One Housing news

Having joined The Riverside Group as a subsidiary in December 2021, our Board is now proposing to begin integration into Riverside through a “Transfer of Engagements”. The proposed transfer would mean that all our assets and liabilities, including ownership of our homes, would transfer to Riverside and they would become your new landlord.

We believe that a transfer to Riverside is the best option for our residents and our local communities. It would mean that:

• You continue to live in the same home with services provided locally by the teams you already know.
• Your tenancy/lease agreement will stay the same – only the name of your landlord will change to The Riverside Group Ltd. Your rights, including rents and service charges, whether you are a tenant, shared owner or leaseholder, will be protected.
• Riverside will continue to deliver the pledges it made when One Housing joined the Group, including the £1 billion for improving and repairing homes over the next 5 years and the £2.5m per year to support communities and livelihoods.
• We continue our commitment to ongoing improvement of services and the delivery of our Resident Engagement Strategy that we have worked with you to develop.

The six-week consultation period on the proposed “Transfer of Engagements” ends at 4pm on Wednesday 1 February 2023.

This is your chance to share with us your views on the proposed transfer to Riverside.

How to have your say

You should have received a letter inviting you to share your comments and feedback on the proposal along with a copy of Frequently Asked Questions and information on how to respond.

Each letter has been coded with a unique ID that is personal to you. Whichever way you decide to respond, your comments will go to BMG, our survey partner, and will be confidential.

If you have questions, or accessibility or translation requirements which are not met in the letter you received, please call BMG on 0800 358 0337.

What happens next

Once the consultation has concluded, we will provide you with feedback on the comments received and explain how we have taken account of your views in coming to our final decision.

Should the transfer to Riverside go ahead, we, One Housing Group, will serve you with a formal notice confirming the transfer and notifying you of any changes to where and how you should pay your rent and service charges.

If you would like to give us feedback, we must receive postal returns by Monday 30 January 2023 and online and telephone surveys by 4pm on Wednesday 1 February 2023.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Our Tenant and Residents’ Associations (TRAs) help to make sure that residents have a voice and can share their views. By being involved with your local TRA, you can stay informed about issues affecting your local area, organise neighbourhood events and activities, and discuss service improvements with One Housing on a regular basis.

To help you set up a TRA in your local area, we have developed a TRA toolkit. The document acts as a handy guide and provides information about our Resident Engagement Officers, funding and practical help, positions of responsibility, constitution and local service agreements.

Download our toolkit

During the festive season, there will be some changes to our customer service centre opening hours. If you need to speak to us urgently to report an emergency repair, please call us on 0300 123 9966.

Please note that our office at Castalia Square will be closed during the festive period. Our Millwall office will be open on 28, 29 and 30 December between 9am-1pm. We will resume regular operating hours from Tuesday 3 January 2023.

We work to ensure our homes are maintained to a high standard and are safe, secure and warm for our tenants.

To do this, we must carry out a variety of checks on your property each year, including a gas safety check to make sure your appliances are safe to use, as faulty or unsafe gas appliances can cause carbon monoxide poisoning.

Your home has been fitted with a carbon monoxide detector and it will activate if there is too much carbon monoxide in the air in your property. Please note that the alarm needs to be present in any room where there is a gas appliance fitted. It’s not required for a cooker, so a kitchen is excluded unless that’s where your boiler is fitted.

If you have been affected by carbon monoxide poisoning you may feel dizzy, sick, tired, breathless, suffer chest pains or you may even lose consciousness.

If you think there is carbon monoxide in your home, please call the National Gas Emergency Service on 0800 111 999 immediately.

If you’re a leaseholder or shared owner, it’s your responsibility to make sure that a carbon monoxide detector is fitted and the gas appliances in your home are safe. We recommend you get a gas safety check once a year, too. If you want to arrange a gas safety check in your home, you can check the official list of gas registered engineers on the Gas Safe Register https://www.gassaferegister.co.uk.

We are living in difficult times, where the price of energy, food and bills are all rising steeply.

The Greater London Assembly (GLA) has launched a cost of living hub, which provides signposting as well as advice on maximising residents’ income, help with keeping warm, and help for residents in financial crisis.

On 1 December last year, One Housing and Riverside officially joined forces, forming a partnership which we believe will make us Better and Stronger together.

Since then, we’ve been working together to form one fully merged organisation as well as working to deliver on six key pledges we made.

One of those key pledges was to keep our promises and be accountable to you, publishing an annual report on our progress.

Read on to find out what we’ve done this year, how we’re delivering against our five other pledges and what we’ll be doing for the rest of the year as we continue our journey towards the creation of a fully merged organisation.

Read our Annual Report

During the festive season, there will be some changes to our customer service centre opening hours. If you need to speak to us urgently to report an emergency repair, please call us on 0300 123 9966.

Please note that our office at Castalia Square will be closed during the festive period. Our Millwall office will be open on 28, 29 and 30 December between 9am-1pm. We will resume regular operating hours from Tuesday 3 January 2023.

If you need help to make your money and pension choices clearer, please visit Money Helper website.

The website features a range of videos, tools and calculators, all of which are free. For example, it includes a money manager tool for those on Universal Credit and credit card and loan calculators.

During our Resident Engagement Strategy consultation residents told us they would like to get involved in shaping, scrutinising, and improving our services.

Following your feedback, we were pleased to support residents to create a new Scrutiny Panel which will review customer-facing services and recommend improvements.

The Panel Members held their first meeting on Wednesday 16 November 2022 and will shortly be deciding on their first inspection area. They'll need your help to learn more about how residents receive our services and to undertake the inspections. If you're interested in mystery shopping or feeding back about services, please contact our Resident Engagement Team via residentengagements@onehousing.co.uk.

As fear of crime is among the very top concerns of Waltham Forest residents, the local Council and the Metropolitan Police have partnered to launch Pop-up Police Stations in six libraries across the borough.

This new initiative will give residents the weekly opportunity to engage directly with their local police service and Council officers in an informal setting.

Resident will be able to find a Pop-up Police Station nearby and share their concerns regarding community safety, report issues and get crime prevention and safeguarding advice from police and Council officers.

Further information of key dates/times and locations can be found using this link: walthamforest.gov.uk/pop-uppolicestations