The Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) recently carried out its routine inspection of Karbon Homes. The inspection included our subsidiaries 54North Homes and Leazes Homes.
It’s part of the RSH’s regular inspection programme to assess how housing associations are performing.
The RSH is an independent organisation that helps to oversee housing associations like ours. Its role is to make sure that we are financially sound, well-governed and making decisions in the right way. It also checks that we’re providing safe, good-quality homes and that we listen to, and involve, customers in shaping our services.
These inspections are a way for the RSH to make sure housing associations are meeting these important standards, and we wanted to share our outcome with you, our customers.
We’re pleased to have once again achieved the highest possible ratings for viability (V1) and governance (G1). This means the RSH is confident that we’re financially strong and well-governed, and that this means we can deliver our strategic and charitable goals.
We’ve also met the consumer standards, with a rating of C2, which is how well we meet the needs and protect the rights of our customers, particularly in areas such as safety, repairs and customer involvement.
We're pleased that some of our key strengths have been recognised in this area, including:
Keeping homes and communal areas safe
Maintaining accurate records of the condition of our homes to guide future investment
Treating customers with fairness and respect
Involving customers in decision making, including providing a range of opportunities to influence our strategies, policies and services, with effective scrutiny arrangements in place
Providing a range of relevant and accessible information to customers, including about our performance
Clear and compliant complaints handling.
At the same time, we know there are areas where we must do better, particularly around the timeliness of repairs and deepening our understanding of the diverse needs of our customers.
The RSH acknowledged our focus on strengthening our repairs service and our work to involve customers when planning the improvements.
While our repairs service continues to receive high customer satisfaction overall, and emergency repairs are managed quickly, we know that our non-urgent repairs are taking too long. We set ourselves very high standards in this area to ensure customers get the service they rightly expect as quickly as possible. Where we haven't met these, we're actively working to enhance our performance.
To help to address this, we’ve already recruited more trade colleagues and sub-contractors. This has meant that we were able to complete an additional 6,000 repairs this last year, resulting in shorter wait times and improving our service for customers.
We’re also continuing to enhance our understanding of the diverse needs of our customers through our ‘Getting to Know You’ project, which was acknowledged by the RSH, and will remain a key focus of over the coming months.
We’ll continue to keep you updated on our improvements, and we hope you’ll start to see the benefits of these improvements soon.
Over the Christmas period, payments made online between 24 December and 1 January will not show in your balance or appear in your online account until on or after 2 January 2026.
To avoid paying more than once, please check with your bank before making another payment.
We’re sorry for any inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your patience. The good news is that we’re working to make sure online payments update instantly in the New Year.
⚠️ Amber weather warning – service update
The Met Office has issued an amber weather warning for parts of the North East of England on Thursday with frequent wintry showers and significant snow expected. This may cause disruption.
Please bear with us if it takes a little longer than usual to reach you. The driving conditions are challenging, and the safety of our customers and colleagues is our top priority.
If you need to report an emergency repair, something that poses an immediate risk to your health, safety, or security, our out of hours service is available.
The Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) recently carried out its routine inspection of Karbon Homes. The inspection included our subsidiaries 54North Homes and Leazes Homes.
It’s part of the RSH’s regular inspection programme to assess how housing associations are performing.
The RSH is an independent organisation that helps to oversee housing associations like ours. Its role is to make sure that we are financially sound, well-governed and making decisions in the right way. It also checks that we’re providing safe, good-quality homes and that we listen to, and involve, customers in shaping our services.
These inspections are a way for the RSH to make sure housing associations are meeting these important standards, and we wanted to share our outcome with you, our customers.
We’re pleased to have once again achieved the highest possible ratings for viability (V1) and governance (G1). This means the RSH is confident that we’re financially strong and well-governed, and that this means we can deliver our strategic and charitable goals.
We’ve also met the consumer standards, with a rating of C2, which is how well we meet the needs and protect the rights of our customers, particularly in areas such as safety, repairs and customer involvement.
We're pleased that some of our key strengths have been recognised in this area, including:
Maintaining accurate records of the condition of our homes to guide future investment
Treating customers with fairness and respect
Involving customers in decision making, including providing a range of opportunities to influence our strategies, policies and services, with effective scrutiny arrangements in place
Providing a range of relevant and accessible information to customers, including about our performance
Clear and compliant complaints handling.
At the same time, we know there are areas where we must do better, particularly around the timeliness of repairs and deepening our understanding of the diverse needs of our customers.
The RSH acknowledged our focus on strengthening our repairs service and our work to involve customers when planning the improvements.
While our repairs service continues to receive high customer satisfaction overall, and emergency repairs are managed quickly, we know that our non-urgent repairs are taking too long. We set ourselves very high standards in this area to ensure customers get the service they rightly expect as quickly as possible. Where we haven't met these, we're actively working to enhance our performance.
To help to address this, we’ve already recruited more trade colleagues and sub-contractors. This has meant that we were able to complete an additional 6,000 repairs this last year, resulting in shorter wait times and improving our service for customers.
We’re also continuing to enhance our understanding of the diverse needs of our customers through our ‘Getting to Know You’ project, which was acknowledged by the RSH, and will remain a key focus of over the coming months.
We’ll continue to keep you updated on our improvements, and we hope you’ll start to see the benefits of these improvements soon.
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Christmas Holiday Hours 25/26