1.0 Introduction
1.1 The legacy of tenant involvement
This Tenant Involvement Strategy builds on our legacy organisations engagement opportunities and sets out how we will listen and engage our tenants.
This underpins our continued commitment to co-regulation by involving tenants in scrutinising, shaping, co-designing, and influencing services.
This co-created strategy will help us to plan and set goals and priorities to get us where we want and expect to be. It will help us stay focussed on what is important.
1.2 The vision for tenant involvement
Our vision for our Tenant Involvement Strategy is simple.
“To engage and involve tenants and use their insight to influence and improve services and to ensure their voice is heard in decisions that affect their home, their safety and their communities.”
To support the delivery of the strategy we have, we have developed three key outcomes. These outcomes were developed with tenants and are:
- We will have a strong culture of tenant engagement throughout North Yorkshire Council, with a transparent, open, and accountable housing service that meets or exceeds the requirements of the Regulator of Social Housing’s consumer standards.
- Tenant involvement will be an integral part to the delivery of all our housing services and we will work together with tenants to design, improve and deliver services in a meaningful way.
- We will offer a modern, varied engagement service that ensures the voice of a diverse range of tenants is heard, understood, and translated into actions to improve services and outcomes for Tenants.
This strategy sets out how we will do this, and we will produce an action plan to detail how the strategy will be delivered.
2.0 Background
2.1 The steering group
We met with the existing engaged customers from the legacy organisations and listened to what was important to them and what they wanted to see in the new involvement framework. Tenants and officers then formed a steering group to work together, share ideas and discuss the next steps in more detail. This strategy is a result of this work.
2.2 National context
In April 2024 the Regulator of Social Housing introduced four consumer regulatory requirements that housing providers must adhere to.
The transparency, influence and accountability standard has six required outcomes, and these are:
- fairness and respect: treat all tenants with fairness and respect
- diverse needs: take action to deliver fair access to, and equitable outcomes of, housing and landlord services for all tenants
- engagement with tenants: take tenants’ views into account in decision making about how landlord services are delivered
- information about landlord services: communicate with tenants and provide information so tenants can use landlord services, understand what to expect from their landlord, and hold their landlord to account
- performance information: collect and provide information to support effective scrutiny by tenants of their landlord’s performance in delivering landlord services
- complaints: ensure complaints are addressed fairly, effectively, and promptly
2.3 Local context
2.3.1 The council plan
This Tenant Involvement Strategy will support the delivery of our Council Plan (2024-2028) which sets out the council’s vision, ambitions, and priorities for the next four years, as well as the approach we will take to achieve them.
The plan addresses the exciting opportunity the creation of North Yorkshire Council gives us to transform services, drive innovation and improve outcomes, but also the many significant challenges ahead including the impact of inflation, increased demand for our services, climate change, and the impact of the cost-of-living crisis on our communities.
Here is a summary of what the plan entails:
Our vision: We want to build on North Yorkshire’s natural capital, strong local economy, and resilient communities, to improve the way local services are delivered and support a good quality of life for all.
Locality working is a key element to the council plan, with the plan outlining our four pillars of locality working:
- local services and access
- local accountability
- local action
- local empowerment
2.3.2 North Yorkshire housing strategy
We provide over 8,000 homes across the county and have ambitions for growth. Most properties are socially rented properties, but we also manage leasehold properties and a small number that are shared ownership.
We aim to become an exemplar landlord, providing high quality tenancy services. Our North Yorkshire Housing Strategy commits to ensuring the Council housing stock remains decent and continues to improve and will meet this challenge by:
- implementing a robust investment plan for all our council housing stock over the next 30 years
- putting tenant safety first and fully meeting our regulatory responsibilities, including the eradication of mould and damp issues within set timescales
- developing a new Tenancy Strategy and establishing clear and high standards for the delivery of tenancy services
- appraising our council housing stock and re-purposing where required
2.4 Tenant satisfaction measures
2.4.1 Introduction of the measures
In April 2023, the Regulator of Social Housing introduced Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs) aimed at helping improve standards for people living in social housing. They enable the regulator to see which landlords may need to make improvements but are also a way of enabling tenants see how well their landlord is performing.
2.4.2 North Yorkshire Council TSM results 2023/2024
The results give us up to date information of our tenants’ perception of our current services and the 2023/24 Tenant Satisfaction Measures results tell us that in terms of engagement:
- 69 per cent of tenants surveyed feel they are treated fairly and with respect
- 60 per cent of tenants surveyed feel informed
- 55 per cent of tenants surveyed feel their views are listened to
Whilst there are some good areas of overall satisfaction, there is some work to do particularly in relation to positive contribution to neighbourhood, anti-social behaviour handling and being kept informed, which are the lowest ratings in the survey.
This strategy aims to help us improve satisfaction with these important measures.
3.0 Current position
3.1 Local government reorganisation
3.1.1 Bringing services together
Following local government reorganisation and the bringing together of the former council housing services, we have a new structure to deliver services and resources have been increased to support the delivery of this strategy. Tenant involvement has always been important to us, but we also recognise that we need to do more to meet tenant expectations, as well as meet the new requirements of the regulator.
We take our responsibility seriously in respect of gaining the trust and respect of our tenants. We will ensure that this strategy and engagement framework does not lose sight of the realities of the tenant experience.
3.1.2 The tenant involvement team
To tackle some of these challenges at pace and put us in a strong position to build on the legacy organisation’s engagement opportunities, we have established a dedicated tenant involvement team. Local government reorganisation was an opportunity for us invest in our services and this new team is made up of a Tenant Involvement Manager and three Tenant Involvement Officers. We want to create new opportunities to address the gaps that exist, strengthen our offer, and amplify the voice of our customers.
3.2 The profile of our customers
To enable us to address the gaps and to ensure we deliver fair and equitable outcomes for our tenants, we need to collect and understand relevant information and data to understand their diverse needs. This includes those that arise from protected characteristics, language barriers, and any additional support needs.
We deliver services to a diverse range of people and so its important that we understand more about them so that:
- when we develop or review services, policies and procedures we can be sure that our services are accessible
- when we test services, we do so from a wide range of perspectives
- when we plan engagement activities, we can develop methods that are of interest to relevant groups
- when we ask for views and ideas, we do so from a wide range of perspectives
Improved data collection and analysis will also enable us to tailor our services and take appropriate action in areas such as anti-social behaviour and repairs.
3.3 Regulator of social housing
3.3.1 Regulatory judgement
In May 2024, we self-referred to the Regulator of Social Housing because a range of issues were identified following a self-assessment against the standards. The issues included a lack of reliable information to support our understanding of and respond to the diverse needs of our tenants and limited and inconsistent meaningful opportunities for tenants to influence and scrutinise our services.
In August 2024, the regulator published a regulatory judgement specifically in relation to outcomes in the Safety and Quality Standard and Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard. The conclusion was a C3 grade and significant improvement is needed.
4.0 The new tenant involvement service
4.1 A values-based service
What we do and how we do it, is in line with our council values: to be inclusive, ambitious, creative, and together.
Tenant involvement is a term used to cover many different tasks and activities but what it means to us is that we will give tenants the opportunity to scrutinise our services, to shape and help improve our services and, we are committed to keeping tenants informed.
We will be ambitious in our plans, ensure the opportunities are available to all and we will come up with new creative ways of working together.
4.2 Our approach
We will make it easy
This new strategy will recognise our commitment to involving tenants in scrutinising, shaping, co-designing, and influencing services. We consider and value all interactions with customers as a source of feedback and engagement and tenant engagement includes everything from ad hoc contact such as a call to the Customer Service Team or a conversation with a workman at home, through to taking part in a transactional survey, consultation group or being a scrutiny panel member. We will make it easy to give feedback.
We will involve those with a direct experience
We will tailor the approach for different customers and depending on the issue and customer needs, our wide range of engagements opportunities will be tailored to different customer preferences and needs. We will consider the barriers to involvement and then actively seek out feedback from tenants from a diverse range of backgrounds and communities.
We will consider the wider tenant voice
We recognise that each type of engagement may not be representative of all customer groups and opinions. Where we consult with a smaller group of customers, we will seek to test this with a wider group where possible. We aim to ensure that feedback overall is broadly representative of all relevant customer groups. We will take additional steps to ensure that customers are not excluded by tailoring our tools and approach to listen to and celebrate diverse views.
We will offer choice
We will offer a blended approach to involvement, with the development of a new digital engagement platform offering digital methods of engagement to widen the pool of engaged customers. We will support tenants to get involved in a way that suits them, and ensure they are offered the required training to enable them to do this.
We will be open and honest
We will clear about what we are hoping to achieve with input from customers and tenants, what other feedback we have received and what will happen when. We will communicate clearly and regularly the impact feedback has had.
In accordance with the Transparency, Accountability and Influence standard, North Yorkshire Council will support tenants to exercise their Right to Manage, Right to Transfer or otherwise exercise housing management functions.
4.3 Our promises
We have made a number of promises in relation to tenant involvement and therefore to show tenants our commitment to these promises we will:
- Share information through a tenant’s magazine, four times a year in a format suitable for you
- Produce an annual report which will include details of our performance and how income is spent
- Share the results of our Tenant Satisfaction measures at least once a year
- Tell you about the opportunities to have your say and how to get involved
- Use plain English and keep our information jargon free
- Offer our information in different formats, for example, in large print
- Share our learning following complaints on an annual basis
- Hold four open tenant forum events, every year
- Provide hybrid meetings in different locations and allow you to join remotely through using Microsoft teams
- Let you know what involvement events are in your area, and where to come and see us
- Provide quarterly performance information including key information relating to how we keep your home safe
- Let you know how you and the tenant involvement activities, have made a difference
4.4 What are the opportunities for involvement
There will be a range of opportunities for involvement, some more formal than others and some requiring more a time commitment.
Scrutiny Panel
The Scrutiny Panel examines how well North Yorkshire Council delivers its housing service and will work on an annual plan of specific topics focusing on areas that are under performing or where there is poor tenant satisfaction. This group will be tenant led and is an opportunity for tenants to work more strategically to influence services.
Task and finish groups
The purpose of these groups is to enable tenants to be part of shaping any detailed work on service improvement, reviewing policies and procedures, or other aspects of service improvement. It could also include bite size scrutiny work and these groups often only require a short-term commitment.
Tenant Voice Forum
This forum is open to all tenants and leaseholders and is led by a tenant chair and committee. The meetings will take place in one of the council offices with the option to join the meeting on-line via Microsoft teams. At the forum we will present our quarterly performance report and provide updates against our improvement plan. This group will link to the officer led Housing Improvement Board and the council’s elected member overview and scrutiny committee
My Housing Voice
Tenant involvement does not always mean having to go to a regular meeting or becoming a committee member, many people find this option too formal or do not have the time or commitment for it. My Housing Voice is our digital involvement offer and there is a menu of opportunities that are flexible and don’t require tenants to big time commitment.
These include:
- emailing your comments and ideas to us at myhousingvoice@northyorks.gov.uk
- making a suggestion for an improvement
- completing questionnaires and responding to consultations on-line
- becoming a mystery shopper
- opt to receive email updates from us
- following us on social media
- contribute to the tenant newsletter.
- be involved in a virtual task and finish group
- helping review our letters and forms
We will use social media and electronic communications to widen the reach of our consultation or engagement requirements.
Editorial Panel
The Editorial Panel will support and influence our tenant communications including our printed materials, website, and social media.
The panel will also generate ideas for the Open Door (our newsletter for tenants) and support the creation the of the Annual Report.
Local tenant representatives
This role is for anyone who wants to work with their local community. They may represent tenants within a scheme, or community, and provide a link between tenants and North Yorkshire Council’s housing service. They will not advocate for tenants but will represent tenants are the Tenant Voice Forum.
The big conversation
We want to speak to as many tenants as possible to find out what they think and what matters to them. By hearing from many voices, we can build a service that we know reflects tenants’ priorities. We will be out in the community throughout the year, visiting tenants and holding community pop-up events listening to tenants.
4.5 How we support customers to be involved
Being an involved tenant can bring lots of rewards including:
- the change to really make a difference to the homes and communities where they live
- the opportunity to learn new skills and increase knowledge
- the change to meet other volunteers who have similar interests and make new friends
It is important that staff and involved tenants have the necessary skills to be involved at a level that suits them to allow us to achieve our objectives and we will offer the following training and support:
- we will pay reasonable out of pocket expenses to cover the cost of travel and car parking
- we will arrange transport by taxi if public or private transport is not possible
- we will choose venues which are as accessible as possible for people with disabilities
- some of the ways to get involved take up a lot of your time and to recognise this and say thank you, we may provide vouchers
- we will offer training which can be informal or formal training
5.0 How will we know if this has been successful?
It is essential that we monitor and share the difference tenant has made. Tenants have told us that they want more feedback on things that have changed because of the work they have undertaken. We have committed to sharing the results and we will monitor if our strategy has been successful through the following results:
- increased tenant involvement and evidence that tenants have given their views through a range of activities
- improved tenant satisfaction measure results and transactional feedback survey results
- an increase in involvement from underrepresented groups