Tenant cashback

27/01/2012 3:04 pm

At the risk of starting to talk to myself in the forums (not that anyone on this site would ever do that), I've just had quite a timely press release through from Six Town Housing about some work they are doing to teach tenants how to do basic DIY jobs. I'll do a story on it shortly, but thought it was worth mentioning here as well. Maybe if tenants were trained to do basic repairs that would get round some of the concerns about quality associated with the tenant cashback idea.

30/01/2012 1:32 pm

Derren - I'm not sure about those examples, it might have been a similar but different scheme?

But you might be interested in this feature about the most recent pilots: http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/repairs/repairs-revolution-or-diy-disaster/6520103.article

31/01/2012 12:55 pm

Hi Derren,

Yep, I have heard this too! It rather predates my knowledge of social housing, I'm afraid, but Kevin Lowry mentioned the right to repair in his comment piece, which seems to be a relatively similar idea... http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/repairs/power-to-the-people?/6520157.article

31/01/2012 2:31 pm

We're going to hold a live debate on this tomorrow morning (Wednesday) at 10.15. The two authors of our head to head opinion piece, Bromford's Darrin Gamble and Kevin Lowry, from Northumberland, will be discussing the pros and cons of tenant cashback and answering your questions on the subject. You can post your questions for them on here now, or sign in at 10.15 tomorrow to debate the issues live.

01/02/2012 10:04 am

A great start to the questions, Derren :)

I'll also be posting some of the questions and comments people have raised on Twitter too!

1. Jan Taranczuk, who is one of the candidates for VP of the Chartered Institute of Housing, and tweets as jantaran, has a question about how much tenants could earn in cashback through the scheme. Apparently Grant Shapps has previously raised a figure of £1,000? Is this still the case? https://twitter.com/#!/Jantaran/status/163960928398876672
2. On the same subject, Home Group (one of the other associations running a pilot, along with Bromford), said they have 160 tenants signed up, and they're benefitting to the tune of £400/year. (https://twitter.com/#!/wearehomegroup/status/163966099002638336)
3. Joe Chambers, who is CEO of Soho Housing, tweeted his concern about whether social landlords will really be able to make savings through getting tenants to carry out their own repairs. https://twitter.com/#!/JoeChambers7/status/164051818492596225 He says: "No savings if the repair is inspected before and after-Disputes about quality-lots of small payments-inefficient ineffective" Any thoughts on this?
4. Lara Oyedele, CEO of Odu-Dua Housing Association, is similarly sceptical. "Am all for choice. But not just for the sake of it. This is a distraction from real issues - money, more homes etc." (https://twitter.com/#!/LaraOyedele/status/164279313728942080)

01/02/2012 10:13 am

Oh, and more of a positive example! The environmental team at Lush (the cosmestics shop) tweeted in support of the idea, (https://twitter.com/#!/GreenTeamatLush/status/163921497411432448), and gave an example of how a similar arrangement has worked for them:

"this is brilliant! Our landlord bought gravel for our garden and liner and we put it down ourselves- win win!"

Is this a concept that has worked well for some people in the private sector?

01/02/2012 10:41 am

How do costs work in terms of materials and equipment? Presumably a professional contractor would get better rates on materials than someone who just pops down to their local DIY store, as well as having all the tools they need to start off with. Could this potentially undermine any savings?