Resident engagement
Programmes slip on access, not on installation.
Assessments, surveys and installation all mean people coming into someone's home. How that is handled decides your access rate, and your access rate decides whether the programme finishes inside the funding window.
How we work with residents
- A named liaison officer
- One resident liaison officer stays with the scheme from assessment through to handover, so the person arranging access is the person the resident already knows.
- Early notification
- Letters and door-knocking ahead of the works explaining what is being installed, how long it takes and what will happen in each room, before anyone is asked for a date.
- Appointments that hold
- Visits booked against the installation sequence and confirmed the day before, with a direct number to move an appointment rather than a call centre.
- Vulnerability and additional needs
- Households needing extra support are flagged at assessment: interpreters, longer notice, carer or family present, and adjusted working hours where required.
- Refusals and repeat no-access
- Logged, reported and revisited with a different approach rather than written off, because a refused property still has to come out of the programme count.
- Handover in person
- New heating and ventilation demonstrated in the home, with written guidance left behind and a follow-up call once the system has been in use.
Living with the work in progress
Scaffolding, dust sheets, boarded lofts and a few days without heating are the reality of whole-house retrofit. We are straightforward with residents about that at the start rather than after the scaffold goes up.
Where heating is being replaced, temporary heaters are provided and the changeover is planned so a property is not left without hot water overnight. Where a resident cannot be at home, we agree key arrangements with the landlord in advance.
Anything reported after sign-off goes back to the same liaison officer, who has the site records for that property, rather than into a general repairs queue.
Working around people who are at home
