Putting resident’s at the heart of our decision making
I was very pleased this month to join our colleagues at The Curiosity Society for their debut podcast. They decided to get their teeth into a big subject: the current state of the housing sector!
You can take a listen here to our discussion: it was a lively conversation that ranged from the challenges facing home building and to the huge pressures on housing services. As I said during the course of the programme, many registered providers (RPs) have been hollowed out over the past decade as a result of central government budget cuts, as well as rising resident demand.
This has left RPs facing substantial hurdles in delivering even day to day operations, and that is before we get to big problems like the rising bills for temporary accommodation.
In this environment, it is important that we don’t lose sight of the importance of putting resident’s at the heart of decision making. We discussed various techniques to make this happen: they all come back to building trust, transparency and taking joint pride in our homes. This is a process I have a deep commitment too: at Just Housing Group our team has worked on numerous such projects. A stand out example, in partnership with the Curiosity Society, was to help build a body called the Learning Forum. This was a newdecision making body that aspired to help organise and run services across one of London’s largest new developments. Residents were at its very heart. Read about this here - and do get in touch if you have any feedback on our discussion!
John Swinney