Trivallis halves housing officer patch size

Welsh social landlord Trivallis has reduced the number of homes that individual community housing officers oversee from 700 to 350.

The change has been made as part of the housing association’s new ‘team around the tenant’ approach to housing services.

Trivallis has 10,000 homes in Rhondda Cynon Taff and Cardiff Bay and said the new system “focuses on building stronger connections between tenants and the housing team by offering more personalised, proactive, and easy-to-access support.”

Duncan Forbes chief executive of Trivallis, said the new service is a “game-changer” for the association.

He said: ”We’ve listened carefully to tenants and staff and recognised that our previous service model, with large patch sizes of 600-700 homes per housing officer, made it difficult to provide personal support.

”It often felt we were only there to fix problems, limiting our ability to truly work with tenants. It was clear we needed to change to better meet the needs of our tenants and communities.

>>See also: In search of a magic patch size: How social landlords are rethinking their housing management approaches

“Our new ‘team around the tenant’ model has been inspired by some exciting work done in the social care sector, which the housing sector hasn’t really explored. It has required a major transformation of our teams, and a big investment in our frontline services, but we are confident that it will make a positive difference to our tenant services and improve outcomes for tenants and local communities.”

The Social Housing Regulation Act came into force last year, bringing in new consumer standards and a proactive regulatory approach from the Regulator of Social Housing, including the return of routine inspections backed up with a swathe of powers and sanctions, including unlimited fines.

This has resulted in a sector-wide debate around the ideal patch size for housing officers as social landlords seek to make it easier for tenants to access support.