Tenants of social landlords play an important role in assessing and influencing the performance, service delivery, plans and behaviour of their landlord.

North Hertfordshire Homes really values input from tenants and is trying to attract more tenants to come forward. Last year the housing association set up a Tenant Audit Team to review some of its processes and how it approaches them. A year on and the team has already completed three reviews on complaints, moving in moving out and equality.

What’s great about these reviews is that they are entirely tenant-led, allowing tenants who may have families and jobs to arrange the review around their other commitments. They focus on a topic and make suggestions as they go. Sometimes results appear before they’ve finished and that is very rewarding. For example, the team’s recent equality review found that North Hertfordshire Homes could save money on its contract with its translation service, so it switched straight away. And there may be more savings as they discovered a new pay-as-you-go service that is now under consideration.

The Audit Team was also satisfied that North Hertfordshire Homes meets its promise to provide a fair and accessible service to all tenants whatever their age, disability, ethnic origin, gender, marital status, nationality, race, religion, or sexual orientation. They are now planning their next review and hoping more tenants will get in touch to help.