What is stopping us having great tenant engagement now?

By 2030, tenants will have more rights to involvement.

They will have the power to act if their organisation doesn’t do this well.

There will be structures to put sanctions in place if social landlords do not listen to and work with residents. That doesn’t mean there will be simple answers, but that conversations, partnership and respect need to be in place, with proper feedback if something is not possible, as well as organisations responding positively if they can.

There will be a well-established national voice for tenants, funded by a levy from landlords. Just as with other consumer bodies and trade unions, there will be a formal and independent representative body for the four million households living in social housing.

This will have good links to many tenants across the country and able to represent their views in national policy development.

Tenants have genuinely become customers, with the right to transfer landlords to another in their local area if they are not satisfied with the service they receive.

This adds an extra incentive to social landlords to achieve high satisfaction and puts something in place of the market power held by customers elsewhere. Of course this is complicated, but anything can be achieved – and if it works for gas and electricity, there’s no reason we can’t make this work for housing (same gas supply, different manager).

By 2030, it will be the norm for landlord chief executives to have an open door policy for tenants. It shouldn’t be unusual for the person leading a social housing provider to be speaking with tenants very regularly.

This needs to include those people whose views are challenging about the quality of services and decisions made by the management.

“It shouldn’t be unusual for the person leading a social housing provider to be speaking with tenants very regularly.”

We’ll have regular training for tenants and staff who are involved – led by tenants from across the country who are paid for their work. The experience that tenants have developed in their local communities and working to improve services will help to inform great involvement elsewhere.

We will have a backstop – a little like the Audit Commission – which insists on good levels of tenant involvement. But we will hardly ever need to see its power used because boards and executive teams will understand that working in partnership with residents leads to great services and great decision-making. But if they don’t they must face sanctions that bite.

My next question is: What’s stopping us now?

How much is listening and responding well to tenants a part of staff job descriptions and performance management?

From my experience this is mixed and probably better in some parts of the sector than others.

“Realistically I think we will need sanctions to make it happen.”

The government and the Regulator of Social Housing aren’t actively helping to achieve excellent levels of accountability. But they’re not stopping us either. Initiatives such as Investing in Involvement show the great results that can come about with good-quality resident involvement.

But somehow other priorities have come above this core part of our organisations.

Perhaps it’s a case of ‘what can be sanctioned gets done’, meaning that economic regulations and covenants with lenders take up the limited time of social landlords.

My concern is not that we meet those requirements, but that the current pecking order means they may squeeze out the importance of genuinely listening and responding to tenants.

I’d like to see landlords having the sense to do much more to empower residents now and not wait for 2030.

Optimistically, I know some landlords will step up to the plate. But looking at the last 40 years of housing in England, realistically I think we will need sanctions to make it happen.

Richard Peacock, chief executive, Soha Housing