by Tracey Wilson, North Ayrshire Council

I recently had the privilege to share good practice from North Ayrshire Council on a webinar session hosted by Supporting Communities to give members a flavour of what Tenant Participation looks like in the West of Scotland. The session covered three topical areas: engagement pre-COVID, new normal practices and the benefits of external accreditation.

A few things struck a chord with me when I was delivering the session, the main one being the fact we will never return to the old normal, however, by taking small steps in this current crisis will help us work towards the bigger picture of Tenant Participation, a message that can be replicated in our personal lives too. COVID has impacted all our working practices and personal lives and I, indeed for one, will never ever take going for a lunch with my daughter for granted again.

In the last nine months, we have reconfigured our Tenant Participation service by upskilling staff, training tenants and working together to develop the service we provide. We have moved rapidly towards digital engagement and involvement, ensuring our tenants are with us every step of the way whilst focusing on our strategy’s priorities – Engage, Empower and Evolve.

The new normal has meant leaving face to face meetings and hard copy documents well behind us and embrace the world of digitalisation. We have swapped meeting rooms for Teams online living room meetings! This work has allowed us to effectively engage and involve tenants through the pandemic, with no impact to the day to day service delivered.

One of the other areas that created some discussion in the webinar was the merit of external accreditation. North Ayrshire Council Housing Service currently hold gold level accreditations awarded by two different organisations and have been externally accredited since 2008.

The accreditation has been a wonderful organisational health check, looking at all aspects of Tenant Participation, ensuring resources are in place along with adequate budgets and developing participation across the service. It helps us as an organisation be sector leaders in the field of Tenant Participation and gives tenants confidence in their landlord.

Tenants like the merit of our organisation being externally accredited as it helps place an element of trust and confidence that their voice is being heard. It gives scrutiny panels and all other working groups the recognition of their hard work, they so freely give on a regular basis. It recognises the partnership working being done between tenants and staff and the continual strive to do better. Tenants also welcome the idea that Tenant Participation is embedded across the service and have a robust structure and framework for this to happen.

This year has brought many challenges and who knows where the next level of Tenant Participation will be in a few years. In the meantime, by taking small steps at a time we will help transition into the new normal world of Tenant Participation and help tenants to remain at the heart of our organisation where they are able to take part, be heard, and have a say.

Wishing you all a peaceful, safe festive season and a happy, healthy prosperous 2021.