The Tenant Services Authority (TSA)

In April 2010, the TSA replaced the Housing Corporation as the independent regulator for affordable housing in England.  The TSA works with landlords and tenants to improve the standards of service you receive and monitors the performance of all landlords to ensure that you receive quality services, and seeks to give you the power to contribute to the way services are delivered.

To help improve the services you receive, the TSA has developed six national standards which landlords must meet.  These were developed following the National Conversation in 2009, which many of you took part in.  All social landlords will be measured against these standards to see how well we are doing and where we need to improve.  The TSA will take action against those who do not meet the standards.

The six national standards are:

1. Tenant Involvement and Empowerment (including Customer Service, Choice & Complaints and Understanding & responding to the diverse needs of tenants)
2. Home (including Quality of Accomodation and Repairs & Maintenance)
3. Tenancy (including Allocations, Rents & Tenure)
4. Neighbourhood and Community (including Neighbourhood Management, Local Area Co-operation & Anti-social Behaviour)
5. Value for Money
6. Governance and Financial Viability

Going Local

The TSA expect us to ensure we are tailoring our services to your local priorities so we can demonstrate that we are delivering what matters to you in your neighbourhood.

This is why we have been working with you to develop ‘Wulvern Promises’, our approach to local offers. We needed your help to find out what ‘local’ means to you; e.g. a specific geographical area or estate, a particular group of customers or a type of housing or a particular service.

You made it clear to us which services were most important to you:

• Tenant Involvement and Empowerment
• Customer Service, Choice and Complaints
• Quality of Accommodation
• Repairs and Maintenance
• Neighbourhood Management
• Local Area Co-operation
• Anti-Social Behaviour
• Allocations

Customer consultation so far has included the launch of our approach to Wulvern Promises at our big summer fun day. Since then we have worked with customers on our annual report which sets out our response to the TSA National Standards and explains how we are developing our Wulvern Promises. We launched the annual report at Wulvern's Annual General Meeting where we continued to consult on our Wulvern Promises. A bitesize version of the annual report was then sent to all Wulvern customers. To download our annual report  click here.

Throughout October and November we hit the streets with a series of roadshows and also visited customers in their homes to understand whether the eight Wulvern Promises we had drafted were what customers wanted.

We shared feedback from the consultation with all customers who had been involved, in addtion we invited them to attend a series of discussion groups where customers helped us to understand;

1. The impact of the Promises on value for money
2. How we ensure the Promises meet our commitments to equality and diversity
3. If we need to create additional Promises to meet local customer needs - perhaps by location or service area
4. How we should measure the delivery of the Promises

We will continue to work on the feedback throughout December and January, we will then take the Promises to Wulvern's Boards and RISE Panel for approval before we launch them to customers in March 2011. 

To read more about the national standards please click here and for further information about the TSA please click here alternatively call 0845 230 7000 or email enquiries@tsa.gsx.gov.uk