Embedding tenants’ voices at the heart of the Housing Service

In particular, the Consumer Standards relate to how to landlords engage with tenants. It requires that landlords are transparent, enable tenants to influence and scrutinise services and ensure accountability of the landlord. This ensures tenants have more influence over the services they receive and that their views are at the heart of the District Council’s decision making.

There have been notable successes with the current tenant engagement structure including involvement in scrutinising gas servicing, assisting with tender contracts, gathering tenant views on internal and external consultations, internal policy and procedure changes and representation of tenants in the formal governance structure.

Data gathered from the first year’s Tenant Satisfaction Measures indicate that District Council tenants are satisfied with the opportunities for engagement with 70% of tenants satisfied that the Council listen to their views and acts upon them and 85% saying they are satisfied they are treated fairly and with respect.

To further enhance and embed the tenant voice the District Council have commissioned TPAS to conduct a re-engineering activity. TPAS are tenant engagement experts who promote, support and champion tenant involvement and empowerment in social housing across England. The process will help to create procedures to further harness the tenant voice with frameworks to improve the District Council’s service and create more opportunities to engage with tenants that are deliverable and comply with the Regulatory Standards.

Councillor Lee Brazier, Portfolio Holder for Housing at Newark and Sherwood District Council, said: “We are absolutely committed to making sure our tenants’ are at the heart of our housing service and that their opinions and feedback directly influence our decision making and improvements in the service they receive from us.

“Earlier this year we took a thorough review of our tenant engagement activities including a survey in which we received feedback from 11% of our tenants. We undertook this activity to understand what ways we currently engage with our tenants, what is working well and what we can improve on. The feedback suggests that we’re doing well, and more tenants are engaging with us than ever before – we currently have 338 involved tenants which is an increase from 177 in the year 2022/23. However, we want to make sure that we continue to do all we can to put tenants at the heart of our housing service. Therefore, we’re looking forward to engaging with TPAS   to help us further enhance and embed our tenant voice.”