National Housing Federation
Supporting system change and tenant involvement
The client and background
CfGS has been providing expert advice to the National Housing Federation on the development of the Together with Tenants initiative since 2018. As part of this work, we supported the design and recruitment to their first Tenant Advisory Panel and now provide independent support to the Panel.
What we did and the impact
Since the Grenfell Tragedy, the social housing sector has rightly been reviewing many aspects of its responsibilities to assess if they are up to standard. One of these is whether housing associations are doing all they can to involve tenants in decision-making. CfGS worked with the Federation to co-design an approach members and tenants to encourage system-wide change.
The outcome of the work was the ‘Together with Tenants’ (TwT), a new national initiative to create a stronger relationship between tenants and housing associations. CfGS drew on its expertise and experience from a wide-range of sectors to establish the levers required to encourage system wide change. The TwT initiative includes a new charter, changes to the governance code and support mechanisms to enable change to happen. Following the consultation, 133 housing associations volunteered to be early adopters. These organisations were tasked with testing the plan and charter with their residents between July 2019 and March 2020. The next step is to process the early adopters’ learnings and experiences and use these to shape the sector-wide rollout.
If you would like CfGS to support your organisation to help drive improvement in the way you do business please get in touch by emailing info@cfgs.org.uk or call 020 7543 5627.
