YMCA Exeter
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Social Tenant Access to Information Requirements (STAIRs)

You have a right to know how YMCA Exeter is run, how decisions get made, and how the services you rely on actually work. This page brings it all together in one place.

What is STAIRs?

It is a new government standard that sets out the information social housing providers, including YMCA Exeter, should share with residents.

For you, this means easier access to information about how your home is looked after, how YMCA Exeter is managed, and how the services you use are delivered.

The standard is part of a wider effort to increase transparency and accountability across social housing, helping residents better understand how their housing provider operates and making it easier to hold providers to account.

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Publication Scheme

All social housing providers are required by the government to publish this kind of information, as part of the STAIRs standard.

Our Publication Scheme brings the key information about our housing services together in one place, so you don’t have to ask for it.

We review what’s published here regularly, to keep it accurate and current. We’ll add to it whenever we’re required to, and whenever we think something will be genuinely useful to you.

We’ve split the information into clear sections, so it’s easy to find what you’re looking for.

Through this Publication Scheme, you can find information about:

Who we are

 

Senior staff and how we’re run

  • YMCA Exeter is led by our Joint Chief Executives. Our Board of Trustees sets our overall strategy and oversees the Joint Chief Executives, who are responsible for running YMCA Exeter day to day. Find more information on our Meet The Team page.

 

How we make decisions

  • We’re gathering our decision-making and risk management information and will add it here soon.

 

How we prioritise complaints

  • We handle complaints through a clear route: a Level 1 complaint reviewed by a senior member of staff, a Level 2 complaint, and — if still unresolved — referral to the Housing Ombudsman. Find more details here.

 

How we involve residents in decisions

We want to hear directly from you about what’s working and what needs to change — you know your home and your community best. We do this in three ways:

  • Everyday conversations with your support worker, so you don’t have to wait for a scheduled session to be heard
  • Structured surveys across our services, to build a wider picture of what’s working.

 

Tenant meetings

Tenant meetings such as the Building and Grounds Committee at Sidwell Studios — a resident-run panel that meets every three months, or sooner if something comes up.

This section sets out how the income we receive is spent — on managing, maintaining, and improving our homes and services.

We publish details of our income and spending, including grants and service charge income, in our financial statements.

You can find our Annual Report and financial statements on our downloads page.

This section will outline our future plans and explains how we maintain, repair, and invest in our homes.

Inspection outcomes & ratings

  • As a smaller registered provider (under 1,000 homes), we aren’t graded by the Regulator of Social Housing, and don’t currently have a published regulatory judgement.
  • The Housing Ombudsman publishes the outcomes of cases it investigates in its Decision Archive — search “YMCA Exeter” in the landlord field to see any decisions relating to us.
  • We are registered as achieving ‘Trusted Charity Level 1’ status.

 

News and updates

 

Complaint metrics

  • The Housing Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code sets out how landlords should handle complaints, and registered providers are expected to self-assess against it each year. Further information can here found on our complaints page.

 

 

  • Find information about our support offered over various stages here.
  • Our Mighty Networks app contains a large amount of information and support to help you get the most out of your accommodation. Links to which can be found from either our Exeter, or Torbay Resident Pages.

This section contains the policies and frameworks that explain how we deliver our housing services and support our tenants.

  • Our policy library, held within Mighty Networks, brings together the policies that guide how we make decisions and manage your homes and services. Find it on our Exeter or Torbay Resident Pages.
  • You can browse our reports, and other publications in our Reports and Downloads page.

How to contact us

We’re committed to meeting your needs, and our own regulatory obligations.

If you need support accessing, navigating, or understanding this publication scheme, or if you need information that isn’t listed here, please contact office@ymcaexeter.org.uk.

If you’re not satisfied with the information provided

If you think we haven’t published information we hold, and that it should be included in this scheme, you can ask us to review this.

We’ll review your request within 30 calendar days. In some circumstances, we may need additional time. If you’re not happy with the outcome of our review, you can escalate this directly to the Housing Ombudsman.

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Information requests

From April 2027, you’ll have a legal right to ask us for information about how we manage your home and the services we provide. This new right is designed to make things more transparent, and easier to understand.

We’re currently developing our process for responding to these requests, and we’ll share more information on how to make one closer to April 2027.