Hi, I’m Tracy, your Involvement Officer. Welcome to your Christmas edition of In Focus!
What a year it has been! Not only did we celebrate our 50th birthday, but we also welcomed Cadwyn Housing Association to our Group. 2025 promises to be exciting with both organisations working together to improve services.
We are developing a new joint Tenant Involvement Strategy and will share more in the next edition after consulting with TPAS Cymru, our Tenant Scrutiny Groups and Tenant Reading Panels.
With your continued involvement, we can’t fail! Please share your feedback in surveys and at our community pop-ups.
We have successfully recruited new tenant Board members to strengthen the tenant voice and form stronger links to our Boards. Congratulations and welcome to Emma Goodjohn and Hayley Mellors.
We also welcomed Scott, Ceri, Sue, and Kalpana to our new Tenant Scrutiny Group - they join existing members Amanda, Cath, Lianne and Emma.
The Newydd and Cadwyn Tenant Scrutiny Groups met with our Chief Executive, Jason Wroe, on 25th November to discuss our self-evaluation for Welsh Government and our integration with Cadwyn. They also decided to merge to form one Group which will be called ‘Cadarn Scrutiny Team’.
The Cadarn Scrutiny Team will start their first scrutiny review in the new year as well as receive equalities training. Service charges was chosen as their first topic as feedback from the rent survey indicated low levels of satisfaction when considering value for money.
WHQS23 aims to improve the quality of homes, address decarbonisation and water efficiency.
The Cadarn Scrutiny Team met with Nikki, our Head of Assets and Sustainability, as she is developing a new WHQS23 tenant engagement strategy. The strategy will consider how we can manage tenant expectations; how we should plan and communicate with those having work done to their home to ensure the process runs smoothly.
To help, TPAS Cymru facilitated a workshop on behalf of LENS (the Landlord Engagement Network South-Wales) on 11th December where tenants from 9 landlords worked together to develop content for short guides to help raise awareness and explain what WHQS23 means for tenants. Once agreed, the video guides will be produced and will cover:
Interior of your home - bathrooms and kitchens
Exterior of your home - doors, windows, and roofs
Gardens and outside spaces
Safety - What is WHQS23 is? What it means to tenants and landlord obligations.
We will share these videos with you in the new year.
428 Newydd and Cadwyn tenants responded to our annual rent survey. Results showed:
68% of Newydd tenants think their rent is affordable (down from 72% last year)
A third struggled to pay rent in the last 12 months and were worried about paying rent in the future
Only 17 respondents, who were worried about paying rent, wanted help with budgeting
Only a third thought their service charge was value for money
The Cadarn Scrutiny Team will consider how to better promote digital, employability and financial support services, improve satisfaction with service charges, and monitor service standards.
To find out how our Financial Inclusion Team can help you, please click the link below
Congratulations to Andrew, Gerda, Angela, Sandra, and Sara for winning £50 supermarket gift e-vouchers after completing our rent survey!
This year, we held community pop-ups and went litter-picking in Barry, Talbot Green, Penarth, Tongwynlais, Aberdare and Rhydyfelin, engaging with 176 tenants. We received 50 positive comments, reported 109 repairs and 26 cases of anti-social behaviour.
We analysed the characteristics of the tenants we spoke to, and the majority were female; White British; heterosexual; had no religion/belief; single; not transgender; and aged between 35-64.
Let your Housing Officer know if you’d like us to visit your estate or have suggestions for improvement.
TPAS Cymru has a new tenant guide outlining opportunities for tenants in Wales to share their voices. Click here for more information:
5 things tenants are saying about Tenant Voice
David Wilton, TPAS Cymru’s Chief Executive, summarised concerns raised by tenants at their annual conference.
