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Foreword

The needs and priorities of tenants and other people who use housing services are a central concern for landlords – and they are at the heart of the single regulatory framework. The views of people using the services are a rich source of information that can help organisations to develop and improve those services, and this information isn’t always captured or used as effectively as it might be. There are lots of reasons for this, and what has become clear through the process of developing this guide is that both tenants and practitioners have a strong interest in this topic.

While there are legal frameworks for tenant participation and (for local authorities) for best value, landlords are free to decide how they should seek the views of individual tenants and other people using the housing service, who may include owners, shared owners, homeless people and other housing applicants. This guidance is about how to use the wide range of tried and tested approaches to gathering views from individual service users rather than the related, but slightly different, area of tenant participation, which has been well-covered elsewhere. It is aimed at housing staff who do not necessarily have previous experience or knowledge of research and consultation methods – though it will also interest those who do.

We recognise that landlord organisations vary enormously in their size, structure, aims, geographic location and tenant and resident population. There is no one ‘right’ way of doing things and the guidance should be treated as a useful resource, not a blueprint for how things should be done. While it gives fairly comprehensive coverage of research and consultation methods, different organisations will want to use it in different ways and at different times.

The guidance isn’t meant to be read all at one sitting and we certainly don’t expect every organisation to do everything described here. The emphasis is always on what is to be achieved by gathering views and what is the best way of doing that, in each case?

Doing more effective research and consultation doesn’t always have to mean putting in more resources – sometimes it might just mean doing things differently.

We hope this guidance will help to show you how.

Karen Watt

Director of Regulation & Inspection

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