We are proud to have signed up as an early adopter, and are working closely with the National Housing Federation (NHF), on the new initiative ‘Together with Tenants’.
This came out of the government’s Green Paper which seeks to rebalance the relationship between social housing tenants and their landlords by looking at issues such as complaints procedures, transparency and accountability. This naturally sits very well with one of our core values of being customer focused.
The housing sector has a long-standing commitment to engaging tenants and residents, and there are many great examples of how housing associations have shaped their organisations around the needs and views of the people they house. We are currently recruiting for our new customer group InFocus to help challenge what we do and shape the services we provide going forward.
The NHF has developed a draft charter with tenants, residents, housing associations and stakeholders under the Together with Tenant’s banner.
Tenants and residents can help identify where improvements are required and also play a key role in making changes happen that will benefit whole communities as well as individuals.
As an early adopter we are now consulting with our residents and tenants and giving them the opportunity to help shape this charter.
We hosted a session with tenants at our Worle office on 2 April which was run by our Resident Services Manager, Sharon Cresswell, and our Resident Engagement Team Leader, Sara Sollis.
We also jointly ran a focus session with fellow housing association, Plymouth Community Homes, on 3 April at their Plymouth office.
Our Executive Director of Neighbourhoods and Customer Services, Suzanne Brown, said “It’s important that tenants have the opportunity to contribute their views on the proposed charter. We held a successful event in Worle and have been encouraging tenants to also engage in the conversation online.
“LiveWest is an early adopter of the Together with Tenants charter and continues to work collaboratively with the NHF to promote opportunities for tenants to get involved.
“We were delighted when Plymouth Community Homes extended the invitation to LiveWest tenants to attend their Beacon event.”
The feedback from the consultation process will be used by NHF to amend the charter before a full roll out in 2020.
We will bring you more news about the charter and Together with Tenants over the coming months.
