In November 2009 the Tenant Services Authority (TSA) launched the findings of its ‘national conversation’ exercise to find out what matters most to tenants and what standards of service they wanted from their local housing service. It was the single largest ever tenant consultation exercise carried out with over 27,000 tenants taking part.
The TSA have been set up to raise the standard of services across ALMOs (like Aire Valley Homes) and other social housing providers – putting the interests of all social housing tenants first, regardless of the kind of landlord.
The thousands of tenants who took part in the ‘national conversation’ listed getting repairs and maintenance right, ensuring homes are up to date and in a decent condition, tackling anti-social behaviour and being involved in decisions as top priorities they expected from their landlords.
This feedback then became the back bone to a new set of national standards for landlords, that the TSA as regulator will enforce.
The standards are on five key areas:
‘Tenant Involvement and Empowerment’ (including customer service, choice, equality and diversity, vulnerable tenants and complaints)
‘Home’ (covering repairs and improvements)
‘Tenancy’ (for allocations and rent issues)
‘Neighbourhood and Community’ (dealing with neighbourhood management and anti-social behaviour)
‘Vale for money ‘ (getting good efficient services for the rents paid)
These national standards will be complemented with ‘locally agreed’ standards. Working with tenants in the year ahead we’ll be setting local performance targets, agreeing how performance is monitored, sharing performance information, telling you how our service compares to others and describing what happens if we fail to meet the standards we have agreed. This is what the TSA calls ‘co-regulation’.
By October 2010 we will have published our plans for how we will develop these local standards and have the standards themselves in place by April 2011 at the latest.
In the year ahead then, we’ll be speaking with all the tenants and residents groups, as well as many others about them and look forward to hearing your views.
Find out more about the TSA on their website: www.tenantservicesauthority.org