An amazing event with involved residents

HOMELIFE

September 2023

On 1 July 2023, a group of involved residents from across the country joined us at our West Ham Lane office for our annual Involved Resident Conference. After a couple of years of virtual conferences, meeting in person, collaborating and hearing directly from the residents who joined us was wonderful.

After being welcomed through our doors, residents browsed exhibition stalls led by various departments who shared information and answered questions. From staircasing to resident involvement opportunities, from how we're keeping homes safe to our new housing management structure, our teams were on hand to answer it all.

The conference began with intros, then on to future planning and smaller group discussions before ending with an interactive Q&A session with our senior leadership team.

The purpose of the conference was to speak to, learn from and work with residents. Presentation sessions focussed on future planning, with smaller group discussions and lots of opportunities to ask questions of our senior leadership team. All of the feedback from the day will be used to help us and our Group Board make improvements and changes that will benefit you.

Matt Foreman, Executive Group Director, Customer Services, said “We always take so much from hearing from residents first-hand and the conference provided an ideal opportunity to do this. It’s important for us to understand the issues residents are experiencing so we can focus on improvements that matter most to residents.

"We believe this ‘partnership of equals’ approach is the best way to shape our future, so we can be better and residents can benefit and be proud of the services we provide.”

One resident who attended the conference said: “It was helpful to have staff, residents and Board all present. [It was also] really helpful structure to the day giving opportunities to share and having a focus and structure to discussions.”

Another said: “It was much better participating in the conference face to face, great interaction, much more engaging than online.”

Richard Hale, Service Insights Improvement Manager, commented: “It was a great opportunity to meet the residents and board members to share the project work we are doing to improve the reactive maintenance services. Some residents shared their problems with the service which reminded me of how important our work is to improve day-to-day service delivery.”

One resident agreed with Richard’s reflections on the importance of listening to residents, and said: “it’s important to communicate with residents, have a great deal of empathy and support them consistently.” 

We are very grateful to all those who attended and took part and hope everyone was able to take something away from such a positive day.

For more information on how you can become an involved resident or for our other resident involvement opportunities, please visit our resident involvement section.