What’s Preventing Social Housing Residents From Being Heard?
It’s probably reasonable to say that the effectiveness of responsive repairs goes a long way towards determining how social housing residents judge their overall experience.
And if that’s the case, recent research by Shelter doesn’t paint a rosy picture of how social housing residents feel about the service they receive. Many are unhappy with the level of responsiveness and the quality of repairs. They feel impotent with little ability to influence events and priorities. Many feel that they are not being listened to.
We have many occasions in recent years which should have been a wake-up call. Unheard residents’ concerns about safety may have contributed to what was an avoidable tragedy. And yet, many social housing residents still feel like second class citizens.
A new regulator with the remit of standing up for residents still seems a long way off. And should we be waiting for a new regulator in any case?
What Would a New Regulator Demand?
Let’s imagine a new regulator had been established and was starting work tomorrow. What would we need to do? We’d have to invent a multi-channel communication system so that residents could report and track faults 24/7 in the way they find most convenient.
This would have to be backed by a streamlined system for logging, scheduling and tracking repair appointments at a time that suited the resident. There would also have to be ongoing communication to keep residents informed and send reminders to ensure somebody would be in.
Robust inspections would also be needed to safeguard quality and identify any issues that need to be fed back into targeted staff training and process improvement. Related to this we would also need open sharing of performance data including ‘right-first-time’ statistics to drive up standards and accountability.
Behind these processes would have to be a repair and maintenance provider that was fully committed to shaping the service around what residents truly value.
Do we need a new regulator to make this happen? We can do all of this today without waiting for government action or a new regulator to be formed. These principles characterize every one of Osborne’s repair and maintenance partnerships, which place residents at the heart of all we do.
