At Seaside Homes we believe that tenant engagement is a vital part of providing an excellent service as a landlord. For this reason we decided to apply for accreditation with TPAS – experts in tenant engagement who work with social housing providers. To achieve the accreditation standard we needed to provide evidence of how tenant feedback influences the decisions we make. We showed how tenant feedback from our Tenant Panel, surveys and call logs informs the way we work and how we keep tenants informed through our newsletter, website and SMS service. We also described our Decorating, Gardening and New Possibilities schemes and how we work in partnership with other organisations such as Pelican Parcels to meet the needs of tenants. Our TPAS assessor attended our July Tenant Panel meeting and also interviewed a number of tenants, staff and members of our Board.
Meeting the TPAS standard is not a ‘tick box’ exercise but a way of working day to day. It’s about having a culture that values the tenant voice. And we have more work to do – TPAS have given us a series of recommendations to develop our programme and will be coming back in August 2025 and see what progress we’ve made.
The areas we’ll be working on over the next year include:
- Continuing to discuss with the Council how we can have access to more detailed complaints information to inform our service improvement programme.
- Work on how we can remove barriers for tenants who cannot or do not wish to attend face-to-face events, providing more opportunities to take part on Zoom or via online forums.
- Provide opportunities for tenants to have a voice in the Council’s engagement framework, particularly around repairs.
- Ensure that tenants, staff and board members have access to TPAS resources.
Thanks to everyone who gave up their time to take part in our TPAS assessment.
