Social housing tenants have a statutory right to have a say in the running of their homes, but what does that mean in practice?

“Communities have to have a say in decisions that affect them, and housing has one of the biggest impacts on people’s lives.”  Helen Barton, TPAS

In a recent podcast hosted by Jimmy Black and Kieran Findlay of Scottish Housing News our very own Helen Barton spoke with Castlehill Housing Association tenant Colin Stewart and tenant and community engagement facilitator at Scottish Borders Housing Association Louise McNeilage about the importance of tenant participation.

TPAS Scotland launched their Back on Track programme to help housing organisations and tenants to build better relationships as they recover from the pandemic.  Covid has interrupted tenant participation and some of the people who used to be involved are no longer active. The TPAS Back on Track programme is designed to help landlords rejuvenate their tenant participation programmes. TPAS want to help landlords work out how best to engage tenants in participation after Covid.

Colin highlighted the role of regional tenant participation networks in policy making and reporting tenants’ views directly to ministers but emphasised that there is a challenge to get members for some of the networks.

Scrutiny is a big part of the tenants responsibility to monitor good practice of their landlords. Since 2015, Scottish Borders Housing Association (SBHA) has been working with tenants to scrutinise any areas of work which may need improvement.  Louise McNeilage highlighted that their scrutiny model involves customer audit teams which include people from registered tenants’ organisations and other tenants with an interest examining things like the empty homes lettable standard, repairs and maintenance, planned maintenance, complaints handling and much else.

Read Jimmy Black’s blog about this podcast here.