Here's an idea

We are fully refurbishing all Sunderland Housing Group's 33,000 homes. Our stock was transferred from the council and, in the council days, tenants would go from one year to another without knowing what was happening. Now we want tenants to be involved in choosing materials at an early stage.

This year, for the first time, they will be able to select the style and colour of fittings such as tiles, floors, bathroom suites, kitchens and fire surrounds.

For the past four years we've invited tenants who will be affected by the next year's works to an "Ideal Home" exhibition at Sunderland FC's Stadium of Light. I always plan this for when the team is playing two away games in a row because it takes two days to set the show up and it runs for three days.

This year we invited 7000 tenants. The cost of running the exhibition is £70,000 but we can get £50,000 back by charging exhibitors a fee. We had more than 30 exhibitors with fittings we knew we could afford: 11 types of kitchen floor and 20 different bathroom tiles, for example.

About 350 tenants filled in surveys on which materials they liked the most. The next step is for me to meet with a customer panel of about 400 residents to follow

up the event. The third stage will be a mobile exhibition unit with samples of the shortlisted materials and fittings.

This goes out every day of the year, because we have 5000 properties to do a year.

In the summer we hope to print brochures of the chosen fittings.