A Good Practice Example

The challenge of encouraging tenant involvement in dispersed rural areas has been tackled and the outcome is recognition by HouseMark as being at the Leading Edge of Good Practice.

HouseMark - the Good Practice and Benchmarking on-line service has recognised Signpost Housing Association's tenant participation strategy has an excellent example of how to deal with tenant participation in dispersed rural areas. It is the first such recognition by the organisation in the UK.

The Assocition has developed an independent tenants forum, based on tenant compact standards and both representative of and accountable to all other tenants. Over half of Signpost Housing Association's tenants are now represented in a democratic way.

The challenge was met by developing a concept of 'open representation', following a series of road shows. The number who attended the meetings were deemed too low to form support tenants groups. However, individuals wanted to be active players in their own geographical area. The important aspect of their involvement was that they needed to be accountable to the silent majority.

This is achieved by writing to all the tenants in the geographical area/community proposing that the individual should represent the views of that area at future meetings with Signpost. The stamped addressed envelope is enclosed to encourage comments on the proposal. Open representativies are encouraged to create information sheets/newsletters with a view to developing a formal group.

Every 12 months the representative has an appraisal with the Best Value Manager to discuss the activities over the last year and to set targets for the forthcoming year. Residents are then contacted again about their open representative and informed about their activities over the previous 12 months and their plans for the future, and again they are encouraged to pass comment.

This sytem has worked well with over half of all tenants being represented by the tenants forum with their own Executive made up officers and tenant board members.

If you would like to find out more about becoming a Tenant Representative please contact David Moreland on 01258 484823 or e-mail him on david.moreland@sha.co.uk