25.
of homes for which all required electrical safety checks have been carried out for 2024/25.
C18
What % of homes meet the national housing quality standard? Of those which fail, what is the housing provider doing to address these failings?
98.30% of homes meet the Decent Homes Standard. We have a robust planned maintenance programme in place to ensure homes meet the DHS, in line with our Asset Management Strategy.
C19
How do you manage and mitigate the risk of damp and mould for your residents?
How many cases of damp and mould were reported in the period that required action? 1314
To best manage and mitigate damp and mould, we introduced a specialised Damp and Mould team in December 2024, making sure that these reports are all triaged and handled correctly. We continue to develop our resource, with regard to Awaab’s Law, which is coming into force in phases from October 2025.
From September 2025, our Change Board will review damp and mould KPIs monthly to ensure robust oversight of our performance and response to reported issues. Our approach is to work together with residents to identify, treat and prevent damp mould in homes.
Where the presence of damp and mould in a home is identified, colleagues and contractors will be empathetic, informative and solution focused to supporting customers to address the damp and mould in their homes. This will be underpinned by an initial visit aimed at diagnosing on a root-cause analysis basis and discussing required actions and timescales with customer.
Where possible we take a proactive approach to preventing damp and mould and include supportive discussions about preventative measures. We use internal stock condition data and benchmarking to help identify properties that may be at the greatest risk of damp or mould so we are able to communicate with residents and take any necessary actions to prevent issues before they arise or materially worsen.
Resident Voice
C20:
What are the results of the housing provider's most recent tenant satisfaction survey?
All social housing providers are regulated by the Regulator for Social Housing. We reach out to our residents once a year to ask a set of questions defined by the regulator. They have set 22 measures called Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs) that all providers must publish annually. We share these measures on our website, annual report and our resident magazine.
49.8% of our residents were satisfied with our overall service for 2024/25. We know we need to do better and have therefore developed key areas within our customer service and repairs teams to improve our customer satisfaction. We have recruited repair specialists, developed a Damp and Mould team and created a new complaints procedure.
You can read our full Residents Annual Report, including our TSM results in full, for 2024/25 on the link below.
C21
What arrangements are in place to enable residents to hold management to account for the provision of services?
Resident voice is at the heart of our governance and decision making, with a resident on our Board, and four residents on our Customer Experience Committee – a direct committee of the Board.
We also have a Customer Excellence Panel where residents meet at least 4 times a year. Panel members represent the views and interests of Wandle residents, scrutinise and monitor service performance and standards, provide feedback on policies, procedures, and service delivery, influence strategic decisions and service improvement initiatives, promote transparency, trust, and accountability and strengthen the link between resident involvement and Wandle’s Board as well as ad-hoc opportunities to get involved on a one-off or ongoing basis.
Our focus is our Repairs Transformation journey. Working in partnership the Repairs and Customer Empowerment teams have established a Repairs Improvement Panel consisting of engaged residents, many of whom have had experience of poor service from repairs. Working together with residents we plan to design a service that works for them. Residents' insights and experiences will help shape the changes we make, ensuring they reflect what matters most to all our service users.
We regularly share performance information in Wandle News, as well as our annual residents report, and on our website. Our Customer Empowerment team is focusing on strengthening the Customer Excellence Panel, building better lines of communication between the panel, senior management and the rest of the business. We are working in partnership with colleagues in complaints and customer insight to identify areas of dissatisfaction and designing targeted programmes of events to increase our presence in the communities we serve. We are supporting our colleagues across the organisation to create policies and procedures that ensure the customer voice is central to all we do.
C22
In the last 12 months, in how many complaints has the national Ombudsman determined that maladministration took place?
For the year 2024/25 we received 51 determinations, including 127 maladministration findings.
We are always transparent about findings, and we know we don’t always get things right.
In October 2024 the Housing Ombudsman Service notified us of their intention to investigate our complaints handling due to the high rates of determinations of maladministration and severe maladministration of the complaints we received. This investigation was closed following a constructive engagement process, where we demonstrated that we recognised the issues identified and have a robust improvement plan in place.
We devised a new Complaints team, who implemented our complaints project. The project delivered a new complaints procedure, new training for all staff and new compensation guidance in line with the Housing Ombudsman requirements. We are now seeing improvements in complaint handling timescales and satisfaction with responses and appropriate redress for customers.
Resident Support
C23
What are the key support services that the housing provider offers to its residents? How successful are these services in improving outcomes?
Helping Hand Fund
Each year we create a Helping Hand Fund to support residents financially who are on very low incomes or experiencing exceptional financial hardship. The fund assists our residents in financial areas not related to rent, in the for of vouchers to buy food and household goods.
In 2024/25 the fund supported 305 applications, and £135,676 grants were issued in total.
Estate Improvement Fund
Our Estate Improvement Fund was set up in June 2020 to deliver much needed works to our estates. Our projects have been welcomed by our residents and has delivered improvement to their communal areas and communities. In 2024/25 the fund supported 16 projects on 14 estates.
Welfare rights and benefits advice
When a need is identified by any colleague across the organisation, Wandle has a dedicated Welfare Rights Adviser who can support customers in the following ways:
- New tenancy affordability checks
- Full benefits check/budget review/income maximisation
- DHP claims
- New benefit claims
- Challenge benefit decisions
- Tribunal appeals work
- Signposting/referrals to external debt advice/food bank etc
- Referrals to internal Helping Hand Fund
Between 2023/24 between 150-200 Wandle households were referred. This secured a total of £275k new and additional benefits including a £90k reduction in arrears.
Resident support activities
- Safeguarding
- Referrals to support agencies
- MARAC meetings
- Domestic Abuse
Partnership working
- Local authority housing groups
- Provide housing for specialised support services, such as Evolve.
- Work with UC Partnership Managers, Case Managers, JCPs, and local authority HB teams to support vulnerable claimants and review complex housing cases.
We also provide tenancy visits, host resident meetings, provide translation services and have accessibility support to support our residents.
Placemaking
C24
Describe the housing provider's community investment activities, and how the housing provider is contributing to positive neighbourhood outcomes for the communities in which its homes are located.
Wandle runs and supports a number of community initiatives rooted in the places our residents call home. Here we share just a few:
Greenfingers Community Garden Winner
“Soul Food Garden”, Wingate Crescent, Croydon
Residents of Wingate Crescent were tired of a disused piece of land at the end of their road being a centre of anti-social behaviour. They were granted permission from the landowners to clear the land, and use it to create a community garden.
The space is now unrecognisable, full of planted crops - and a large tree house. The garden is run by residents in their spare time and all the crops are distributed to neighbours.
The garden won last year's Greenfingers community garden category. The prize was £300, which has all been put towards maintaining and expanding their work on the garden.
Intergenerational programme at Queen Elizabeth House run in partnership with InCommon.
Primary school children from a local school are brought together with residents of Queen Elizabeth House to attend monthly workshops where they learn about themselves and each other and take part in creative projects together. The programme is not only a great way to bring generations together but also an opportunity for residents of QEH to spend time with each other and foster a sense of community. Last year the children enjoyed their time with the residents and invited them to the school’s end of year concert.
InCommon connects groups of young people with their older neighbours to learn and build friendships together. The activities they run help to boost older people's wellbeing, support children's social and emotional learning, and build more age-friendly communities for all.
What does home mean to you? Hoarding artwork in Summerstown
We worked with our partner InCommon to create artwork for the hoardings at the Summerstown site in southwest London. The children from Belleville Primary School who have been visiting Queen Elizabeth House for the last few years, provided artwork around the theme of "what home means", which were printed on all the hoardings around the Summerstown site.
A safe place to store sustainable transport - Ainsdale House
One of our residents used a bicycle as her primary form of transport, including to and from work, but had nowhere to store it safely.
She was padlocking her bicycle to the communal hallway railings, which was causing safety concerns. We needed to make sure the bicycle wasn’t stored in a communal hallway but saw that the lack of a suitable alternative was causing the issue.
We consulted residents on the fitting of a lockable bike shelter, which residents were in favour of, and we got it fitted as soon as we could. The resident was delighted with the resolution, and the bike shelter is now well used by all residents in the block!
