By Alex Jones, Research and Strategy Analyst at L&Q

In boardrooms, in government meetings and in the news, important and historic discussions are taking place: how can social landlords improve their relationships with residents?

The death of Awaab Ishak in 2020 and the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017 both illustrated the grave risks of failing to listen to residents.

Much soul-searching has taken place in the sector since, and it’s encouraging to see voices come together through initiatives like Together with Tenants.

The relationship between social landlords and residents are unique and vitally important; for the most part residents stay with us for long periods of time, engaging with us on a highly emotive topic: their home.

Yet, we can sometimes be wary about starting a dialogue with residents, or developing a deeper relationship that goes beyond the transactional. It’s a regulatory requirement to involve residents, but honest self-reflection reveals that we aren’t always clear about why we’re doing it, what good practice looks like, or what outcomes we should expect to see.

At L&Q, we think resident involvement has the potential to drive significant cultural change. By working with residents in a spirit of genuine partnership, we think we can make our services and interventions more meaningful, responsive and effective.

Today, we’re publishing a report outlining the steps we’ve taken so far to radically transform our involvement activity, and our ambition to embed resident involvement at every level of our organisation.

This is a critical moment for the sector, with change already afoot. As the Social Housing Regulation Bill completes its passage through parliament, we’re awaiting the arrival of the biggest regulatory changes for over a decade. L&Q welcomes the reforms, and the government’s intention behind them: it’s only right that residents scrutinise our performance and hold us to account.

Whilst this is a step in the right direction, regulation alone will not be enough to redress the power imbalance between residents and landlords. We must go beyond what the rules will require us to do – and the key to this lies in resident involvement.

We began our journey by creating a new resident services board (RSB), a formal committee of our group board that’s almost entirely comprised of people who make their homes with us. The RSB are equal peers of other group board members and skilled partners with the authority to make an impact. In line with point 1 on the Together with Tenants plan, our board is now directly accountable to residents, and their views are at the heart of our strategic decision making.

Residents aren’t a problem to be solved; they have a huge amount to offer the organisation. Their local knowledge, community connections and desire to improve things all have the potential to help us do our jobs better. The question is: how do we unlock this potential?

At L&Q, we took a step forward when we reframed resident involvement as a form of volunteering. We want all residents who choose to get involved with us, whether on a strategically-focussed committee or on an ad-hoc business improvement initiative, to have a role which carries the same prestige and purpose as those in the voluntary sector. This is more than just putting a new label on existing practice: all of our team have been professionally trained in volunteer management and we adhere to nationally-recognised standards.

We must also be clear on what we’re trying to achieve through involvement, and how to measure success. We’ve produced an outcomes framework, which illustrates the four outcomes we’re seeking: better relationships with residents, operational excellence, improved colleague wellbeing and motivation, and improved resident experience.

While we believe our involvement programme has the potential to drive wide-ranging benefits across the organisation, we know there are no quick fixes. It’s vital for us to look to the bigger picture and adopt a long-term, strategic view of resident involvement, in the same way we do for planned works and our development pipeline.

Equally, we want to take a measured, test-and-learn approach – radically altering our involvement offer and bringing residents closer to areas of the organisation that they haven’t been before is a big change. We’re pacing ourselves and making gradual changes, so that we can adapt our practice as we go along.

The report also explores the idea of participatory democracy – a method we are actively exploring that’ll give more power to residents than ever before. From residents’ assemblies to participatory budgeting exercises, we’re considering what it would look like to move away from the traditional resident-landlord relationship to become collaborators on an equal footing.

This may all sound a long way away from where we are now, and it is: this is a long-term journey that we’ve only just started. With this report, we hope to kickstart a conversation about the value of resident involvement, and how it can drive us to become the truly resident-centred landlords we aspire to be.