Customer involvement

South Lanarkshire Council has a long history or meaningful customer involvement, and the Customer Involvement Strategy 2024-29 produced by Housing and Technical Resources sets out how we will engage with tenants and customers to make sure they are informed about important developments and decisions and can share their views to help make change.

The strategy has been co-produced with tenants and other customers through the Tenant Participation Co-Ordination Group (TPCG), with the support of the South Lanarkshire Tenant Development Support Project (SLTDSP). It has also been developed to reflect the principles of both the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 and the National Standards for Community Engagement.

Who is the strategy for?

The Customer Involvement Strategy 2024-29 is for anyone who is:

• A tenant or future tenant of the council, including sheltered housing
• A resident of a Gypsy/Traveller site
• Using homelessness services
• Using other housing services including mediation, factoring, community wardens.

What will the strategy do?

The strategy sets out what we want to achieve over the next 5 years and focuses on 4 strategic objectives:

1. We will ensure that customers are informed and knowledgeable

We will do this by:

• Continuing to provide relevant and up-to-date information to customers through the regular publication of ‘Housing News’ and ‘Sheltered Housing News.’

• Working alongside local Gypsy/Travellers to deliver and further develop site masterplans.

• Publicly reporting on how well services are performing in an accessible way and provide comparisons with other social landlords.

• Promoting awareness of the wide range of opportunities for people to get involved.

2. We will ensure that more customers are involved

We will do this by:

• Encouraging involvement and feedback from less engaged groups of customers

• Further developing and promoting a programme of local estate walkabouts

• Developing and improving engagement opportunities with young people.

• Developing and improving engagement opportunities with homelessness service users.

3. We will ensure that customers help to drive continuous service improvement

We will do this by:

• Delivering an annual programme of customer scrutiny through the Customer Scrutiny Group.

• Revising the Tenant Scrutiny Framework to widen the range of customer groups involved, including older people, homelessness service users, Gypsy/Travellers.

• Considering options to further develop scrutiny recommendations by the council.

• Ensuring reports to Housing and Technical Resources Committee highlight the contribution and influence of customers in developing recommendations.

4. We will ensure that customers help to shape change and make a difference

We will do this by:

• Including ‘You Said, We Did’ feedback to customers via ‘Housing News’, the council website, social media platforms and annual report to tenants highlighting the difference made by customer involvement.

• Analysing and reporting on feedback from customer satisfaction surveys including marginalised service users, for example, Gypsy/Travellers, homelessness service users and ensure that it is used to influence service planning and delivery.

• Reviewing independent advice and support for tenants to ensure it provides for the needs of all customer groups.

• Using customer surveys, comments and complaints to inform how the council can improve services.