Monday, March 21, 2011

National Tenant Organisation challenge the Housing Sector to improve Annual Reports to their Tenants

As landlords gear up to producing their second year annual reports to tenants, the four National Tenant Organisations publish their review report of the first year annual reports – “A good start, but could do better” - challenging the housing sector to improve annual reports next time round.The review identifies many positives in annual reports – particularly that the tenant-led reports were amongst the best. 

However, the review sets out that too many reports were written for the TSA and not for tenants; there was too much PR and corporate back slapping; too many did not include enough honest assessment of services and very few compared services with other landlords; too many did not include information on value for money, diversity and governance; and very few demonstrated that landlords had understood “local offers”.  Above all, the review makes it clear that too few reports set out to excite their tenant readership.

Report author and CCH Chair Nic Bliss said “We carried out this review to give tenants and landlords examples of things we liked in reports so that the next annual reports can be better.  Given that it will be for tenants and landlords to work together to self-regulate services in the future, the ongoing regulatory requirement to produce annual reports for tenants becomes a really important tool that tenants can use locally to hold their landlords to account.  But we need landlords to learn quickly the culture of how to work with their tenants on annual reports.  It was great that there were a small number of usually tenant-led reports that were good, but our review suggests that only a small number of landlords have got it so far”.

Please click below to read the summary version:

A Good Start - Could Do Better - Summary Version