Reflections from Housing 2026 – Resident engagement and building trust in retrofit
Last week at Housing 2026 in Manchester, across three days that were as insightful as they were hot, one question stayed with me: how can we better involve residents in retrofit programmes?
Having supported housing providers with end-to-end maintenance and compliance services through WPS and Liberty, and delivered more than 8,500 home retrofits across 42 programmes, we’ve seen first-hand that resident engagement is becoming a critical factor in delivering successful, energy-efficient homes. Retrofit isn’t just about the technical solution. It’s about bringing residents on the journey, building trust, and ensuring improvements work for the people who live in these homes every day.
Visits resulting in no access means disruption to works coupled with frustration for residents. To ensure people have the healthy, safe and compliant homes they need, it’s essential more is done to help people understand the work on their homes and the benefits it brings them.
Working as the extended arm of our clients, carrying out hundreds of thousands of visits to deliver heating system install and maintenance checks every year, we’ve seen the impact of this first hand, working in people’s homes, day in, day out.
Even when engagement is well planned, it can be complicated to reassure residents – particularly when energy efficiency upgrades don’t immediately bring bill savings, lifestyle changes might be required to maximise the benefits and deeper retrofit becomes more disruptive to tenants.
It’s therefore something as an industry we have to work much harder on, shifting our collective mindset from resident engagement to real involvement, and there are three key areas that will make the biggest impact in raising the bar.
1. Tailoring communication throughout the resident journey
Resident involvement is about upgrading the approach from simply telling people what’s going to be happening in their homes to an open, two-way conversation about how this will be managed.
For some people, being made aware and receiving programme information proactively will be enough, but it’s important to recognise that others might need further support. Whether that’s resident forums to discuss the works, identifying a space for them to go when works are disruptive or using technology to reach people in the way that best meets their needs – it’s accepting that a one-size fits all approach isn’t going to work across the board. When planning programmes, we look at each and every touchpoint for the resident, alongside how we can tailor the journey with every team involved in delivering the programme – resident experience should extend far beyond the Resident Liaison Officers.
2. Collaboration across contractors, housing providers, supply chain and tenant associations
Joining forces across our industry is essential to create a cohesive approach to resident involvement. We are currently working with TPAS to continue to drive this and will next month be holding workshops to help tenants understand how air source heat pumps work and how to maximise their efficiency.
Putting housing providers, contractors, tenants and housing associations in the same room harnesses the collective knowledge and experience to carve out the most effective tenant involvement strategies.
3. Becoming increasingly data-led – use what we know from other programmes to share best practice
Using repairs and maintenance data to inform the most efficient programme doesn’t just support value for money but can also help identify ways to minimise disruption for residents. For example, understanding how multiple surveys can be carried out to reduce the number of visits.
But it’s not just property data that can provide us with the insight to improve. We also collect data from our residents to reimagine our processes. We seek feedback at every step to evaluate how we can improve. Our 24/7 customer service centre are also the ears of our residents and help to signpost themes and trends that impact how we manage and deliver our work.
In summary
A shift in mindset from resident engagement to involvement, powered by data-led decisions can help the social housing sector become closer to residents. But partnering brilliantly across our industry will help unlock the collaboration we need to create a consistently resident-focused tenant experience – and enable us to deliver the safe, healthy and compliant homes they deserve.
