National Customer Council

Pamela is a shared owner who lives in our South London region.  Pamela is also a member of our Customer Services Committee where she is one of three resident representatives.

Ashley moved into her MTVH property in Aylesbury in 2017. Since moving there, she has helped to improve the sense of community by supporting her neighbours with food parcels and transport for those going to work.

Ashley cares passionately about her community, improving repairs services and ensuring residents live in safe and secure housing. Ashley joined the Customer Council because, as a resident, she would like to have the resident voice heard; she is also the Chair of our North London Regional Panel.

Beryl is mum of two grown up sons and proud grandmother of 2 lovely grandchildren. She moved into her home with MTVH in East Leake in 2023 and decided to join the Customer Council to meet new people, to keep in touch with communities and to support residents to have a positive experience with MTVH. She’s previously worked in hospitality, accounting and in the charity sector.

George moved into his MTVH flat in South London in 2009 and has been involved in service improvement both in his area and nationwide since. He has extensive experience in communication design, photography and filmmaking in the private, education and healthcare sectors. George is also the chair of the South London Regional Panel.

As someone who has worked in customer service roles for many years, Kerry is passionate about the importance of listening to customers and working with them to improve services.  Her experience in customer service along with her many years as an MTVH resident in Nottingham are two of the main reasons she decided to join the Customer Council.

Melanie is a homeowner living in a new-build MTVH property in Clapham Park since 2011. Melanie joined the Customer Council to work with MTVH to improve customer services and ensure all MTVH residents have their repairs and concerns dealt with as efficiently and quickly as possible. She is an active member of MTVH Customer Engagement focus groups.

Sasha is a mum to two lovely girls and became an MTVH resident in Wembley Park through mutual exchange in 2022. She has worked in a range of customer focused roles and is currently working in a secondary school where she supports the Committee of Trustees.

Sasha joined the Customer Council so that she could support MTVH to improve services and find ways to communicate positively with residents.

Nikki is a general needs resident who lives in Cambridgeshire.

Adam is a resident who lives in one of our keyworker homes in London.

Amit is a shared owner who lives in London.

Read the Customer Council minutes from 5th September 2026.

Read the Customer Council minutes from 30th May 2026.

For our Q4 Customer Council Meeting, we met via MS Teams on Tuesday 17th February 2026, it began by welcoming and introducing Customer Council members and MTVH colleagues who were in attendance.

Chair & Vice Chair updates including updates from CSC and G15 Residents’ Group

Our Customer Council Chair, Pamela shared updates from recent Customer Services Committee discussions, including introductions to the new Interim Executive Director of Customer Services and the Chief Information Officer. She highlighted progress on the Customer Voice Framework Refresh and Fit for the Future, positive discussions on complaints with strong ownership and learning focus, also providing an update on G15 Residents Group activity, with an outcome awaited on the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government Social Housing Innovation Fund bid.

Regional Chairs’ Update from Second Regional Panel Conference
George, our South London Regional Panel Chair shared feedback that some panel members were unhappy with how the panels ending was communicated, although reassurance was provided through opportunities to join new forums. This was echoed by Ashley, our North London Regional Panel Chair, who agreed with George’s comments. Nikki, our Midlands Regional Panel Chair reported positive feedback from her group, with many keen to sign up to new forums.

Benchmarking Satisfaction Measures (TSM)
Vicky Bywaters, our Director of Strategy Performance and Projects, provided a brief update on the MTVH strategy, noting a formal launch in May and further detail to be shared with the Customer Council on 30 May 2026. Vicky then moved on to MTVH’s TSM benchmarking and noted that it shows strong overall performance, particularly for rented homes, with opportunities to learn from peers. Challenges remain for homeowners and shared owners, and consistency and communication were highlighted as key drivers of customer perception. It was confirmed that TSM data informs service improvements and the Customer Voice Framework, with resident feedback used to drive tracked actions.

Customer Voice Framework Update
Lynda, our Head of Customer Voice shared an update on the progress of our Customer Voice Framework refresh. Lynda started off by reassuring members that wider engagement opportunities will replace Regional Panels. The framework has been approved and will go to Board in March, with Terms of Reference to be co-developed with the Customer Council. Forums are expected to launch in Q3 2026, with a refreshed Customer Council format in early 2027, alongside continued focus on scrutiny, communication, and homeownership issues.

Home Visits Update
Maxine Gordon our Director of Housing provided an overview of the Home Visit programme, following a successful pilot and its formal launch for 2025–26. The programme supports regulatory expectations, helps identify resident needs and vulnerabilities, and strengthens trust through proactive, nonenforcement visits. Learning from the rollout has improved access and communication, with feedback from Local Housing Managers and residents informing ongoing improvements and future efficiency, including a move to digital recording. Maxine also presented an overview of the annual anti-social behaviour and hate crime report, outlining definitions, response times, and support offered to all parties.

Continuous Learning Scrutiny Update
Megan Gee, our Customer Influence & Engagement Manager shared an update on scrutiny activity, noting fewer reviews due to the framework refresh, but highlighting that previous recommendations have already driven improvements, particularly in communal repairs and ASB. Recent reviews led to clearer planned works communications, improved accessibility of complaints reporting, and ongoing consideration of CCTV coverage, with further investigation to follow.

For our fourth and final meeting of 2025, we met via MS Teams on Saturday 22 November, with welcome introductions of Customer Council Members and MTVH colleagues who were in attendance.

Vice Chair Updates on G15 Resident Group and Customer Services Committee

Our Customer Council Vice Chair, Adam Popat covered an array of actions and topics from our August meeting earlier in the year primarily focusing on our commitments to building safety, repair efficiency mapping, home visit transparency around getting to know our customers and implementing our new Customer Experience Strategy.

G15 Residents’ Group and Customer Services Committee

Our Customer Council Chair, Pamela Newman has been busy engaging with G15 and GLA and housing panels some of the topics include:

• Responses to consultations on Decent Homes and Rent Convergence.
• Updates on Awaab’s Law implementation and MTVH’s Customer Experience Strategic Plan.
• Focus on complaints handling improvements and vulnerability awareness.

Regional Chair’s Updates

Customer Influence & Engagement Manager, Megan Gee provided an overdue of the feedback received since August on Regional Panels. Overall there was a strong call from residents for MTVH to improve communication, transparency and training for staff to be able to resolve queries more effectively.

This followed into an update surrounding the proposed refresh of Customer Voice Framework with five pillars focusing on Governance, Scrutiny, Influence, Hearing Every Voice and Tools for the Job. These changes will be implemented later in 2026 with revised changes that will put emphasis on stronger local engagement, new resident forums, clearer remits for formal groups, and improved communication.

Executive Director of Property Update

The Executive Director of Property shared updates following actions taken away from the August 2025 Customer Council Meeting, these include:

• Building Safety Act 2022: Compliance for high-rise buildings 18 meters high or 17 stories brought into effect since the Grenfell disaster, introduction of “golden thread” for data where everything regarding the makeup of a building is stored and updated for continuity and £15,000 regulator charge per building assessment.
• Decarbonisation: MTVH aims for 95% of it’s homes to be to receive EPC C rating by 2030, this comes with a £28m investment largely grant-funded.
• Efficiency: Issues with Dynamic Resource Scheduling (DRS) for appointment booking have been identified and improvements are being worked to consider proximity to other appointments for a more intelligent and efficient service. This we hope will reduce operative travel time and our carbon footprint.

Customer Experience & Complaints

Our Director of Customer Experience, Serena Heathcote shared some welcome updates centred around our Launch of the “Our Promise to You” section on MTVH website for transparency surrounding our complaints performance, these include:

• Complaint volumes up 15% in Q2 with Ombudsman cases also seeing a rise of 30%.
• Extensions on complaints has reduced from 40% to 28% with a target of reaching 10% by the end of March 2026.
• Data analysis and focus on top complaint trends and compensation costs are being reviewed to find the key area’s for improvement.

Regulatory Inspection

Our Head of Customer Voice, Lynda Davis shared that MTVH scored G2/V2/C2 highlighting that as an organisation we are compliant but needs improvement. They provided some great feedback on how we can achieve our goal of G1 & C1 ahead of our next inspection.

These include better emphasis on Board Member oversight, continued focus on reducing complaint extensions, tackling a repairs backlog, communication, trust, and improving home standards.

Continuous Learning Scrutiny Review Updates

Megan rounded things off nicely with the topics our residents chose to scrutinise this year featuring Planned Works Letter and CCTV in MTVH Communities. We want to thank everyone for their input as we have received some fantastic feedback from diverse communities across the UK. These recommendations include:

• Clearer language in Planned letters, reduction in unnecessarily alarming issues such as asbestos.
• Localised policies and procedures for and greater efforts to improve community safety.

Out next step is to assess the feasibility of these and publish a report by spring to highlight the steps we’ve taken.