Putting Tenants at the Heart of Change

What is the Tenant Voice Panel?

The Tenant Voice Panel is a group of tenants who work with Dacorum Borough Council to ensure that residents' views, experiences and priorities are heard and acted upon in the delivery of housing services. Your lived experience matters, and your insight helps guide the future of housing in our community.

The Panel provides feedback on housing policies and services, reviews how the Council is performing as a landlord, and shares insight based on tenants' lived experiences. While the Panel does not make final decisions, it plays an important role in influencing service improvements, reviewing the effectiveness of tenant engagement, identifying opportunities for change and ensuring that tenants remain at the heart of decision-making. It also supports the Council in meeting the expectations of the Regulator of Social Housing and the Housing Ombudsman.

Making an Impact

Since its launch, the Tenant Voice Panel has quickly moved from induction into active engagement and influence. Following the induction tour on 27 May, members visited council homes and neighbourhoods, speaking directly with staff about repairs, building safety, antisocial behaviour and neighbourhood management. These visits helped members gain a better understanding of how services operate and where tenant feedback can help drive improvement. Panel members also played a key role in the mobilisation of Dacorum Borough Council's new repairs partnership with CARDO.

At a highly interactive mobilisation event on 3 June, tenants challenged assumptions, scrutinised proposals and helped shape expectations for the new service. Members identified communication, responsiveness, honesty, respect, teamwork and quality as the foundations of a successful repairs service. The event demonstrated the Panel's commitment to ensuring residents' perspectives help shape important service changes. The influence of tenant involvement was reinforced by our Mystery Customer group, who have been involved in the development of the contract and fed back that tenant feedback is clearly shaping how the service being delivered. The message from residents was clear: services must be transparent, accountable, inclusive and focused on people rather than processes.

The Panel's impact has also extended beyond Dacorum. In July, Tenant Voice Panel members Susan and Susie represented Dacorum Borough Council at the launch of Cardo's Consumer Standards Training Module at the House of Lords. The event brought together housing professionals, tenants and sector leaders from across the country to discuss resident involvement and consumer standards. Their participation highlighted Dacorum's commitment to ensuring tenant voices are heard not only locally, but across the wider housing sector.

The Panel continues to develop its knowledge and influence through regular meetings, engagement opportunities and learning events. Members are building relationships with service teams, reviewing service engagement activities and performance information, and helping to shape future improvements based on tenant insight and lived experience. As the Tenant Voice Panel moves forward, it will play an increasingly important role in reviewing how tenants are engaged in housing services, influencing priorities and ensuring that tenants help shape decisions that affect their homes and communities. Alongside the Panel's work, there will continue to be a range of opportunities for all tenants to get involved, helping to ensure that housing services across Dacorum are informed by the voices of the people who use them every day.

Still want to get involved?

Although not everyone could be offered a place on the Panel, we remain committed to giving as many tenants as possible the chance to influence services.

One way to get involved is through our Mystery Customer Group, which enables tenants to take part in scrutiny sessions, feedback exercises and online surveys. Members may also be invited to contribute to important pieces of work such as the Community Safety Partnership Survey.

We look forward to working with tenants in a variety of ways to ensure your voices continue to shape and improve housing services across Dacorum.