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8th February 2024

Mystery Shopping Update

You may recall that back in October 2023 we were on the lookout for tenants to get involved in a new area of work that is of significance to us as a service.  It is crucial for us as a social landlord that we can demonstrate that we give our tenants a voice and a real opportunity to scrutinise and shape the services that we deliver.

In line with this new regulation, the Regulator of Social Housing is creating a set of four consumer standards. One of these standards will be focused on “Transparency, Influence and Accountability” - building on and replacing the existing Tenant Involvement and Empowerment Standard:

• Influence their landlord’s decision-making
• Understand how their landlord is performing
• Hold their landlord to account.

Our new Engagement Strategy has since been agreed at the Council Meeting on the 26^th January, for more information please follow: Agenda item - Tenant and Leaseholder Engagement Strategy | Sheffield City Council

Since October we have been busy meeting with our tenants gathering and collating feedback and taking opinions and ideas on board. We have met face to face and via Zoom. 

Since our last ebulletin we now have a training provider in place and we have been working with Emma Marsh from Yvonne Davies Consultants  https://www.ydconsultants.co.uk/, YDC were awarded the training contract to deliver on this exciting work.  Emma and the Engagement Team are in the process of delivering training sessions, sharing of knowledge and expertise/ materials with the objective of equipping:

• tenants with the skills and confidence to carry out effective scrutiny of their landlord and to take an active role in decision making
• officers to support the effective scrutiny of tenants

Emma will continue to work with us to achieve this over the coming months.

Where are we at?

We can now announce that our eager Mystery Shoppers are ready to put the training delivered to the test, with our first key area of work identified to start on Monday 12^th February up until the 8^th March.

If you some time to spare you can still get involved.  Your input can help make a difference to the delivery of Housing Services. This could be in the form of a phone call, popping into one of many customer access points or can even be done without leaving your home. I am currently looking over the snow filled hills of Sheffield, so if you don’t want to venture out, we have got you! You can still get involved from the comfort of your home.

It is not too late to take part as we are always looking for volunteers to come and test our services. If you are interested or have any questions, please get in touch with us getinvolved@sheffield.co.uk.