Code of Practice
for Tenant Participation in Best Value

A Framework for Tenant Participation in Best Value

Introduction

"Tenant participation is about tenants taking part in decision making processes and influencing the decisions that councils take about housing policies, housing conditions and housing (and related) services. It is a two-way process involving the sharing of information, ideas and power. Its aim is to improve the standard of housing conditions and service"
'Partners in Participation', (1999), The Scottish Office

This Code of Practice sets out guidelines for developing tenant participation in Best Value. It is aimed at both councils and tenants, but will also be useful for other council services. It could also be used as a framework for consultation with other housing service users. Best Value currently applies to all local authority services. A separate code on how Best Value might apply to housing associations is planned.

Some of the suggestions in the Code may already be in use by individual councils, in partnership with their tenants. However, Best Value requires a fresh look at current participation practices, even where they are felt to be working well.

Best Value means:

• Making sure that services are of a high quality and are cost effective.
• Involving local people in decisions about their council's priorities and the way services are delivered.
• On-going monitoring to see if things are improving and doing something about it if they are not.

For tenants, this means being able to influence the decisions made about the services they receive and getting feedback on how those services are performing. It also means including tenant representatives in decisions about what should be done if services do not meet agreed standards and targets.

Tenant participation in Best Value

Tenant Participation in Best Value is about:

• Agreeing with tenants how they are to be involved
• Reviewing the service
• Setting standards, targets and indicators
• Having the right information
• Reporting back to tenants
• Monitoring and reviewing services
• Improving services.

Agreeing with tenants how they will be involved

Councils and tenants should agree at the outset the way in which they will be involved in Best Value. Tenants should be able to be involved both individually and collectively in Best Value.

Councils and tenants should make sure that:

• Tenants themselves decide how and when they want to participate;
• Participation strategies encourage both individual tenants and groups of tenants to participate;
• The participation and consultation processes are clear and timetabled;
• They have a shared understanding of what Best Value means for housing;
• Tenants can feed in their views about the housing services they get, the monitoring of that service and what they should expect if these standards are not met;
• The participation arrangements are reviewed and monitored.

Training and resources for tenants should be made available to help them play an active part in Best Value. This might include:

• Access to premises for use as offices or meeting rooms
• Administrative support for tenants
• Access to joint training in Best Value
• Support to help build and sustain representative organisations
• Funding for travel, childcare, holding events and providing written information
• Access to independent advice and information about Best Value.

Reviewing housing services

Best Value applies to all services provided by the council. For housing, this will include:

• Allocations, transfers and exchanges
• Tenant Participation
• Homelessness
• Rent setting and collection
• Day to day maintenance
• Planned maintenance
• Rent arrears
• Dealing with crime and anti-social behaviour
• Estate management issues
• Capital investment programmes
• Housing Benefit (if part of the housing service)

The council, working with tenants, will have to undertake a fundamental review of each service which:

• Identifies the strengths and weaknesses of the service
• Asks whether there is still a need for the service
• Compares with other landlord/same landlord services identified by the landlord and tenants
• Compares the service with other councils or the landlord's other services identified by the landlord and tenants
• Outlines the agreed objectives, standards and targets for the service in the future.

Each service will have to be reviewed every five years and can be examined:

• On its own (e.g. rent arrears, repairs)
• Along with related areas (e.g. crime and anti-social behaviour)
• At a local community level (e.g. estate or village).

Tenants should be able to feed their views into which services are reviewed, and when. They may also have views on whether services are subject to stand alone reviews, or combined with another service.

Setting standards, targets and indicators

For each service, councils and tenants should agree on the:

• Definition of services and any relationship between different services
• Way in which the service should be delivered in the future
• Local priorities for the service
• Local indicators, standards and targets.
• Role of tenants in monitoring and evaluating the services.

The council may not be able to do everything and the decisions made will have to take account of:

• What the landlord is responsible for
• What the landlord must do because of the law
• How much money is available.

Having the right information

Tenants must have access to all relevant information, to be able to judge whether the service they receive from the council has met the agreed standards.

Tenants and councils should agree on an information strategy which makes it clear:

• What information tenants will be given
• How information will be provided (reports, meetings or other formats)
• When information will be received (it is important that enough time is given to allow the information to be absorbed before decisions are made)
• Who will receive the information (individuals or representatives).

The information provided to tenants should be:

• Accessible in content, typeface and size and circulation
• Provided at the right time
• Relevant and with enough detail
• Presented with easily understood statistics, tables and graphs, in an attractive design and format
• In clear, concise plain language, free of jargon, with technical and legal terms explained
• Monitored through customer surveys and consultation to make sure it is what tenants want.

Councils and tenants need to know if the standard of service they have agreed, has been met. Performance information, including indicators and other targets, will be used to do this. Councils have targets to meet that are set by Government. They also have to develop local indicators which have been agreed in consultation with tenants and other people who use the service.

Local performance information and targets should:

• Reflect local priorities and be additional to national targets set by others
• Be simple, understandable and easy to collect and publish
• Be set in consultation with tenants
• Allow comparison with other, similar, councils
• Demonstrate improvement in services
• Reflect specific goals or more general goals (e.g. reduce poverty).

Performance information should also be put in context - for example, by comparing performance against targets, budgets, and comparable services in other authorities, or against other service providers.

Reporting back

Councils have to publish council-wide performance information to show how they are performing against performance indicators and targets set by the Government as well as those that have been set locally.

Councils and tenants should agree on how the performance information should be made publicly available and how tenants can feed back their views. There should be a range of methods available for individual tenants and representative groups to feed in their views about service performance.

Councils and tenants should jointly agree:

• What the standard and performance indicator means
• What results have shown
• Why performance might not have been up to the agreed standard
• What tenants can do to make suggestions to improve performance.

Monitoring and reviewing services

Landlords and tenants should jointly agree:

• How and when the services will be monitored
• The role of tenants in the monitoring of services
• The style of monitoring reports and when tenants and tenants representatives can expect to get them.

Tenants and councils will also need to discuss and agree what improvements can, and should, be made to services. This may include making improvements to the service, or changing who delivers the service.

Improving services

If the landlord has not delivered the service to the agreed standards in the local service delivery plan or strategy, tenants should have the opportunity to have this addressed within the Best Value process.

Tenants are currently able to raise concerns about service delivery in a number of ways, including:

• Local authority monitoring officer or other staff members
• Local tenant representatives
• Local Government Ombudsman.

Landlords and tenants should jointly review the existing methods for redress.

Tenants and landlords should then discuss and agree what additional methods are needed, so that tenants can ensure service failures are addressed by their landlord.

Any new methods should make clear what tenants can expect if a service standard is not met.