Tenant Involvement

 

Customers involved in NCHA’s work at every level

Customers are involved in the governance of NCHA at every level following the appointment in 2007 of Graham Carvell as the second tenant representative to sit on the Association’s board of management. Graham lives in Leicester and has been a NCHA tenant for four years. He was selected following a thorough recruitment process, which involved other NCHA tenants.

‘I believe that by being actively involved in the work of the Association, tenants can  monitor, change and improve the service it provides,’ he says.

Graham certainly knows about being involved.  He is Treasurer of the NCHA Tenants and Residents Consortium, which brings together all the tenant and resident groups supported and funded by the Association.

He also sits on several of NCHA’s Customer Advisory Panels (CAPs) that look in more detail at specific areas of the Association’s work. The panel that keeps a watching brief on our maintenance service, for example, meets once a month, can scrutinise any area of the department’s work and is involved in setting the annual maintenance budget. It also makes site visits to look at work in progress.

Other CAPs look at design and sheltered housing and each of our regions has its own generic CAP.

The Association recently launched a drive to recruit Tenant Inspectors to carry out ‘reality checks’ on our services through a mixture of mystery shopping, estate inspections and surveys. The Association will pay all travel and other expenses and reward the inspectors with shopping and decorating vouchers. It is particularly keen to recruit people who are not already actively involved.

  

Many customers, of course, cannot participate in tenant and resident activities because of work or family commitments. Their views are canvassed by post and email by the Association’s tenant liaison staff. A fizzy bi-annual newsletter, Link, keeps tenants up to date with the Association’s work. NCHA’s supported housing customers have their own regular newsletter, InSight. Both publications have a hands-on tenant editorial board.