North Lanarkshire Council urges tenants to help improve housing services

North Lanarkshire CouncilCouncil tenants in North Lanarkshire can inform, get involved and help improve housing services by commenting on a new draft strategy for Tenant Participation.

North Lanarkshire Council’s five year plan - ‘Inform, Involve, Improve’ - puts tenants and customers at the heart of service delivery and provides another opportunity to influence and shape key housing services.

Councillor Sam Love, convener of housing and social work, said: “We’ve already received tremendous support from tenants and other customers keen to participate and get involved in informing and influencing service developments and improvements. But we want even more tenants to get involved in shaping our future proposals for tenant involvement.”

The strategy’s main aims are: to look at and improve the way the council communicates with its customers and tenants, and measure satisfaction and feedback; to create more opportunity for customers and tenants to participate in consultation and widen their involvement in shaping future housing services, and to develop better ways of communicating and consulting with under-represented groups such as Black and Minority Ethnic (BME), disabled people and younger people.

Previously, customers said they want to be consulted and involved in various ways to allow participation, at a time and level that suits them. The strategy is doing this by:

  • Using social media to promote involvement opportunities;
  • Continuing to fund the provision of the independent Tenants’ & Residents’ Participation Project to support and develop tenant participation throughout North Lanarkshire;
  • Delivering a new e-mail subscription service that provides all the latest housing news direct to tenants’ inbox;
  • Using the tenant participation budget to provide direct grant funding to the North Lanarkshire Federation and to local tenants’ and residents’ groups;
  • Developing a tenant scrutiny framework, in partnership with the North Lanarkshire Federation of Tenants’ & Residents’ Association, to involve tenants in taking a more in depth look at specific areas of service delivery and consider areas for improvement, and
  • Gaining feedback from the various surveys, such as the biennial Tenant Satisfaction Survey, house letting and repairs surveys, to help shape and improve the way the council delivers housing services.
  • “There are so many ways to get involved,” added Councillor Love. “We want to empower tenants and support them so they can effectively contribute to, and influence housing services. We’re doing this by making it easier to participate in, and influence our decisions through methods that suit them and meet their needs. It’s so important that our customers get all the information they need about the services we provide to allow them to provide feedback. We’re committed to gathering your views and listening - let’s work together and build on the good partnership working we’re already established.”

    The consultation period for the Draft Strategy for Tenant Participation comes to an end on Monday 24 August.

    @nlcpeople

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