Rights and responsibilities

Rights and responsibilities	Where can I find out more?
Newlon and our residents both have a range of rights and responsibilities for maintaining homes, communal areas and any common parts. This includes our responsibility to maintain and repair homes and communal areas. A detailed list of repairs responsibilities can be found in our repairs leaflet in the publications section of this website. More details on our responsibilities and those that you have as a resident are detailed in your tenancy agreement. These could vary depending on where you live or the type of tenancy you hold. Other important responsibilities we have include maintaining your home to the Decent Homes Standard including meeting the Homes for Human Habitation Amendment 2018. The Decent Homes Standard is a set of minimum criteria that social housing homes must meet, and a similar standard is being extended to private rental properties. The standard requires properties to be in a reasonable state of repair, have modern facilities and services, be warm and energy-efficient, and meet the minimum safety standards of the Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS). We report our Decent Homes performance annually as part of our Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs) scorecard, and in our annual report to residents, which you can find in our performance page. In the last year all of our homes met the Decent Homes Standard. We are also required to meet the Regulator of Social Housing’s Consumer Standards. You can find more information about the standards here. Our lead for dealing with standards is Sarah Shaw. We are also required to meet the Housing Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code and you can find detailed information about this and our approach to responding to and learning from complaints in our complaints section on this site. Sarah Shaw – Housing Services Director is responsible for overseeing compliance with the Regulator of Social Housing’s Consumer Standards and for complaints handling performance. You can find details of our Executive Team and Board and their areas of responsibility can be found in the about us section of this site. Being a good neighbour One of your main responsibilities as a Newlon resident is to be a good neighbour so that you and those around you can enjoy living in a safe and secure environment. Every resident has the right to enjoy living in their home in peace and comfort. This means that you, and all other residents, must show consideration, think of others and be a ‘good neighbour’. Within your tenancy agreement, there is also the ‘good neighbour agreement’. The agreement states that neither you, anyone living with you or a visitor should cause your neighbours any problems or harassment. For more information, you can visit our being a good neighbour page.
You can find our lettings and tenancy policy which explains the types and lengths of tenancies we offer, the circumstances for fixed-term tenancies, and information about important areas including succession and appeals in the lettings and allocations section of this website.
Consulting with residents Newlon is required to consult with residents when considering significant changes in the way we provide services. This includes ensuring we provide residents with fair and accessible information in good time and being able to demonstrate how their views shaped our decisions.	We are committed to working closely with residents to design services together and to ensure they are involved and consulted on any significant service changes. Consultation can take a range of forms including formal consultation such as Section 20 notices, planning consultations or Estate Regeneration Ballot proposals. In other areas we work with residents through think tanks, and involving them in recruitment and procurement to design services and ensure residents’ views have shaped our decisions. More details about how we work closely with residents to consult on service changes and design services together can be found in our getting involved section.
If we become aware of an area where we have significantly failed to comply with the regulator’s consumer standards our lead officer for compliance, Sarah Shaw, would be responsible for ensuring we self-refer to the regulator in a timely manner.