Is there a difference between Scrutiny and Tenant Participation?

We recently spoke to the team at TPAS Scotland to get their thoughts on whether tenant scrutiny and TP are the same thing?

Tenant scrutiny has been around in tenant engagement for a long time but sometimes it’s not always clear where it comes into play.  Tenant scrutiny gives tenants an active role in setting their landlord’s processes and standards, rather than just being a recipient of their services. The role of scrutiny is to enable staff and tenants to work in partnership to achieve better performance and improved outcomes.  Scrutiny focusses on what is important to tenants, how and what improves tenants’ lives.

Tenant participation on the other hand is where tenants have a range of opportunities to have a say about how their housing services are delivered. Landlords value the tenant engagement and recognise it as a vital component to improving their services and delivery.  Tenants give landlords their views and highlight their priorities and those suggestions are used to influence how they move forward.

Tenants are participating when they are carrying out scrutiny, but the focus is different.  When carrying out scrutiny, tenants are taking a closer look at what the landlord already has in place and how they are delivering those services.  This could be instances such as allocations estate management, rent setting.   Often landlords create scrutiny panels (or scrutiny groups) where they provide tenants with an easy process to influence decision making.

Lead Projects Officer at TPAS, Tony Kelly said, “Scrutiny requires landlords to share their procedures and be open with tenants. It also needs tenants to make recommendations based on evidence. An open, honest, and constructive approach is needed from tenants and landlords to deliver the benefits of scrutiny.”

We also spoke with Conor Lanigan, Stronger Voices Managers from Wheatley Group about the importance of scrutiny within their organisation at the Housing Professionals Conference last year and Conor gives a detailed description of how TPAS’s support in this area has been extremely helpful for their organisation.

Watch the video here.