For this month’s Your Voice, Our Action story, we’re sharing the positive outcome from changes to our service charges. By listening to feedback and involving residents in how we communicated these changes, we made sure the information was clear, easy to understand, and showed exactly what residents are paying for.
This work reflects key areas of our Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs), particularly around how we handle complaints, listen to residents, and act on their feedback.
What residents told us
Through scrutiny panel meetings, residents told us they were unhappy with how we communicated important information, such as rent letters. They felt these were often unclear, too long, and included too much jargon, corporate language and repetition.
We had also received complaints about service charges and wanted to take a fairer approach. This means residents now pay for the services they receive, with a clearer understanding of what those costs cover.
Working with residents to improve
This change in service charges gave us a chance to act on feedback and involve the scrutiny panel in shaping how we communicate with residents. Our resident involvement team shared early ideas with the panel and asked for their views.
The panel suggested shorter, easier to read documents and using symbols to make the information more accessible. Most importantly, they wanted to avoid long explanations and instead provide clear, simple information about what the changes mean for residents.
What we changed
Using insight from the panel, we created a leaflet and a letter that were clear, easy to follow and quick to read. The input was important in bringing a more human voice to our communications.
Catherine, a member of the scrutiny panel who was involved with this project shared that it was one of her proudest moments of being part of the panel. She said “Actually making that pamphlet so that people that are on a spectrum or anything else can actually understand it because we’ve decided to put in symbols where some people ... may be dyslexic, but they know what they’re actually paying for”.
The impact
The results have been very positive. We expected a high number of calls from residents about the service charge letters. Instead, the clear and helpful information meant far fewer enquiries than expected.
Your voice, Our action in motion
By listening to resident feedback and involving them in shaping our communications, we’ve been able to turn feedback into real change. This has helped us create a more human approach, making important information clearer and more accessible for everyone.
If you’re interested in helping shape our services, take a look at our opportunities to get involved page.