Last week, Plymouth Community Homes (PCH) hosted an Involvement Devon Customer Event where we were joined by engaged residents and Involvement Devon representatives from housing associations across the South West. Members and residents joined us from PCH, Westward Housing, Cornerstone Housing, East Devon District Council, Exeter City Council, Livewest and North Devon Homes.
Involvement Devon is a networking group of engagement professionals from social housing providers across the South West, who share best practices, approaches, ideas and resources, and deliver training and events for staff and residents.
The event was facilitated by Sarah Codling, an Associate at TPAS (Tenant Engagement Experts) and residents were given the opportunity to get together and network with likeminded individuals, focussing on two main topics which were selected by the residents themselves. The topics included anti-social behaviour (ASB) and the cost-of-living crisis.
Jo Steel, Resident Involvement Coordinator at Plymouth Community Homes, said: “It was a pleasure to host an Involvement Devon Customer Event where we were joined by residents from a number of housing associations across the Southwest.
“Throughout the event we received a lot of passionate feedback and residents shared many ideas and experiences with us, alongside their plans to help and improve their neighbourhoods.”
Sarah Codling, an Associate at TPAS, said: “The energy everyone brought to the sessions made for a really enjoyable day, with lots of thoughtful contributions and creative solutions. It is testament to the commitment of all the Landlord organisations involved that the day was structured around issues that tenants themselves have said matter to them most.”
Gill, Gaynor and Stacey, residents at PCH thoroughly enjoyed the event and the opportunity to connect with other residents of housing associations across the city and beyond. Stacey said: “We have really enjoyed today’s event, and it is a good thing to do as a housing association. We’d be keen to attend more regularly. At the event we were able to learn a lot about different topics and learn from each other too. It is interesting to be able to hear from others, and we are really looking forward to future events like this one.”
Gemma and Kevin from Westward Housing also attended the event. Gemma said: “It has been great to get together with residents from different housing associations across the city and to talk about different challenges including anti-social behaviour and cost-of-living. The conversations with likeminded individuals have been really powerful and insightful, and we were able to get our opinions across and be listened to, which is really important to us.”
Angel, their teenage daughter also came along to the event. She said: “It has been really fun, and I am really surprised that as a teenager that I have enjoyed this event. It was brilliant to be able to get involved.”
We will be sharing what we are going to be doing following the feedback and discussions that were had by our engaged residents at the Involvement Devon Customer Event later in the year.
Do you want to know more about getting involved with PCH?
Your feedback and ideas improve how we deliver our services and the quality of your homes and communities. At PCH, resident engagement is rooted in our values, mission and vision, and we are committed to engaging with residents.
PCH is dedicated to making resident engagement easy to access and understand. By focussing on resident needs and listening to their voices, we can continuously improve our services.
In 2024 we launched our Resident Engagement Strategy (2024-2029) which embeds the residents’ voice in the decisions made in meeting the ambitions of our Strategic Business Plan (2023-2028) which sets out how PCH will achieve its mission of a ‘high-quality affordable home for everyone’, and vision of ‘providing homes and communities where people want to live’.
The term ‘resident’ is used to refer to tenants, leaseholders, shared owners and other service users to capture every voice of our customers
If you are a PCH resident and would like to get involved and have your say, find out more information about how you can do this here. Alternatively, you can call us on 0808 230 6500 and ask for our Resident Involvement Team.
