WORKING WITH YOU In this section we look at the Tenant Involvement and Empowerment standard and how we deliver services that meet your needs, as well as how we involve you in our decision making, so your voice makes a real difference.
North Star LINK North Star LINK is your group of involved tenants who work closely with staff across the organisation, influencing and improving services for all customers. The group involves tenants from both Endeavour and Teesdale who meet regularly to represent the views of all our customers, residents, and local communities. The group’s activities range from helping us to develop the tenants’ magazine and report, to working with contractors to improve kitchen and bathroom specifications. North Star LINK organised the very successful tenants’ conference in 2013, and this year’s conference at the Riverside Stadium, was even bigger and better than ever.
Tenants’ Voice Scrutiny Panel North Star Tenants’ Voice Scrutiny Panel forms an important part of our approach to working with you – putting customers at the heart of our business and giving them access to review any service and hold us to account. The Panel, supported independently by the Tenant Panel Advisory Service (TPAS), selects areas of service they would like to review and scrutinises how well we are doing, making recommendations for improvements directly to our Board. Their work has made a real difference to the services we delivered this year, including the decision to invest over £150,000 in our new Customer Service Team, which was launched in March 2014. The Panel has also been recruiting and training new members to help further strengthen our services.
Quick Change We have always regarded ourselves as being good at listening to customers and acting on their feedback. Over the last 12 months we have focussed on speeding up the process for bringing about change from your feedback. Our approach to Quick Change has taken lessons from the private sector and reshaped the way we now listen, learn from and deliver improvements for customers within days, rather than weeks or months, using a much wider range of ‘real time’ customer feedback.
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