Last Updated on September 28, 2015
Category: All, Customer Engagement, Social Housing

 

Reaping the benefits of sustained resident engagement 

 

Earlier this year, two reports proved the importance of involving tenants in improving the standard of social housing. In the first report, ‘Investment Not A Cost’, (commissioned by the National Tenants Organisation with University of Birmingham) twenty landlords identified savings of £29 per property annually, directly linked to resident engagement. If replicated across the social housing sector, this could result in cost savings of approximately £118 million a year creating both a stronger economy and a fairer society.

Happy Family Garden

 

The landlords that were able to attribute savings to tenant involvement apportioned them to,

‘…tenant-led scrutiny and reviews, tendering for new contractors that had involved tenants in the process, value for money suggestions from tenants, tenant control, and through tenants carrying out activities that otherwise would have been done by staff or consultants.’[1]

The second report, ‘Success, Satisfaction & Scrutiny: The business benefits of involving residents’  from Amicus Horizon and University of Westminster showed resource savings of at least £2.7 million per annum, largely related to Amicus’s approach to designing and refining services by consulting residents.

Our TP Tracker users are evaluating the costs and benefits of resident involvement using the Impact Upgrade. For full details, please e-mail us at sales@arenapartnership.co.uk , or call us on 01603 813932 for an informal chat.

[1] ‘Tenants Leading Change – An Investment Not A Cost: The business benefits of tenant involvement’ (Department for Communities and Local Government, March 2015)