Tenants' Voice - Improving Services (Our tenant-led scrutiny group)
The Tenants' Voice - Improving Services group is made up of tenants from across Progress Housing Group. It completes reviews on different areas of the organisation to identify what we do well and make recommendations for improvements in areas where we could do better.
When carrying out a scrutiny review, tenants carry out a wide range of activities. This can include interviews from Group employees, looking at performance information and survey results from other tenants, looking at policy documents, mapping out process from a tenant's perspective and looking at what other housing providers do. Tenants then meet with employees to discuss their findings and produce action plans to implement their recommendations.
To find out more about our Tenants' Voice group, including how to join or make a suggestion for a service review, please contact our Customer Voice Team to find out more.
Copies of previous minutes from the Tenants' Voice group are available upon request from the Customer Voice Team.
You can also read our Tenants' Voice annual report here: Tenants’ Voice – Improving Services | Annual Report
At our meeting in July 2023, our Tenants’ Voice - Improving Services group identified Communication as their next area for review.
We plan to start the review in December. You can view the meeting dates here: Tenants' Voice - Improving Services events
If you are interested in getting involved and sharing your thoughts and experiences of communication from the Group, please contact the Customer Voice Team - formerly the Progress Involvement Team. We would love to hear from you.
In April 23, the Tenants’ Voice group selected our planned maintenance service as their next area of review.
The review is now complete with tenants finalising their report and recommendations.
The Tenants’ Voice group chose to carry out a review of Community Safety in December 2022.
The group decided to focus their review on how easy it was to report anti-social behaviour (ASB), how tenant expectations around ASB issues are managed and how tenant satisfaction is obtained and used to improve the service.
The group made nine recommendations, seven of which have been implemented, including:
- A review of standard letters, making sure they are easy to understand and have key information clearly visible.
- Providing information and link to the ASB Case Review Directory on the website.
- Providing testimonials from tenants who have benefited from the service, sharing their experiences to promote the benefits and accessibility of the service.
- Promoting our free, independent Wellbeing and Support service available to tenants, on the Community Safety letters and webpage.
The two ongoing recommendations are on track to complete over the next few weeks.
The group completed a review of the Out of Hours service in October 2022.
They made six recommendations to improve the service for tenants who contact Progress Housing Group to report a repair outside of normal office hours.
Three of the recommendations have been implemented, including:
- additional information provided on the website to explain what is meant by an emergency repair
- tenants receiving confirmation when the trade operative is on their way to carry out the out of hours repair
- and training provided to colleagues to make sure tenants with specific requirements are supported when requesting an out of hours repair.
The group selected to carry out a review of the electrical testing process in October 2021.
This included a review of the information provided to tenants to arrange and explain what is involved in the electrical safety test.
The group made nine recommendations. At the meeting in April 2023 the Tenants’ Voice group confirmed they were comfortable that all nine recommendations had been implemented and signed the review off as complete.
The group carried out a full review of the customer engagement carried out by Progress Housing Group.
They used the National Housing Federations Together with Tenants Charter as a basis for their review, finding that all six areas of the charter were met by Progress Housing Group.
The group made 18 recommendations to further improve customer engagement across Progress Housing Group.
All 18 recommendations are complete, with the Tenants’ Voice group confirming the review is complete at the meeting in January 2023.
The review of the complaints and feedback process was completed in December 2019 making seven recommendations.
All seven recommendations are now complete with the Tenants’ Voice group confirming the review is complete at the meeting in January 2023.
Read 'You said, We did' information
The Scrutiny Pool carried out a review of the grounds maintenance communication during the Summer of 2020. Due to COVID restrictions this was carried out entirely on Zoom.
All recommendations made by the group have been implemented and tenants are happy to sign this review off as complete: See more here.
Whilst carrying out the review of the compliments and complaints process, the Scrutiny Pool also looked at the Compensation, Good will and Sundry Payment policy.
The group made three recommendations which have been included when re-writing the policy.
All three recommendations made by the group have been implemented and tenants are happy to sign this review off as complete.
All six recommendations made by the group have been implemented and tenants are happy to sign this review off as complete.
The recommendations have been included in the new annual visit form. We started to use the new form in November 2020 and are seeing the benefits of it.
Following feedback from tenants the Scrutiny Pool chose to review the letters used to arrange the annual gas safety and periodic electrical tests.
We wanted to make sure that the letter provide clear information and explain why it is so important that these safety inspections are carried out. We wanted to make sure that the letters use the right tone and language to encourage our tenant’s co-operation in providing access to allow the checks to take place.
The Scrutiny Pool made five recommendations, all of which are now complete with the new look letters now being used.