This year’s event – held at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Birmingham - got off to a fantastic start with an African drumming workshop in recognition of Black History Month.

It brought together involved customers from all the Partnership companies, both to celebrate their involvement and to give them the opportunity to influence the development of our business plan.

Customers told us our priorities should be to:

• Make repairs and anti-social behaviour our top priorities
• Deliver services that provide value for money and are right first time
• Demonstrate value for money in what we do
• Maintain our homes to meet the needs of current residents
• Help residents understand the new benefit regime
• Do everything we can to help people into work
• Continue to improve service delivery and communication with residents
• Ensure staff spend more time out and about in their communities
• Help people to be more energy efficient.

Customers also enjoyed a question and answer session with David Orr, the Chief Executive of the National Housing Federation. He gave customers and staff a fresh perspective on both the media agenda around Social Housing and developing Government policy.

One of the most rewarding aspects of the weekend was the workshop with customers on worklessness. They told us they wanted us to deliver more apprenticeships and work experience programmes and our Community Investment teams will be working hard to deliver these in the coming year.

Look at your Company website pages to find out about job fairs, recruitment events and apprenticeships in your area.