How to adopt the NHFs disabled tenants charter

At its conference next week the National Housing Federation will publish a new charter for disabled residents and applicants. It aims to bring disability issues and access to housing into the mainstream of registered social landlords’ thinking.

At its heart are four key principles:

• RSLs will adopt the “social model” of disability – that people are disabled by the inaccessibility of the built environment and society’s attitudes, rather than by their personal impairments
• associations will provide services that are equally accessible to disabled and non-disabled people
• they will review policies and procedures to ensure they don’t discriminate
• they will challenge inequality and actively promote equality.

To fulfil these principles, associations should look at the following areas.

Supply and demand

RSLs must consider how to manage their homes with greater creativity and offer more choice to disabled residents and applicants. Boards and management committees need to take into account the wider need for public transport links, dedicated car parking spaces and better environmental design.

They may also wish to participate in a shared “accessible housing register”, so that details of vacant accessible and adapted properties are made available to disabled applicants. An accessible housing register often makes it possible to pre-allocate new homes, in which case the applicant is involved from the outset and the design generated according to their particular needs.

Building inclusive communities

Housing providers should positively value disabled people as equal members of their communities, neighbourhoods and staff.

All residents, including disabled people, should be able to expect to live in a community where the diversity of people’s backgrounds and circumstances is appreciated. RSLs could, for example, introduce specific strategies to tackle harassment of disabled people, support business enterprise initiatives for disabled people or undertake “community street audits”, where a group of residents surveys an area and suggests ways of improving it.

Associations could also take steps to broaden the traditional landlord-resident relationship to offer more than just housing services, as Southern Housing Group has done. Southern employs social investment officers to organise activities that provide opportunities for tenants to meet socially and to share their interests. The posts are funded by the group’s charitable arm.

Associations should also strive to meet the needs and aspirations of disabled people when developing and designing neighbourhoods and housing. CDS Housing Association, for example, only employs architects with experience of building accessible homes, even though it houses non-disabled as well as disabled people.

Information and advice

It is important to make sure all information and advice is accessible to disabled residents and applicants. Examples include using plain language in communications, ensuring that front-line staff are skilled and confident with a variety of communication techniques to support residents and applicants with form-filling, advice and making complaints, and making a commitment for all information to be accessible and available in a range of formats such as Braille, large print, online or using pictures.

Management and support

Associations should review their activities to ensure that disabled people have fair access to services. The Papworth Trust, for example, sought advice from the Essex Coalition of Disabled People on developing policies and procedures, and also commissioned the coalition to provide staff with disability equality training.

Other examples of good practice in housing management include: operating a maintenance and repairs system that identifies residents who are vulnerable, and prioritises response times according to their needs; having a transparent process with adequate resources for residents to access aids and adaptations and monitoring the satisfaction of disabled tenants to ensure equality of service.

Involvement and engagement

The active participation of disabled service users in the development of policies, practices and procedures is the key to providing an inclusive service.

RSLs need to consider ways of removing barriers to participation, and should encourage disabled residents to take part in decision-making. For example, they may wish to encourage greater representation of disabled people on management boards, develop more accessible consultation methods, using information technology where appropriate, and find ways of demonstrating to disabled people how they can influence decision making.

This has been a brief guide to putting the principles of the charter into practice, but a detailed good practice guide for housing associations will be published in December.