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Tenant Assessors

In March 2005, the Regulation and Inspection division of Communities Scotland launched its tenant assessor initiative. Our panel of tenant assessors work with us, on a voluntary basis, to bring a service users’ perspective to the inspection process. Tenant assessors work with inspection teams to review and comment on the services provided by social landlords. While the work is unpaid all expenses are reimbursed.

We have a panel of tenant assessors from all over Scotland who participate on our inspections. Our aim is to include at least 1 tenant assessor on any inspection with a service focus that we carry out. We recently recruited 8 new tenant assessors to join the panel, bringing the total number of tenant assessors to 25. An induction event has been held for the new tenant assessors, who will begin their training by shadowing some of the existing tenant assessors on inspection.

Left to right: George Fraser, Esnat Mbisa, Patsy Beaton, George Murray, Karen Watt (Chief Executive SHR) Steven Black, Robert McGoldrick, Nadya Wagland, Richard Leiper.

The role of the tenant assessor

A tenant assessor can be involved in our work in a number of ways:

- talking to and gathering the views of tenants;

- shadowing landlords’ staff on estate and home visits;

- talking to governing body and staff members; and

- reviewing and commenting on literature produced by landlords for tenants.

Training and Evaluation

We hold an Annual Conference for tenant assessors and regular training events. We also issue a regular Newsletter to update tenant assessors on recent events and forthcoming activities.

An evaluation of the Tenant Assessor Programme was carried out in 2007. We spoke to inspected organisations, inspection staff and the Tenant Assessors themselves to gather views of the Programme so far. Here are some of their thoughts:

“The presence on-site of a tenant assessor definitely added value to the inspection, especially in terms of engaging directly with tenants - it’s positive” (Senior staff- inspected organisation)

“I think that tenant assessor involvement encourages people to relax and chat, tenant to tenant” (Inspection Manager)

“I was pleased to see that what I submitted as a report was reflected in the inspection report” (Tenant Assessor)

To find out more about the tenant assessor role, click here to read about a day in the life of a tenant assessor.