Tenant Connection – October – December 2023

This is our first quarterly tenant connection update. It covers the period October to December 2023 and is designed to give you a picture of how tenants are holding North Star to account and supporting the organization to make service improvements.

If you have any questions about the information in the report, please contact communities@northstarhg.co.uk.

Your Voice Data Base

• During the period of 23rd – 26th October Helen Taylor, Tenant Connector ran a Your Voice sign up campaign.
• Helen spent time at several of North Star’s Supported Housing units, meeting with staff and tenants to answer questions about what being an Involved Tenant means at North Star as well as advertising on Facebook and sending information to tenants by email and text.
• Helen also provided regular updates to all North Star staff via Teams during the campaign.
• The campaign was a success and attracted 132 new sign ups. This brings the total to 315 tenants registered to receive information about involvement activities. This is an increase of 41.9% since the last campaign.

Meetings

Dring the period of October – December 2023 there were 11 involvement activities held:

8x involvement meetings in person and online

1x TPAS Scrutiny Conference

1x Friends of North Star meeting

1x Attendance of TVSP at a North Star Board meeting

Over the 11 activities, tenants donated just over 614 volunteering hours to North Star. This is equivalent to £6400.49 under the current National Living Wage (£10.42/hour).

There was also:

1x Survey issued to the Your Voice database as part of the Policy Review Group.

1x Involved Tenant Christmas thank you lunch held in December that 23 Involved Tenants attended. This has not been included in calculations as this was not a formal tenant meeting.

Recommendations

Over the period of October to December 2023, there were 16 recommendations made from the following groups:

2 x Performance Review Group

7 x Consumer Standards group

7 x Tenants Voice Scrutiny Panel (TVSP)

A report with the recommendations from the Performance Review Group was sent to the Property and Repairs Manager and the Customer Experience Manager. Their responses have been forwarded to the Involved Tenant Group to decide if they would like a further meeting to discuss these responses.

A report with the recommendations from the Consumer Standards Group was sent to the Head of Communities and the Property and Repairs Manager. All 5 recommendations were accepted, and deadlines have been provided.

TVSP met with The Board in December 2023. They presented their Right First-Time scrutiny report along with the responses from Senior Management. TVSP have requested a formal response from The Board following their presentation as well as an action plan from Senior Management with deadlines for the recommendations to be implemented. Helen Taylor, Tenant Connector will arrange for these to be passed to the group once received.

All of the recommendations made across the groups have been added to the Involvement Recommendation Tracker so that implementation and impact can be monitored.

Diversity

We monitor the diversity of our tenant connection activities and we are pleased to confirm that all activities were broadly representative based on age, location, ethnicity and disability data we hold.

Action plan

Jan-23 – Repeat a similar survey to the one carried out in April 2023 to identify any new barriers for tenants attending involvement activities

Jan-23 – Send the above survey and any meeting invitations via text as well as email to encourage more responses

Jan-23 – Offer an incentive for completing the above survey to encourage more responses

Feb-23 – Explore the possibility of covering the cost of childcare for tenants who need this extra support

Feb-23 – Hold another Your Voice campaign with the option of pre-bookable slots for tenants to request either a call back, video call or visit in person from Helen Taylor – Tenant Connector to answer any questions about involvement

Continuous – Offer evening and weekend meeting in the hope this will be more accessible to all tenants