How to get involved

There are a range of ways you can get involved with us. As a customer, you can make a vital contribution to Derby Homes by helping shape how we deliver services. Depending on how much time you have, there's a way to give us your views or even take part in scrutiny, improvement plans or even decision making.

Tenant board member

As a tenant member of our Board or Operational Board, you will attend meetings and be active in how Derby Homes is being run. To apply, you must be a current Derby Homes' tenant or leaseholder, or the family member of one. It doesn't matter how long you've lived in your property.

Commitment level: High (Training, reading reports, attending and contributing to meetings in-person or online).

How to get involved: Join our board

Tenant scrutiny

Tenant scrutiny is a key part of ensuring we're delivering fair, tenant-focused services. Derby Homes have supported tenants to scrutinise our services since April 2012 when the Tenant Panel was formed. We try to ensure customers are able to be directly involved in evaluating how we work. Scrutiny currently sits within the Customer Voice. This is a group of volunteers, made up of tenants, who work with us by reviewing services. They report their findings to the Operational Board.

Members receive ongoing training and support to ensure they understand the reality of how services are delivered and how they affect tenants.

Commitment level: High (Attending meetings in-person or online, training, fact-finding, report writing).

How to get involved: Customer Voice page (Let's Talk Derby Homes)

Mystery shopping

Mystery Shopping is way for customers to ‘test’ Derby Homes’ services. You can help us to identify areas where we are performing well, and where we need to make improvements.

Typical scenarios mystery shoppers may test:

• reporting a repair
• making a complaint
• enquiring about applying for a property

You then feed back to us to tell us whether you feel we are offering good customer service, have provided you with helpful information..

Commitment level: Medium (Occasional service tests followed by feedback).

How to get involved: Mystery Shopping page (Let's Talk Derby Homes)

Consultations

Our consultations give you the opportunity to help shape our services. This helps to ensure they are fair, accessible, and put you first.

We publish all open consultations on our Let's Talk Derby Homes website. You can usually respond to any public consultations. We may sometimes need to target specific groups of people to ensure we include the voices of those groups or those who receive certain services.

Commitment level: Low (Survey's usually take around 10-15 minutes to complete. You may sometimes be asked to read policies, documents or webpages before you feedback.)

How to get involved: Consultations are published on Let's Talk Derby Homes and are usually promoted by email, social media or SMS.

Surveys and feedback

Surveys are the easiest way you can give us feedback and your insight on our services and policies.

Customer survey

The Customer Survey is how we measure what you think about our services. From 1 April 2023 all registered providers of social housing must collect and publish a range of comparable information on areas such as repairs, safety checks and complaints. These are known as Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs). The TSMs allow you to scrutinise our performance. They also give us insight about where we can improve. Because all landlords report them to the Regulator of Social Housing, they also provide a source of intelligence about whether we’re meeting regulatory standards.

Commitment level: Low (The survey takes around 10-15 minutes to complete).

How to get involved: Customer surveys are carried out randomly to ensure fairness and representation of all tenants. If selected, you will be contacted by telephone no more than once a year.

Your feedback

We also collect you feedback on specific services when you have received them. For example, this could be if you have reported anti-social behaviour, or received money advice. This feedback is often a mix of question that ask you to rate the service and give us any specific comments on it. 

Commitment level: Low (Usually short, online surveys or replies to SMS texts that take no more than 10 minutes).

How to get involved: We'll ask you for feedback or to complete a survey when you have received a service from us.

Improving your estate

You know more about the area you live in than we do. We welcome any feedback, ideas or reports of issues about your estate. We carry out estate inspections around all of our properties regularly to deal with any issues that arise. We also manage funding that is given to us annually from Derby City Council to improve areas.

Commitment level: Low (Report any issues to us or give us suggestions for improvements)

How to get involved: See more at: Estate management

Leasehold forum

The leasehold team arrange meetings every six months for leaseholders of Derby City Council. The meetings are a great opportunity to have your say on the issues that affect you as a leaseholder. They are usually held at our London Road depot in the boardroom, with an opportunity to join remotely online if you'd prefer.

We usually send out invitations shortly before the meeting. Numbers are limited in the boardroom, so if you'd like to attend in person, please contact the Leasehold Team to book your place.

Commitment level: Low (Meetings twice a year)

How to get involved: Email the leasehold team.