Tenant Involvement and Empowerment
Tenancy Support Measures
- The landlord listens to tenant views and acts upon them
- The landlord keeps tenants informed about things that matter to them
- Satisfaction with landlord's approach to handling of complaints
Key Achievement
In 2023, the Tenant Scrutiny Panel shared their report with us, on 'How Rotherham Council can improve communications with tenants'. The panel are a group of tenants that meet monthly to take a detailed look at the council housing services that they feel need to improve. They make recommendations for meaningful improvements which are agreed before co-designing a realistic plan of action. The first suggestion from the panel was that the council create a team of tenants to sense check communications sent out to fellow tenants which led to the creation of the 'Screen Team'. So far, this has included looking oat out Tenancy Health Check form and co-creating new look Tenant Engagement Team web pages. The panel also said that we should design specific training for Housing Teams around how to communicate well with the tenants that they work with. The training has been developed and is in the final stages of being signed off by our Customer Services Team.
179 - Compliments received up
from 172 last year.
607-Complaints received up f
rom 482 last year.
503-Number of complaints responded to
within corporate timescales.
You said, we did
You said: Hold training for Council officers on how to communicate well with people, including people who have lost someone close to them.
You said: Add a link on the website to let people know how to complain, comment or compliment services.
We did: A training course has been developed for all housing staff and includes videos of tenant experiences when talking to housing tenants.
We did: Work is ongoing to improve the website and make it clearer how to let the Council know about complaints, compliments, and feedback.
You said: Make sure that telephone calls are answered within six minutes.
You said: Make it easier for people to adjust the setting on the website and remove any words that are not easy to understand.
We did: More staff are answering calls and a "customer call back
facility" which allows people to leave their number and receive a
call back from the Council if they are having to wait too long has
been introduced.
We did: Work is ongoing to improve language and terms used on the website and make access easier for all. A new tenant group has also
been set up to look at all resources and discuss how to improve them.