As part of our journey towards merging with Watford Community Housing, and becoming a Community Gateway Housing Association on 1 June 2026, we’re making some important changes to how you can get involved and have your voice heard.
Before we explain what’s next, we want to start with a sincere thank you.
Your involvement in Thrive Customer Voice has been invaluable. Your honesty, ideas, and lived experiences have shaped our services and helped us understand what matters most to you. Whether you completed a quick survey, joined a panel, took part in workshops, or shared detailed feedback, you made a real difference, and we’re incredibly grateful.
As we move into this next chapter, our approach to customer voice is evolving.
Thrive Customer Voice will be coming to an end, but this is not the end of customer involvement, it’s the beginning of something stronger. We’re building on everything that made Thrive Customer Voice successful and moving to a more empowering model: the Community Gateway.
This new approach gives you:
- More power in decisions that shape your homes and communities
- More choice in how and when you get involved
- More influence through a formal membership structure
A look back at how Thrive Customer Voice has helped shape our services:
2025 activities
We gave members the opportunity to let us know what they think should be included in our Annual Report for Tenants. Thank you to the 50 customers who completed the survey.
76 of you took part and told us that you want to know the main reasons for complaints, how quickly we resolve them, and what changes we’ve made as a result.
We invited members to share their thoughts on our Aids & Adaptations Policy. Thank you to the 39 customers who participated in the survey! Your feedback is helping us make the policy clearer, fairer, and more accessible for everyone who may need support to live safely and independently at home.
41 customers took part, representing a mix of leaseholders (56.1%) and shared owners (43.9%).
The main things you told us mattered the most were:
- Value for money
- Quality of services
- Communication
- Safety and neighbourhood
We invited members to share their thoughts on a new contractor to support our in-house repairs team for the next 12 months. To make sure we choose the right supplier, we wanted to understand what matters most to customers when it comes to repairs in your home and building. You told us that things like clear and timely communication, punctuality, respect and quality of work was important.
You told us you wanted simpler, clearer language, more real-life examples to show how decisions are made, and better guidance on how individual circumstances are considered.
We listened. Your insights have directly influenced the way we’ve updated the policy, and they’ve also helped us create a new set of questions and answers to make everything easier to understand. These will be available very soon.
2024 activities
We gave members the opportunity to let us know what they think should be included in our Annual Report for Tenants. Thank you to the 216 customers who completed the survey.
As part of our regular policy review schedule, we asked Thrive Customer Voice members for feedback on our current Downsizing and Neighbourhood Management Policies.
In September, customers got involved with interviewing and scoring contractors questions. They valued clear communication and appreciated contractors who were knowledgeable about the areas they were working in.
Ensuring your voices are heard and your involvement is a key part of our decision-making process, and we were delighted that Thrive Customer Voice members participated by sitting in on interviews and helping to score answers.
Members were sent a survey to identify what qualities were valued most for our next Chief Executive Officer.
Read on to find out your views.
As part of our annual report, we asked customers about their current experience with the myThrive hub.
Customers reported that the myThrive hub can sometimes be slow and some experience crashes, which is understandably frustrating.
Customers took part in online and in person sessions to help us shape our repairs service and the time it takes to get an appointment.
Read about the session and what we discussed
View our published repairs timescales here
In June, customers gave feedback on our cleaning and grounds maintenance services as we get ready to renew the contracts. We found out what customers would like to see from the new contracts and how the service can improve moving forward.
108 tenant members completed this year’s survey.
- 68% read the Annual Report last year
- 71.2% of readers felt the content was relevant to them
- 91.8% of readers said it was easy to read and understand
This year it’s very clear you are most interested in what we are doing to improve our homes and to make them more energy efficient.
Acting on your feedback...
It was great to get together with a small group of customers in July. We enjoyed tea, cake and had really useful conversations about the way we manage damp and mould in our homes.
To start the event, we shared our recently enhanced process for damp and mould cases.
Keeping a close eye
One of the main strengths of our process is making sure every single report or mention of damp and mould is recorded and monitored until both the customer and Thrive is satisfied that it is resolved. On the whole, customers felt this is an effective way of managing cases and we’ll be sharing details of the process on our website soon.
What, when and how?..
All our policies are regularly reviewed to make sure they are fair and effective. On this occasion we asked members as well as non-members who have experienced ASB to give us some input before we get to work.
Here’s what they told us...
We want our members to feel like their input is making a difference. The results are in, and here’s what 136 members said.
- 49% feel their views are listened to (30% neither agreed or disagreed)
- 38% agree it’s easy to have a say (29% neither agreed or disagreed)
- 34% feel their views are acted on (26.5% neither agreed or disagreed)
- 38% trust that their input is taken seriously (28.7% neither agreed or disagreed)
Looking closer at these results, around 66% of members are satisfied with their experience as a member.
So we can understand where we may be able to improve, we will be contacting those who responded negatively to tell us more. If you have any insight you’d like to share, let us know at www.thrivehomes.org.uk/message-tcv or contact us in your usual way.
The survey results are in and here's what customers said!
- The main reasons you do not feel safe in your home are because of anti-social behaviour issues, security concerns with communal entrance doors and outstanding repairs.
- You’d like more updates from us about what is happening in your area, how to stay safe when living alone, what support is available for vulnerable customers, gas and electrical safety, and how we manage anti-social behaviour and building security.
- You think we can improve by communicating better with you when you report repairs and anti-social behaviour issues to us, taking action against tenants who are causing problems and fixing doors.
- You do not trust us to do what we say we will do and this is a reason why you don’t always read our updates.
Acting on this feedback, we have:
- Planned a session to develop a ‘Good Neighbour Agreement’ with customers to help prevent some anti-social behaviour issues.
- Updated our website with a way to find wellbeing support near your area at thrivehomes.org.uk/wellbeing
- Contacted those who have said we have not resolved an issue that is causing them to feel unsafe to understand if there is more we need to do inline with our service standards.
We are also:
- Working with our colleagues to ensure we do what we say we’ll do.
- Keeping a close eye on repairs that may affect building security and working with contractors to make improvements to the service.
- Planning to share some stories to explain how Thrive has different powers to the police and local authority, and what action we can take against tenants causing anti-social behaviour.
Using feedback from our customers, we’ve developed the Good Neighbour Guide!
This information will be shared with customers and members to help prevent anti-social behaviour (ASB).
2022 activities
What was the feedback?
Looking at everyone's collective input, members told us they are particularly interested in hearing about:
- what improvements we have carried out to our homes (80.1%)
- customer satisfaction (62.7%%)
- how income is spent (60.2%%)
- how we act on feedback (57.2%)
- complaints performance (56.6%)
They also suggested new topics, and these included:
- how we make our homes more energy efficient
- anti-social behaviour (ASB).
69% of told us they are interested in hearing about how we compare to other social landlords.
How are we acting on your views?
The Annual Report is one of the ways you can find out how we're performing, so it should include things you're interested in.
We're pleased to share that we will be including all of the topics as listed above in the next report - including two new features on how we are making our homes more efficient and anti-social behaviour.
This is available our website now at: thrivehomes.org.uk/annualreport
8.7% of responses told us they weren't aware of the Annual Report, so we will be planning this into our regular communications including your next email newsletter in November. Make sure you're subscribed to receiving these at: thrivehomes.org.uk/updates
If you have an idea as to how we can better raise awareness of this report, leave us a comment at: thrivehomes.org.uk/give-feedback
What was the feedback?
99 customers took part in the survey.
Looking at your survey responses collectively, the areas that customers are most satisfied are home ownership and moving home.
The areas with least satisfaction were:
- Responsive repairs (33.3%)
- Complaint handling (30%)
- Estate management (19%)
To strengthen these findings, we have also looked at customer satisfaction data from April 2022 - November 2022. These results tell us that:
- 59% feel we do what we say we will
- 50% say we listen and act on their input
- 62%% agree our services are effective and efficient
- 62% trust Thrive
- 65% find us easy to deal with.
To strengthen these findings, we have also looked at customer satisfaction data from April 2022 - November 2022. These results tell us that:
- 59% feel we do what we say we will
- 50% say we listen and act on their input
- 62%% agree our services are effective and efficient
- 62% trust Thrive
- 65% find us easy to deal with.
How are we acting on your views?
The areas listed above are now our key focuses.
In January 2023 we will be holding a series of workshops with Thrive colleagues (including senior members) to identify what is required to improve each of these areas. This could involve further workshops with customers or other activities to shape the way forward.
Once we have identified the needs, we will share our plans with you and how you can get involved.
To make sure changes are making a difference, we will continue to closely monitor our satisfaction feedback and use this to understand what is having a positive impact and where we may still need to improve.
What was the feedback?
Looking at your survey responses collectively:
- 63.3% said that information they receive about building safety is clear
- 34.7% told us they have received safety communications from Thrive within the last year
- 91.8% knew what to do if a fire breaks out inside their flat and 46.9% knew to stay inside their flat if a fire is elsewhere in their building
- 57.1% know how to check their fire door is in working order
- 59.2% feel safe in their home.
We also learned that some repairs are taking longer than expected when we are unable to contact customers.
During the session, it was highlighted that customers may not be aware of the assistance available to access content on our website when English isn't their first language.
How are we acting on your views?
Keeping you informed about the latest safety advice is important
That's why we send out at least four email newsletters and two postal newsletters every year containing updates on building safety.
One of your suggestions is to use more animation and video content to promote safety messaging. We are pleased to share we are acting on this by planning the production of a short video about the ways we can keep your building safe together.
As part of this, we hope to raise awareness of:
- what to do in the event of a fire
- how to check your fire door is in working order.
Watch out for this in the coming months!
Whilst this may make content more engaging, we are still concerned that only 34.7% have received safety information in the last year, so we will be working with Thrive Customer Voice members to understand this further.
Being able to easily access our services is part of our offer to you
That's why we have invested in assistive technology on our website so you can translate, enlarge and convert content to audio depending on your individual needs.
We also have access to a translation service during phone calls and home visits.
Recognising some customers aren't aware of this service, we'll be reminding customers about this in our upcoming communications.
Simply access this tool by clicking the icon as shown below on our website. 
Doing what we say we will
This event highlighted there are times where reported repairs are taking longer than expected when we cannot get hold of the customer.
It's important we don't lose sight of these repairs, so we will be reviewing our internal processes and making sure that we are monitoring the progress of all works including those outsourced to contractors.
You should be able to be safe and feel safe in your home
Where you've told us you're experiencing anti-social behaviour in your building, a member of our team will be in touch directly.
We are committed to working with you to manage and minimise ASB where we can and you can find out more about this at: thrivehomes.org.uk/asb
Answering your questions
Responding to your input, we've summarised all questions asked before and during the event and our answers.