Tenant Involvement Framework

We understand that for engagement to be meaningful, tenant participation needs to be representative of our tenants. By understanding who lives in our properties, and having accurate data, it helps to ensure that our framework is reflective of the community. Our Tenant Engagement Team works to ensure all involvement opportunities are accessible.

• 9.6% of tenants disclosed that they are neurodivergent
• 10.8% of tenants disclosed a disability
• 97.1% of our tenants are from a white background
• 43.9% of tenants are aged 60+
• 58.1% of our tenants are female
• 12.6% of tenants disclosed a long-term medical condition

(Data accurate as of 24/04/2026)

For example, by making meetings hybrid, by offering training opportunities at different times of day and by targeted outreach in areas where we have identified gaps in representation. Our tenant engagement opportunities are offered online and in person.

For tenants who tell us that they have a mobility issue, which would make travel by public transport difficult, we can arrange taxis to meetings. We offer to pay for childcare where necessary, to enable parents to attend meetings in person. If you tell us what you need, we can arrange something for you!

We take our responsibilities as a landlord seriously, these are set out in a range of legislation, regulations and standards. This section summarises the key areas that relate to our engagement with tenants.

Social Housing White Paper 2020 and Social Housing Regulation Act 2023 The Charter for Social Housing Residents:

Social Housing White Paper 2020 (SHWP) aimed to reform consumer standards to ensure residents live in good quality homes, have access to redress as necessary, are safe and listened to. The SHWP outlined that every social housing resident should be able to expect:

• To be safe in your home
• To know how your landlord is performing
• To have your complaints dealt with fairly and promptly
• To be treated with respect
• To have your voice heard by your landlord
• To have a good quality home and neighbourhood to live in
• To be supported to take your first step towards ownership

The Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023 (SHRA) clarifies the importance of ensuring social housing tenants are listened to and empowered to get involved, setting out how social landlords will deliver against the commitments in the SHWP. The areas covered by the SHRA include safety, quality, transparency, tenancy, engagement, accountability, and neighbourhood services.

The SHRA led to the new Regulatory Framework for Social Housing Consumer Standards. We are committed to delivering positive tenant and leaseholder outcomes across all Consumer Standards areas: safety, quality, transparency, tenancy, engagement, accountability and neighbourhood services.

Housing Act 1985 and Housing Act 1996

Local authority landlords must have arrangements to inform and consult with both secure and introductory tenants who are likely to be substantially affected by changes in housing management.

Housing management matters include the provision of services, building maintenance, improvement or demolition of housing and any services or amenities in connection to such housing.

We introduced a Tenant and Leaseholder Engagement Framework in 2022 which demonstrated our commitment to make sure that “tenants and leaseholders are at the heart of everything we do”.

Our approach to engagement and involvement has continued to evolve in response to feedback we receive from our tenants, and through working in partnership with our tenants.

Since then, there has been a continued focus on providing greater opportunities for tenant involvement and scrutiny. In Summer 2024 we introduced a lead officer role to provide a real focus on tenant engagement and the team has been expanded this year. We have used tenant feedback to change our engagement group, Your Voice Your Choice, to provide greater transparency, involvement and scrutiny to influence service delivery and improvement. We have worked with the group to consider feedback from tenants, build on our successes and refine our approach to tenant engagement.

Some examples of what has been achieved, and how, are set out in this framework.

Our approach to developing our engagement opportunities is led by tenant feedback. One source of feedback is the Tenant Satisfaction Measures, this tells us that our tenants want us to improve the way we listen, act and keep them informed. This framework shows how we will do these things.

55.2% Tenants satisfaction that views are listened to and acted upon.

63.7% Tenant satisfaction that they are kept informed about things that matter to them.

Figures from our Tenant satisfaction survey 2025/2026

We are committed to actively listening to tenants, engaging with them meaningfully and giving them an influential voice so that they can hold us to account and help shape the actions and decisions that affect their homes and communities.

Tenants are the key to success. Meaningful and fruitful working relationships between landlords and tenants are central to continue to deliver the best tenant experience and continuous improvement.

To deliver this, we will:

• Have open and honest conversations about tenant feedback, both where we are successful and where we need to improve.
• Share what matters to most tenants and what is important to vulnerable residents individually and collectively.
• Clearly inform tenants about how their engagement makes a difference in decision-making about services and long-term priorities.

We are committed to hearing the diverse voices of tenants and objectives are to ensure that they are:

• Well informed - Clear information on the options to get involved.
• Actively encouraged - Involvement opportunities promoted proactively.
• Enabled to get involved - Supported by us if there are obstacles to getting involved.
• Proactively supported - Work in partnership with us to constructively challenge and hold us to account.
• Supported to engage in diverse ways - By offering a wide range of involvement opportunities to suit different people and their lifestyles.
• Assisted to monitor - Helping us to measure the success of this framework.

Our menu of engagement is broken down into thirteen key areas which are described below. The aim is to provide a wide range of options to suit people who want to get involved in different ways and have different time constraints.

Landlord Assurance Board

The Landlord Assurance Board (also known to us as the LAB) is made up of tenants, councillors, senior leaders and managers from the Council. It has been developed to ensure collective awareness and visibility on important matters such as regulatory compliance, financial resilience, risk management and performance on matters relating to being an effective landlord.

We have a rolling programme of training for tenant members to help boost skills that they need. We also offer places at relevant conferences so tenants can learn from other organisations and use this information to hold us to account.

Your Voice Your Choice

The Your Voice Your Choice Group (also known as YVYC) is chaired by tenants and carries out reviews and scrutinises our services. Tenants set the agenda and help us to identify changes and improvements. Members represent tenant views and help our services reflect their experiences.

Membership of the group is open to all tenants. Meetings are held every six weeks at a consistent time to ensure predictability and accessibility.

Feedback from this group is used to influence formal decision making within the Council.

YVYC provides ongoing tenant-led review and influence, Where deeper examination of a service is needed, the Tenant Scrutiny Panel (a sub-group of YVYC) carries out detailed scrutiny to support improvement.

Task and Finish Groups

Tenants work with staff to scrutinise specific housing services, understand key challenges and develop solutions. The findings and recommendations are presented to Your Voice Your Choice.

Sessions are made as accessible as possible and can be hosted online, in-person or as hybrid meetings. Task and finish groups will be advertised through Your Voice Your Choice, Facebook and directly by email to tenants on the tenant engagement mailing list.

Tenant Scrutiny Panel

The Tenant Scrutiny Panel (also known as TSP) is a formal tenant-led sub-group of YVYC and provides tenants with an opportunity to carry out structured, in-depth reviews of services. This panel strengthens our commitment to transparency, accountability and continuous improvement.

The TSP will:

• Complete evidence-based scrutiny reviews focusing on areas tenants identify as priorities.
• Examine performance information, policies and customer feedback to understand how services are working in practice.
• Work closely with officers to understand processes, identify barriers and explore opportunities for improvement.
• Produce clear recommendations for service improvement which are reported to Your Voice Your Choice and fed directly into the Council’s Landlord Assurance Board to ensure formal decision-making processes.
• Monitor progress with the support of YVYC against agreed actions following each review.

Membership is open to tenants who wish to take a more involved role in shaping and improving landlord services. Training, support and access to information will be provided to ensure all members can participate fully and confidently. Meetings of the TSP will be held as needed and will be convened when scrutiny topics are agreed.

Tenant engagement mailing list

We maintain an up-to-date list of all tenants that have told us they want to be involved. We will use this list to proactively update tenants on involvement opportunities.

Social media

We will use our Facebook and Instagram accounts to promote local involvement activities that are taking place across the Borough. This keeps the wider community informed and allows you an opportunity for more people to get involved and give their views.

Check-it Champions

Members of this group can provide feedback from their home at a time that suits them. Tenants support in reviewing draft documents such as the tenant annual report, newsletters, policies and letters. Documents are sent for review, and tenants are asked to participate in a short survey to answer questions about it. The feedback helps us check to understand whether the proposed document is clear, accessible and tenant friendly.

Housing Community Champions

Housing Community Champions (HCCs) represent a local community and engage with us by reporting on local issues, suggesting improvements and sharing general issues in communities, whether good or bad.
HCCs are invited to events and can share updates with the Tenant Engagement Team by phone or email. Members will be contacted every two months for feedback or they can contact us if they need to discuss something in between.

Coffee mornings

Coffee mornings are held across our sheltered and extra care schemes with the purpose of engaging with and listening to our tenants and their families. We will bring our tenants, partners and service providers together in a friendly safe space. This will help to reduce social isolation, provide an opportunity to meet neighbours and speak to staff, partners and service providers about anything that matters to them. The feedback we receive will be used to ensure that we, and our partners, offer services that best meet the needs of tenants living in those schemes.

Gretton Court Engagement Partnership

This blended engagement model recognises the unique partnership nature of our extra care scheme, and creates a range of engagement and influence opportunities

Estate walks

We arrange regular estate walks in different areas. We use data on issues such as repairs and anti-social behaviour to inform where estate walks are held. They allow tenants to give feedback about their community raise concerns. It is also a great way for tenants to meet colleagues across the Housing Team (including Tenancy Services, Repairs Service and Tenant Engagement), Safer Communities team, Waste and Environmental services team, Community Support Hub, Senior Leadership Team and Local Councillors. We use the feedback from estate walks to inform actions ranging from individual repairs to making fundamental changes to the services we provide.

Surveys

We gather surveys responses by email, post or telephone to get your views on aspects of the housing service.

Targeted Engagement

Engagement activity designed to target a particular issue or activity, using data to decide what issues to focus on and where.

Examples include:

• Our Big Door Knock, which focused on high risk areas for repairs like damp and mould and people that we don’t hear from often.
• Rural Community Outreach, which involved us getting out into our rural communities to talk to them about issues that matter to them.
• Sports team activities, visiting our tenants in their own communities to focus on physical activities.
• Garden competition, giving our tenants the opportunity to showcase their stunning gardens and promoting a sense of pride.
• We prioritise having good quality data and information about our tenants' needs and preferences so that our engagement and communication is meaningful.

Consultations

Where we are looking to make changes to formal documents which may impact on you, such as policies or your tenancy agreement, we will consult with you on the proposed changes. The feedback will be used to shape the changes we make.

Feedback, compliments and complaints

Tenant feedback is very important to us, whether it's a general comment or observation about a service we provide, a compliment about something we've done well or a complaint about something we have not done well. If you have an feedback, compliments or complaints you can log them on our Feedback, Compliments and Complaints page.

We are committed to listening to feedback and acting on what we hear, to continually improve the quality of, and access to, the services we provide.

We constantly monitor the feedback we receive and use it to improve our services, building on the good aspects and improving those that tenants tell us are not as good as they could be.

Tenant Satisfaction Measures

Four times a year we ask tenants to participate in this survey. We ask a series of standard questions about a range of housing services to understand their satisfaction levels. The feedback we receive from tenants is used to calculate our annual Tenant Satisfaction Measures, introduced by the Regulator of Social Housing that are designed to monitor the performance of councils and housing associations.

Tenant engagement isn’t just the role of the tenant engagement team. Instead, it is embedded across our services and recognised as integral to being a landlord. Having clear roles and responsibilities help to ensure that everyone involved in tenant engagement understands what is expected of them and how we work together to deliver meaningful involvement.

Tenants and residents

Tenants play an essential role in shaping and scrutinising our services by:

• Sharing their experiences, views and priorities to influence decision-making.
• Participating in engagement activities at a level that suits their lifestyle.
• Constructively challenging service delivery and helping to identify improvements.
• Representing the wider tenant voice when participating in formal groups.
• Helping monitor the effectiveness of the engagement framework.
• Reviewing information and performance.

Tenant engagement team

The tenant engagement team is responsible for:

• Coordinating and supporting all engagement and scrutiny activities.
• Ensuring opportunities are accessible, inclusive and widely promoted.
• Providing training, information and practical support for tenants to participate meaningfully.
• Working with service areas to ensure feedback is considered and acted upon.
• Supporting the Landlord Assurance Board and engagement groups to evidence the impact of tenant voice.

Tenancy and repairs services

Both service teams have a shared responsibility to:

• Identify engagement opportunities within their service areas.
• Provide timely, clear and accessible information to tenants.
• Engage proactively with feedback and demonstrate how it has influenced decisions.
• Work in partnership with tenants to improve service quality and performance.

Senior leadership team

Senior leaders will:

• Champion the value of tenant voice across the organisation.
• Ensure that engagement is embedded within strategic planning and operational practice.
• Allocate appropriate resources to support the delivery of this framework.
• Consider scrutiny findings and formally respond to recommendations.

Landlord Assurance Board

The Landlord Assurance Board will:

• Receive and consider the findings from Your Voice Your Choice and the Tenant Scrutiny Panel.
• Provide direction, oversight and constructive challenge to ensure strong governance.
• Ensure the consumer standards set by the Regulator of Social housing (also known as RSH) are met and that tenant voice informs our assurance processes.
• Ensure stability of housing services and regulatory compliance during period of local government reorganisation.

We recognise that tenant involvement is vital to the services we provide. For this reason, we are clear that tenant engagement is part of every member of our team’s role.

All teams

All of our teams contribute to engagement as part of their core service delivery, supported by the Tenant Engagement Team.

Tenant engagement team

We also have a dedicated Tenant Engagement Team that will help to co-ordinate engagement activities and support service teams with practical support. This team will also work with the Landlord Assurance Board to assess the success of this strategy.

We will make available all other resources and dedicated budgets for supporting tenants to get involved, capacity building, accessible venues for meetings and all other associated costs.

We will assess the success of this framework by:

• Knowing which services tenants value most to help make best use of resources, maximise
  benefits and achieve the desired impact.
• Showing how tenant's views shaped decisions.
• Ensuring tenant participation in engagement with the council is reflective of our tenants and
  the diverse communities that we serve.
• Evidencing tenant scrutiny of the council’s performance as a social landlord.

We will share the results of this framework by:

• Demonstrating how we are listening to the views of tenants.
• Evidencing the difference made by listening and hearing tenant's voices.
• Annually publishing the results of the Tenant Satisfaction Measures.
• Annually assessing and publishing how well this strategy serves tenants and supports the council.

To ensure this framework remains current, effective and aligned with best practice and governance requirements, we will review it regularly.

The framework will be:

• Formally reviewed every two years to ensure it aligns with legislation, regulatory requirements and the needs of our tenants.
• Review sooner if required, for example following signicant regulatory changes, service redesign or major feedback trends.
• Monitored annually by the Tenant Engagement and Regulatory Compliance Lead and Landlord Assurance Board to assess the impact of engagement activities and identify areas for development.

As part of the review, we will:

• Seek feedback from tenants, including those who participate in the Tenant Satisfaction measures survey, tenants who are part of formal groups and tenants who prefer lighter-touch engagement.
• Work with Your Voice Your Choice and the Tenant Scrutiny Panel to assess how well the framework supports meaningful tenant influence.
• Report findings and propose amendments through the Landlord Assurance Board to ensure transparency and accountability.

Any changes to the framework will be clearly communicated to tenants through our usual channels, including newsletters, digital platforms and engagement groups.

Improved the repairs service

Tenants told us that they were dissatisfied with the repairs service. A review showed us that the customer journey was not as good as it could be and we needed to change the service to improve that. We have since taken decisive action by procuring a new contractor and strengthening the contract specification to ensure a more responsive, transparent, and tenant-focused repairs service.

Improved communication with colleagues

Tenants told us that our staff are not always as responsive as they could be, and some queries were not being answered. We carried out a review and found that the way we handled contact from tenants could not be tracked and monitored by managers. We have introduced a new process which means that our managers can now keep an eye on all tenant contact and make sure responses are received by tenants.

More ways to engage and get involved

Our original involvement options relied on face to face meetings. We received a lot of feedback to say that tenants were not always able to attend meetings in that way. As a result, we have introduced a wider range of opportunities that suit a range of lifestyles.

Access to your Housing Officer

Tenants told us that they wanted to see more of their Housing Officer. We have made changes to our team to increase the number of Housing Officers and take some administration work away from them so that they can be in your communities more. We also introduced estate walks which Housing Officers attend, giving tenants an opportunity to speak to them.

Members of TPAS

The Tenants Engagement Experts (TPAS) is England’s leading tenant engagement experts and they are dedicated to improving tenant engagement standards across the country. They support tenants, landlords and contractors together through a wide range of services, independent and impartial advice, support, consultancy, and training. 

As we are a member of TPAS, our tenants can become members for free. You can and out how to become a member on their website.

We proudly stand with TPAS, believing in the power of investing in our tenants.