Southdown Sign Up To Together With Tenants

Posted on 24 May 2023

What is Together with Tenants?

Following the fire at Grenfell Tower in 2017, the government spoke to residents to understand how people feel about their housing association, and what change needed to happen. A big theme from these conversations was that residents aren’t listened to enough, and this was mentioned a lot in the government’s Social Housing Green Paper.

In 2018 the National Housing Federation (NHF) created an initiative called Together with Tenants to improve this. Its aim is to strengthen the relationship between residents and housing associations. After speaking to lots of residents and their members, the NHF developed a four-point plan for change. This included a new charter with six commitments, setting out in clear terms what residents can and should expect from their landlord – and how residents can hold them to account on these.

Together with Tenants’ Charter

1. Relationships: To treat all residents with respect in all of their interactions, and for relationships between residents and housing associations to be based on openness, honesty and transparency.

2. Communication: To send you clear, accessible and timely information on the issues that matter to you, including important information about your home and local community, how the organisation is working to address problems, how the organisation is run, and information about performance on key issues.

3. Voice and influence: To seek and value the views of residents, and use this information to inform decisions. Every individual resident should feel listened to on the issues that matter to them and speak without fear.

4. Accountability: To allow residents to collectively work in partnership to independently scrutinise and hold their housing association to account for the decisions that affect the quality of homes and services.

5. Quality: To ensure homes are good quality, well maintained, safe and well managed.

6. When things go wrong: To provide residents with simple and accessible routes for raising issues, making complaints and seeking redress. And for residents to receive timely advice and support when things go wrong.

Southdown’s commitment to hearing our tenants’ voice

Carrie Croll, our Tenant Communication and Involvement Officer, says,

Together With Tenants is a really important initiative that puts tenants right at the very heart of everything we do. It also provides a valuable framework to support transparency and accountability.

At Southdown, we want to ensure our tenants are listened to and have every opportunity to share their thoughts and experiences. Meaningful conversations and involvement from our tenants, and acting on their feedback, is fundamental to the delivery of our services.

We’re currently working to develop our Southdown Tenants’ Charter to align to the Together With Tenants’ commitments, and we’re really excited to be doing this in partnership with our tenants.

Find out more about Together with Tenants by visiting the dedicated webpage here or you can follow the hashtag #TogetherWithTenants on social media.

If you are a Southdown tenant and would like to be involved in the development of Southdown’s Tenants’ Charter please get in touch with Carrie at carrie.croll@southdown.org.