The main Scrutiny Committee has agreed the suggestion put forward by the Chair of the Housing Panel, Councillor Linda Smith, that the Panel should, throughout the year examine different aspects of one important topic – tenant engagement and empowerment. This first report is an introduction to the ways in which the Council engages its tenants.

It is expected that the findings will be written up at the end of the year, including any recommendations. The Panel is asked therefore to NOTE the report and AGREE any recommendations it wishes to make. Should it wish to make an urgent recommendation to Cabinet, ie prior to the report being written at the end of the year, it is also at liberty to do so.

Councillor Diko Blackings, Cabinet Member for Affordable Housing, Housing Security and Housing the Homeless, Councillor Mike Rowley, Cabinet Member for Citizen Focused Services, Simon Warde, Tenant Involvement Manager, and representatives from the different avenues and fora of tenant engagement have been invited to attend and present this item.

Simon Warde, Tenant Involvement Manager, gave a presentation to introduce members of the Panel to the different fora and avenues through which the Council engages with its tenants and leaseholders. He was supported by representatives of these fora, the tenant ambassadors.

The Tenant Involvement Team is comprised of four permanent staff, and an apprentice to join imminently, funded from the Housing Revenue Account. It exists to ensure compliance with the Regulator’s ‘Tenant Involvement and Empowerment Standard’ through tenant involvement in the development, monitoring and scrutiny of Council tenant and leasholder services. In 2016 the team was awarded accreditation by the Tenant Participation Advisory Service (TPAS) and was awarded Team of the Year. The accreditation which was re-awarded in 2020.

Alongside its more targeted engagement with the tenant ambassadors, the team provides a number of avenues for engaging with tenants more broadly: The Tenants In Touch magazine, facebook and tenant involvement web pages.

The Tenant Involvement team is not the sole source of tenant involvement, with consultation being undertaken centrally through the consultation team. The Tenancy Management and Communities Team also engage with tenants on a regular basis for consultations. It has been found that a mix of online and telephone yields the best balance between cost and accessibility. Postal surveys were no longer cost effective and therefore were used only on request, but door to door surveys could be, particularly in plugging gaps in responses via other methods.

Looking ahead, the Tenant Involvement team’s work would primarily be focused on preparing for the upcoming Housing white paper, where within every strand there is a significant element pertaining to tenant involvement. Other key areas would be responding to the requirements of the Housing Ombudsman regarding complaints processes, and issues arising from the Building Safety Bill. Two other areas of focus were setting up in-depth assessors, whose job it will be to monitor satisfaction levels, and identify and solve areas of dissatisfaction, and to establish a Housing Development Working Group to involve tenants in the pre-planning stages of development sites and post-completion inspections to ensure they are of satisfactory standard.

In the future, it was hoped that tenants might also be able to become involved in performance monitoring around issues such as gas safety, void turnaround times, and incidences and themes around antisocial behaviour. Also, creating a Tenant and Leaseholder Board – a body attended by senior officers and fed into by tenant ambassadors – would create a direct communication link between tenants and senior decision-makers.

The Tenant Ambassadors presented their areas of involvement with the Council.

Brenda Walton and Geno Humphrey spoke about their involvement with contract tender evaluations. A number of ambassadors have been trained by the Council to look at new contracts, as well as renewal tenders. When tender documentation is received by the Council it is passed on to participating tenant ambassadors, who score each one against the same matrix as Council officers. The only difference is that – at the request of the tenant ambassadors – the price is not included. Ambassadors are supported by council officers if they need help with clarification of technical issues. Having scored each tender individually, a joint meeting between ambassadors and council officers is held, where a consensus score is reached. The procurement team subsequently add in the effect of the different prices offered to determine the favoured contractor.

Anthony Church introduced his involvement with the Great Estates team. The level of involvement requires between two to four meetings per month with stakeholders of the Great Estates programme. The role of the ambassador is to identify areas suitable for makeovers, collecting resident views and ideas and ensuring they are put forward, and scoping proposals for upgrades. Stakeholder meetings, including ambassadors, are then held to agree priorities between different proposals.

David Simons talked about tenant involvement in interviews via stakeholder interviews. Tenant ambassadors are briefed beforehand, where the advert, job description and person specification are talked through, with the opportunity for clarification and model answers provided. During the interviews themselves, ambassadors are asked to score responses to the questions. These scores are fed back as part of the wider interview process. The involvement of the ambassadors does not stop at the point of interviews, however, but there is feedback on how a particular applicant was chosen, with full transparency over the scoring process given to ambassadors. The appointed candidate also gets to meet the ambassadors for a talk as part of their induction process.

Tony Buchanan spoke about the Housing Ombudsman Residents Panel. The role of tenants in the Housing Ombudsman Residents Panel is one which is determined in central government’s Housing White Paper. This involves national level work, but also working with the Council to establish and maintain a complaints procedure in accordance with good practice recommended by the Housing Ombudsman, and is followed to the new regulatory requirements as set out in the new Complaints Handling Code.

Olga Siddon introduced the variety of issues she had been invited to participate in as a tenant, from Environmental Improvement, to the proposed Housing and Homelessness Strategy, to making a response to central government’s green paper on Health and Disability. She stressed that she had become aware of it though information shared in the Tenants in Touch magazine, but her involvement had grown organically. The work of the Tenant Involvement team was lauded, and the benefits of being able to be involved highlighted.

Issues raised for discussion by the Panel included:

-       The level of tenant involvement in choosing housing development partners. There had been some engagement between the Tenant Involvement team and Housing Development around five years previously to do surveys and inspections, but there had been little of that type of engagement since then.

-       The mechanism by which it was decided which tenders would have tenant ambassador input. There was no formal policy; the value Tenant Involvement could add was becoming more recognised as it participated in more procurements but it was not a recognised step in the tendering process. Practically, it was not possible to support tenant engagement in all tender processes, but there was officer support for making the Tenant Involvement team aware of what was coming up in order to allow tenant ambassadors to choose which they wishes to become part of. One issue to be noted was the proportion of development being run through OCHL, rather than directly through the Council itself.

-       The challenges faced by older people in making their voices heard in an increasingly digital environment. Whilst it would be dealt with in greater detail at a future meeting, confidence was expressed that through using a number of consultation methods the Council had managed to capture in its annual tenant satisfaction survey a representative number of responses from older people.

-       A request was made for a summary of the actions to be taken in light of the responses to the tenant satisfaction survey.

-       The adequacy of tenant representation on the Council’s Resident’s Panel of hundreds of local residents. It was confirmed that there was tenant representation. However, GDPR restrictions on use and storage of data meant there was not the opportunity to build on that group outside of work already undertaken by the Resident’s Panel.

-       The number of people trained to be procurement ambassadors. Around 8 people have been trained in procurement, with more anticipated.

-       It was noted that there was not a formal process for having tenant ambassador involvement in interviews, and that the new Executive Director of Housing and Communities had been appointed without tenant ambassador input.

Possible issues that were raised for future recommendations were as follows:

-       Support for the development of the Housing Development Working Group, and within its scope include engagement with tenants on internal design ideas in addition to those mentioned

-       That tenant involvement in procurement is formalised and made less ad hoc

-       Having a specific older people’s tenant ambassador to ensure the specific needs of this group were being met.

-       Replicate the Residents Panel just for Council tenants or find a way to get permission to engage with the subset that are tenants. The former could possibly be done through the use of permissions gained from the tenant satisfaction survey. A total of 420 people did give permission to be contacted in future.

-       That tenant ambassador involvement in appointments, particularly senior appointments, in Housing be formalised.