Pinnacle PSG’s quality and performance manager, Tarequl Islam, explains how they have introduced their ‘noise app’ from RH Environmental to their housing management contracts in London.
Pinnacle PSG’s London contracts serve over 15,000 social housing properties and a further 4,000 leasehold properties. One of the key aspects of our service is dealing with anti-social behaviour (ASB). We believe ASB is something that can be controlled and managed through mediation. Most of the time, tenants are unaware of the nuisance they are causing their neighbours and the noise app is the perfect tool to help mediate with their neighbours.
We knew that the response of the various London councils’ noise teams to investigate nuisances can vary on a case by case basis so we wanted to empower tenants by giving them the app so that there were no delays when keeping a diary of noise nuisances.
The app instantly records noise nuisances on a tenant’s smartphone and by using GPS, all recordings are time-, date- and location-stamped. This is great because it adds authenticity to the recordings. It also helps us to identify cases of false allegations; for example, we’d know if the tenant was standing outside a pub on a Friday night instead of in their home.
With the app, we can now acknowledge all noise nuisance cases instantly, update the status of the case and respond direct to the tenant.
The app’s reporting functionality is really useful for month-end reporting and for gaining an overall picture of the types of nuisances reported by tenants. Furthermore, the app has already been used successfully in court to gain an eviction.
The app is free for our tenants; Pinnacle is the service provider and we pay RH Environmental an annual fee for the service. The app is available on Android and iOS and can be downloaded from Google Play or Apple’s App Store.
Tarequl Islam is a quality and performance manager at Pinnacle PSG.
