Is it really working for you?

It sets out the findings of a joint programme of research and looks at the costs and business sense of involving residents and the benefits to landlords, tenants and communities.

The report, which includes a number of illuminating case studies, says: "Tenants and landlords should adopt a more questioning and open approach to resident involvement. There needs to be great honesty about what activities are designed to achieve."

Act local
It concludes that society, as well as government, expects landlords to adopt a clear and strong tenant focus, but that the way in which residents should be involved is a decision that is best taken locally rather than being centrally imposed.

Resident involvement makes demonstrable business sense, the report says, and although there are undoubtedly costs associated with doing it effectively, these are outweighed by the many significant benefits.

The report makes several recommendations. First, it suggests that the Housing Corporation and ODPM should consider whether their advice, and the support available to those recruiting resident board members at large-scale voluntary transfer associations and arm's-length management organisations, is sufficient to deal with the common misperception that resident members are on the board in a representational capacity.

It also suggests that the corporation ensures existing guidance and good practice on the role of resident board members is communicated well and review whether it is indeed correcting the misperceptions.

And it concludes that if housing associations truly believe in resident involvement they will need to invest time, money and resources in that process.

There must also be clarity about the true purposes of involving residents and there should be constant checks that those purposes are being achieved. Resident board members must have a clear commitment made to them, by their organisation, to provide support, training and constructive appraisal.

The report suggests that organisations stop supporting resident involvement activities when it is no longer clear what the benefits are

Best practice, it is suggested, will involve offering residents a number of alternative opportunities to get involved, with the case for each of these opportunities being carefully monitored by means of service reviews so that the business case for each activity is clear at the outset. The approach should be menu- and options-based, rather than an upwards-only ladder.

The report calls for greater clarity about the real cost of residents' involvement – if only because, if everyone understands the true cost of the activities undertaken and their impact on rent and efficiency, the landlord as well as the tenants will be clear about which approaches will offer the best value for money.

It is suggested that organisations should be prepared to stop supporting resident involvement activities when benefits are either not being obtained or it is no longer clear what the benefits actually are.

The report concedes, however, that a traditional cost-benefit analysis would not be appropriate, given the difficulty in assigning monetary values to such benefits as improved services or enhanced community capacity.

What happens next?
The Audit Commission says that it will focus on the effectiveness and outcomes of resident involvement rather than the process itself, as part of its inspection regime, and that it will ensure that its inspection methodology reflects the findings set out in the report.

All housing associations should give the report their fullest consideration when reviewing and implementing the Housing Corporation's expectations for resident involvement, published in February, and determining how they will comply with section 2.5 of the regulatory code, which sets out how they will involve tenants.

As a supporter of greater resident involvement, I look forward to the debate on the issues it raises. I hope it will lead to a significant improvement in both services and the manner and extent of resident involvement across the sector.