Tracy James, our Involvement Officer tells us about our tenant involvement highlights from the past year.
Hi everyone! My name is Tracy James, and I am the Involvement Officer at Newydd. First and foremost, I would like to thank all our tenants who took the time in their busy lives to get involved and work with us. Your contribution has been invaluable in helping us to develop our strategies and improve services to better meet the needs of our tenants.
One of the major highlights of the year was our Corporate Plan consultation events held in Barry, Rhydyfelin, and Newtown. We received valuable feedback from tenants which resulted in the introduction of a rolling programme of monthly community pop-ups on our estates which allow your Newydd staff to be available for any queries or conversations you want to have with us. It also helped us develop various strategies to support the aims of our Corporate Plan.
We were also thrilled to pass TPAS Cymru's Tenant Engagement Standards Assessment (TESA) which provides independent evidence to demonstrate that we are meeting Welsh Government expectations and Regulatory Standards in relation to tenant involvement. It also recognises that our approach is evolving to meet the changing needs of our tenants and communities as well as offering new online opportunities. We were the first housing association in Wales to successfully complete TPAS Cymru’s TESA challenge. You can read all about our TESA achievement here.
Our Reading and Policy Panel reviewed several documents over the year, including our charters; leaflets for the Optimised Retrofit Programme (ORP), financial inclusion and digital inclusion; our annual report; our inclusive language guide; editions of Newyddion, our tenant e-newsletter, and much more. The valuable input from our tenants has helped us ensure that these documents are clear, concise, and easy to understand.
Recently Cath, our Tenant Scheme Assessor, undertook RNIB Cymru Visibly Better audits at two of our independent living schemes. We are proud to report that one of them attained the Platinum standard for the first time, while the other successfully retained the standard. This reflects our commitment to ensuring that our independent living schemes meet the needs of tenants living with sight loss.
Our Tenant Scrutiny Group members played a key role in helping us procure new independent market researchers Acuity to undertake our quarterly tenant satisfaction survey. They also met with Jason, our Chief Executive and fed into our self-evaluation document for Welsh Government.
Our Physical Adaptation Grant process was reviewed by NEADS (Newydd's Equality And Diversity Subgroup). The group also co-produced four charters, including the Safety-First Charter, Customer Services Charter, Making Reasonable Adjustments Charter, and Contractor Charter. These charters reflect our commitment to ensuring that our services are inclusive and accessible and are available on our website here.
Trained tenants sat on interview panels to recruit new staff members. This helps to ensure that we recruit people who share our values and commitment to delivering high-quality services for our tenants.
Lastly, our total volunteer hours exceeded a fantastic 400 hours, which is a testament to the dedication of our tenants towards improving our services.
In conclusion, 2022-23 was a busy and productive year for tenant involvement at Newydd. We will continue to empower you, our tenants, by offering a variety of opportunities to influence our services. We look forward to building on these successes this year.
If you have any suggestions to improve our services, or would like to get involved in any of the activities above please click here.
