There are many ways for you to get involved, which can help to make a difference to services we provide in your homes and communities. Getting involved can be anything from completing a short survey about a service you’ve received, to joining a dedicated customer group.
Our residents are at the heart of everything we do at South Lakes Housing.
We’re passionate about making sure your voices are heard and provide you with opportunities to help shape and improve our services.
Why get involved?
We want it to be a beneficial experience for you too. By getting involved, you can gain experience and develop new skills. It’s also a great way to meet new people. We will support you in various ways and can cover transport costs to meetings, pay for childcare if you need it and offer you opportunity to attend external events and trainings. Just let us know how we can help.
How do South Lakes Housing benefit from your involvement?
- It helps us to know where we’re doing well and where we need to make improvements.
- Customers can feedback to us about how we’re performing as we want to be open, honest and transparent.
- We want to co-create and get the views of our customers on improvements we want to make to our services.
- We’re committed to improving the customer experience and your voice will help to achieve this.
What's in it for me?
This offers you an opportunity to have your say about how we deliver our services, so that we can make improvements that benefit all our customers and of course, if you’re giving us your time and expertise, we want to make it worth your while too. If you are looking to develop your CV we can support you to gain new skills and qualifications through training, event attendance and access to several free of charge courses.
You’ll have the opportunity to meet new people, experience new things, expand your knowledge and improve your confidence. We will also offer high street vouchers for some engagement opportunities. Terms and conditions applicable.
Here’s how you can use your voice and get involved
Housing & Communities Committee
The Housing & Communities Committee has delegated responsibility from the Board for things like the monitoring of how we are achieving the consumer standards, the delivery of major repairs and tracking complaints performance. There are five places for Residents on the committee which meets quarterly.
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Help us create and implement new strategies, policies and service standards.
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Ensure that we deliver high quality services that meet the needs of our residents.
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Ensure that we are effectively dealing with and learning from resident feedback and complaints.
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Review our performance and challenge us if it is not up to standard.
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Influence decisions, share ideas and make suggestions.
Summary of Former Residents Forum Meetings
Following the refresh of the Resident Engagement Strategy, the Residents Forum has now been superseded by the Housing & Communities Committee.
A summary of each Residents Forum meeting is published here. These minutes have been shared with the Board.
Meeting Summary Nov 2025 – to be approved at the March 2026 meeting.
Become a member of the Repairs Group
We recognise that one of the biggest areas of our operation for residents is how we deliver our repairs service. This group meets to support the wider transformation project we have. They help us understand what works, what doesn’t work and to monitor the improvements we are making, using their lived experience of the service to identify changes.
The Repairs Group looks at our repairs and maintenance offer to our customers. We want to make sure we deliver excellent repairs and maintenance services to our customers. This group examine and assess the processes, highlighting areas for improvement and change, shares their views on how our homes are managed, maintained and repaired. To have accountability and oversight of the delivery of the repairs and support South Lakes Housing to raise standards for tenants by undertaking quality checks on all aspects of repairs performance including the following: – reporting, scheduling, appointments, inspections, prioritising work and out of hours delivery. Making sure equality, diversity and inclusion considerations are paramount when considering all the aspects of repairs and maintenance offer.
The Repairs Group meet every two months by joining online or coming to our office.
Join our Scrutiny Panel
Residents undertake Scrutiny work into our activities, with the aim of ensuring that it is delivering the best possible service. Anyone can join the panel and when we begin a new topic we will invite anyone on the panel or with a strong interest/ recent lived experience to join – recognising the diverse talents and interests of residents and understanding not all topics are relevant for some people.
Activity may take place in a variety of ways – it may be a few hours if looking at how we develop something new or run over a few sessions for a couple of months if looking at how a service is working. This may also include Mystery Shopping and visits to key locations.
Recommendations will be made at the end of the work which are agreed by the Panel and reported to the Housing & Communities Committee who then monitor the implementation.
Be part of our Procurement Panel
When we are procuring services which directly impact residents and communities e.g. grounds maintenance, we invite residents to take part in the procurement process. This includes setting the terms of the tender and support in scoring tenders received.
Resident Conversation Panel
As part of our Resident Conversation Panel, you will be invited to read through changes to our policies and strategies from the comfort of your home. There will be a short survey afterwards where you can share your thoughts and decide if we should approve the policy.
Become part of Rainbow Roofs
This forum covers multiple landlords from across the North West and focuses on supporting and improving the lived experience of LGBTQ+ residents. Meetings are held online and in person and we will support anyone who chooses to be involved.
For more information, please get in touch with us via email at getinvolved@southlakeshousing.co.uk.
Be a Community Champion
Community Champions are active in their area and will have a direct link to key officers to help us know if services are meeting the expected standard.
More information on this will follow in the coming months.
Feedback Surveys
Whenever we have delivered a key service like a repair, we send a short survey to ask for your feedback. This information lets us know how we’re doing and identifies opportunities to improve.
Interested?
If you want to get involved or want to know more about these opportunities please get in touch with Lauren Crawford, Customer Engagement Partner.
