Keep up to date with what's happening in the world of resident involvement.
Scrutiny Panel members attend TPAS National Tenants Conference in Coventry
In July, the Resident Involvement team, accompanied by two dedicated members of the Scrutiny Panel, attended the TPAS National Tenants Conference 2025 in Coventry. The two-day event brought together over 200 tenants, housing association staff, and sector professionals from across the country.
The conference featured a range of informative workshops and keynote sessions, including insightful presentations from the Regulator of Social Housing. Attendees had the opportunity to share ideas, explore best practice, and strengthen their commitment to resident influence and service improvement.
We returned inspired and full of fresh ideas to enhance resident involvement and collaboration within our communities!
To find out more about the Scrutiny Panel and see some of the changes that have been made from their past reviews, visit the dedicated Scrutiny Panel pages here.
Resident Inspectors - Nurture
We work with residents across the county to ensure the grounds maintenance is being carried out to our 3-star standard, as document in the new Estate Standards.
Resident inspectors complete online monthly surveys to feedback what has gone well and not so well. We then share this feedback with Nurture and West Kent’s Contracts Manager to help improve the service we deliver to you. At West Kent we believe it’s important that we listen to you, encourage you to take part and make giving feedback as easy as possible.
In January we opened a competition to encourage regular inspections. We exchanged every monthly survey submitted with an entry to our prize draw for a £50 gift voucher. This competition has run over 6 months and we are pleased to announce the lucky winner is one of our Resident Inspectors living in Palmers Orchard in Shoreham!
We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone involved on this project for the time you take to help us keep our communities clean and enjoyable places to live.
If you are interested in becoming a Resident Inspector for your area please use the survey link here to register your interest.
You can see the latest Resident Inspectors newsletters on the link below:
RESIDENT INSPECTORS NEWSLETTER - JULY 2025
RESIDENT INSPECTORS NEWSLETTER - JUNE 2025
New Homes Advisory Group - June meeting
On Monday 9 June we had our first full meeting with the newly formed ‘New Homes Advisory Group’. Seven residents kindly gave up their time on a Monday evening to join an online meeting with our Resident Involvement and Development teams to discuss their experiences of living in a new build West Kent home.
To prepare for the meeting, we had sent the group a survey beforehand to find out what they like about their home, what they’d improve, and what features are most important. We then used this feedback to have some more in-depth discussions and covered topics such as built-in storage, hard flooring vs. carpets, layouts that improve soundproofing, energy efficiency, and water butts!
We are so grateful for the enthusiasm this group brought to the meeting, and everyone had something valuable to contribute. Their feedback will be applied to the design briefs for an upcoming regeneration project, and we’ll meet again later this year to show them how this feedback has been put into action.
Involving residents in the design of new homes is so important to West Kent. We want to build homes that work for people - not just on paper, but in practice!
If you'd like to know more about this group, or other ways you can get involved, please email residentinvolvement@wkha.org.uk or visit our opportunities available page.
Customer services resident involvement champions
Do you like exploring what happens behind the scenes?
Can you ask questions to get to the bottom of things?
We’re looking for a small group of residents to join a meeting with resident involvement champions within our customer services team to provide feedback on your experience of contacting West Kent. You will also have the opportunity to ask questions and find out more about our busy contact centre.
The first meeting will take place in June at our Sevenoaks office and you will have the opportunity to see our customer contact centre - where all the action happens!
If you are interested in this opportunity, but meeting in Sevenoaks is not convenient for you, please do still contact us and we can discuss alternative arrangements that meet your needs.
Please email residentinvolvement@wkha.org.uk or telephone 01732 749908 if you’d like to take part.
Mystery shopping
In September 2024 a group of nine residents volunteered to be mystery shoppers of our Customer Contact Centre - carrying out 'shops' by both telephone and email.
Mystery shopping is a way for us to involve residents in shaping the delivery of a service that is designed for them. Our mystery shoppers play a very important role by giving us a true picture of how West Kent interacts with residents.
You can read the full report from the 2024 mystery shopping here: Mystery shopping 2024
If you would like to be involved in mystery shopping in 2025, please register your interest here.
New homes advisory group
We have an opportunity for residents with an interest in new developments and sustainability to be part of an advisory group that will help shape the design brief for new homes.
The group will meet with our Development team twice per year, to discuss proposals for any new projects. You will ideally have experience of living in a new-build property, and be happy to share these experiences to provide feedback and guidance.
We know that the design of our new homes is a subject that many residents feel passionate about, and we expect to receive a high level of interest in this new opportunity!
You can read the full role profile here.
If you are interested in getting involved please email residentinvolvement@wkha.org.uk or complete the application form online here.
Resident Inspectors - Nurture
The resident involvement team are meeting regularly with our grounds maintenance contractor, Nurture, to raise any issues that our Resident Inspectors find. We hope to get any issues resolved promptly and will feedback to the Resident Inspectors with a regular monthly newsletter. You can see the latest Resident Inspectors newsletters on the link below:
Resident Inspectors Newsletter - May 2025
Resident Inspectors Newsletter - April 2025
Resident Inspectors Newsletter - March 2025
Resident Inspectors Newsletter - February 2025
Resident Inspectors Newsletter - January 2025
Resident Inspectors Newsletter - December 2024
Resident Inspectors Newsletter - November 2024
It is important that we continue to collect feedback and share your findings with Nurture, so that they know what is going well and what improvements need to be made.
If you would like to join our inspectors then please get in touch by emailing residentinvolvement@wkha.org.uk or completing a short online form to register your interest.
Estate Services Review
Throughout the summer of 2024 we carried out a large project that focused on the services we deliver to our estates and neighbourhoods.
We received feedback from over 600 residents across Edenbridge, Deal, Tenterden, Sevenoaks, Ashford, Cowden, Medway, Maidstone, Leigh and Swanley, about what their priorities are and how we can better manage our estates and communities.
Your feedback is being used to develop a new Neighbourhood Management policy that sets out how we will work with residents and partner agencies to improve services and ensure our neighbourhoods and communal areas provide safe, attractive and well maintained places to live.
Domestic Abuse Policy
In October, a group of seven residents joined us for a focus group to review of our domestic abuse policy. They provided valuable feedback and suggestions on what should be included in our policy update.
In the meeting we were also joined by representatives from DAVSS, a local domestic abuse service, to offer their guidance and support to anyone who is experiencing issues personally.
A new version of the policy is now being drafted by our Community Safety Manager and we will soon be requesting further feedback so please keep an eye on the 'current consultations' page if you'd like to be involved...
If you want to report a domestic abuse concern to West Kent, visit our dedicated page here.
If you, or someone you know is experiencing domestic abuse please contact The National Domestic Abuse Helpline free, 24 hours a day 0808 2000 247
If you, or someone you know is in immediate danger, call 999.
Communications Co-Production Group
In October, the Communications Co-production group worked with us on a new animated video to explain the process for making complaints. They agreed the script and were the first to see the animation and provide feedback.
The group provided feedback about some of the animated images being used. The images were updated based on their feedback, and the overall pace of the video was slowed down to make it easier to follow.
Keep an eye out on the front page of the website and social media for the final complaints video coming soon...
If this group sounds like something you would like to be part of then it's not too late to get involved! Please contact us on residentinvolvement@wkha.org.uk or 01732 749908 to find out more.
Help tackle tenancy fraud…
In June, a group of five residents joined us for a focus group to help in the development of West Kent's first ever policy on Tenancy Fraud. Tackling tenancy fraud is important to ensure West Kent homes are available to those in genuine need of social housing.
As a group they discussed what they already knew and didn't know about tenancy fraud, which helped us understand how much explanation is needed within the policy.
The group reviewed other policies, and suggested the following steps we could take to prevent tenancy fraud:
• Collecting a photograph of a new resident at sign-up, checking against proof of ID (eg passport) and keeping on resident file for reference.
• Updating photos when someone moves between WKHA properties
• Carry out tenancy audits to validate who is living in properties
• Make unannounced visits to homes that WKHA do not hear from to check that the correct person is residing there.
• Provide a wide choice of options for reporting
All of these suggestions were included in the final policy which the group then later reviewed to confirm it was easy to understand.
If you want to find out more about Tenancy Fraud, you can also visit our tenancy fraud page.
Aids and Adaptations Policy
We appreciate the feedback provided by our residents about the draft policy relating to Aids and Adaptations. We will use the feedback to finalise the policy and we will update those involved in this process once the policy is ready to be published.
Please continue to review our consultations page for other policies you can help to shape.
Resident Inspectors
We have appointed an initial group of Resident Inspectors to review the standard of grounds maintenance undertaken by Nurture. We will be appointing a second group of residents in the next couple of months to cover more homes and also cover the standard of communal cleaning.
If you would like to get involved, you can review the Resident Inspectors section of our opportunities page.
Consultations and policy changes
We've previously consulted with residents on several policies, procedures and service changes. We want to use your feedback and unique experience of our services to make positive changes at West Kent.
- Maintaining Your Home policy
In spring we asked for feedback from our Resident Influencers group on a new version of the Maintaining Your Home policy. You can read some of the feedback we received and how it influenced the new policy here.
- Cyclical decorations
Thank you to the 338 residents that were able to provide us with their feedback in relation to cyclical decorations in November 2023. We've summarised how your views were used here.
A group of residents met at the end of January 2024 to score the social value part of our tender process for cyclical decorations. It's important that our residents contribute to the procurement process and help make decisions about what our future operatives will be contributing to across our communities.
- Pets policy
We're reviewing our current pets policy in view of the recent changes to legislation.
Our newly formed Resident Influencers group initially helped to provide some feedback and a wider consultation online will take place soon to get further views on a draft policy.
- Customer portal
A small group of residents reviewed the tenant portal and advised that the sign-up and login process was confusing, as the instructions for password criteria weren't clear. Based on this feedback, we've reviewed the communication we send to residents, when asking them to re-register for the portal.
We hope this will help to make the process easier for our residents when the portal is introduced to more residents.
- Unacceptable behaviour policy
Residents suggested the policy should also apply to staff. The process for reporting unacceptable staff behaviour is through our complaints procedure, so we made sure this was clearer in the policy.
That's our news - but what are your views?!
You can find out more information about reviewing policies as part of our newly formed Resident Influencers group here. Alternatively, keep an eye out on our consultations page to have your say on any wider consultations.