Agenda item

Resolved: the committee noted the report and thanked the witness for their presentation.

Kevin Farrell (Senior Associate, TPAS) delivered a presentation on resident engagement in housing development.

The presentation covered TPAS’s National Engagement Standards, good practice for Independent Tenant Advisors (ITAs), how to engage with “need-to-reach” communities, engagement on infill development, and aspects of the social housing green paper.

The work being carried out by the council and Lewisham Homes was acknowledged by the TPAS representative, as was the research carried out for the review.

Some of the key points of the presentation included:

1.1  Engagement should be planned to, among other things, achieve accountability and transparency. This is one of the first issues that will concern residents. Developers should be available to residents, have dialogue, provide answers, and be open and transparent about decision making and funding.

1.2  Engagement should be allocated sufficient resources. It is important to have the right people and resources to support communities through an often stressful and anxious period of change.

1.3  Tenants, leaseholders and community members should be provided with the appropriate levels of support to be effectively engaged. This includes capacity building to help residents understand and take a meaningful and active part in the process. It is important to understand the existing level of knowledge among residents as this varies from community to community.

1.4  Volunteers should be recruited, supported and trained so that they can influence, co-design and scrutinise. There should be mechanisms in place to enable residents to influence thinking and decisions. 

1.5  Communities have a huge amount of knowledge and experience about where they live and engagement should start with a “blank piece of paper” and build up. Enabling residents to scrutinise plans, funding, designs etc is an important step in building confidence and trust. 

1.6  Communities affected by housing development often want expert advice. Independent Tenant Advisors (ITA) can provide advice to residents independent from the council.

1.7  TPAS, which provides an ITA service, believes ITAs are essential to regeneration projects and that communities should be given the opportunity to choose their own ITA. 

1.8  In order to engage with “need-to-reach” (also referred to as “hard-to-reach”) groups, there are some important initial steps, such as having a customer relationship management system in place and carrying out analysis of the community in relation to equalities.

1.9  Engagement should be planned, monitored and measured so its impact can be assessed, and regularly reviewed with the community you’re engaging with.

1.10   It is important to understand residents’ preferred channels of engagement and engagement activity should be used to gain further insight into communication preferences.

1.11   Engagement on infill development should acknowledge the impact it will have on neighbours but also promote its benefits. There should be boundaries for different levels of engagement. Developers should take an inclusive approach and be prepared to talk to anybody. There should be excellent resident liaison.

The committee asked a number of questions and a discussion followed. The key points noted were:

1.12   The first challenge with engagement is to connect and relate to the communities you’re working with and to build their trust.

1.13   The biggest challenge is speaking the right language and translating between the developer and the community. Key to this is having well-trained staff to speak to communities and translate back to council officers in a way they can understand.

1.14   Speaking the right language can help build the trust and respect necessary to work together positively and constructively. It can take time, however, where communities have a long history of bad experiences. It helps to focus on the solutions to problems.

1.15   On the Carpenters Estate, Newham, TPAS worked with the community to co-design a residents’ charter. The community produced the charter and presented it to the council. This process created a dialogue, provided the community with an opportunity to highlight its priorities, and built trust.

1.16   In order to assert their independence, some ITAs ask residents to monitor and agree to their activity. Residents should accompany ITAs at project meetings and be copied in to correspondence. ITAs should constantly demonstrate they are there to represent the views of the community.

1.17   When recruiting volunteers to be involved in the engagement process it’s important to recognise that the majority of people do not have lots of spare time. Engagement activity that involves significant time commitment can be off-putting. Engagement is increasingly about short burst of work, such as task and finish groups, over a few days.

1.18   It’s also important to ask residents how they would like to organise themselves to be engaged on a project, if they do at all. Developers should avoid imposing engagement models on residents.

Resolved: the committee noted the report and thanked the witness for their presentation.