By Toria Buzza, Head of Community and Tenant Involvement
Listening to tenants and acting on what they tell us is fundamental to how we improve services, shape decisions and support thriving communities.
At ForHousing, we believe the people who live in our homes should have a genuine opportunity to influence the services they receive and the decisions that affect them. That’s why tenant voice sits at the heart of our Together with Tenants approach and continues to shape how we improve services, invest in homes and support our communities.
In 2023, we launched our first Together with Tenants Charter, developed alongside tenants to set out the commitments that mattered most to the people living in our homes and communities.
Over the last three years, we’ve made progress in a number of areas, including:
- Developing and embedding our approach to ‘reasonable adjustments’, making sure that we listen to how you want to communicate with us and ensuring that we contact you using your preferred methods
- Launching our customer newsletter to keep you updated on the issues that matter to you
- Re-designing our complaints process, investing in more colleagues and improving communication to make sure we’re dealing with your complaints in a fair and timely way
- Supporting several environmental projects in your communities, including the Clifton Clean and Green project, St Martin’s play park and the Stockbridge play park
- Continually working to improve how we deal with Repairs and Maintenance and established the tenant involvement group to improve oversight of performance.
- Working closely with the Police to undertake targeted operations to tackle the issue of cuckooing
As we approached the end of that first Charter, we wanted to make sure our commitments continued to reflect what matters most to tenants today.
We carried out a detailed programme of engagement across our communities. We reviewed feedback from surveys, complaints, customer involvement activities and community engagement. We attended local events, visited neighbourhoods and spoke to people in the places they already spend time. We also launched a survey asking tenants what they would like to see from the next version of the Charter, with 586 tenants taking the time to share their views.
What stood out throughout the review was how clearly tenants told us what matters most to them. While every neighbourhood is different, some common themes emerged across our communities.
These included:
1
The importance of clear and consistent communication
2
A desire to better understand how feedback influences decisions
3
The value people place on their neighbourhoods, communities and local environment
4
The need for a reliable repairs service and confidence that issues will be resolved
We’ve used this feedback to review and update our Together with Tenants Charter, making sure our commitments continue to reflect the priorities of tenants today and in the years ahead. The refreshed Charter demonstrates how tenant feedback continues to influence service improvements, investment priorities and the decisions we make as an organisation.
One of the things I’m most proud of is the role tenants have played throughout this process. The review wasn’t something we carried out on behalf of tenants. It was something we did alongside them.
Our Customer Committee, which brings together tenants and Board members, helped review the findings and shape the final Charter. Graeme Foster and Donna O’Neill, both Board and Customer Committee members, have also provided a joint foreword, recognising the important role tenant feedback has played in shaping the commitments and helping hold ForHousing to account for delivering them.
For me, that’s what Together with Tenants is all about.
It’s about creating meaningful opportunities for tenants to influence the services they receive, the decisions that affect them and the communities they live in. It’s about listening carefully, learning from feedback and acting on what we’ve heard.
The updated Charter reflects what tenants have told us matters most today, but just as importantly, it sets out how we’ll continue working alongside them in the future.
The commitments build on what we’ve delivered over the last three years and support our ongoing focus on providing safe, well-maintained homes, delivering customer-focused services and helping communities thrive.
I’d like to thank everyone who took the time to get involved. Every survey completed, conversation shared and piece of feedback contributed has helped shape this refreshed Charter.
We’ll continue listening to what tenants tell us, sharing the progress we’re making and using feedback to shape how we do things, putting tenants at the heart of decision-making.
Read the updated Together with Tenants Charter here: ForHousing’s together with tenants charter
