Housing tenant feedback | Central Bedfordshire Council

How your feedback makes a difference

Read the tenant involvement update for the last quarter.

By completing surveys and joining focus groups, you help us identify what’s working well and where we need to do better. Below are the outcomes from engagement activities.

How your feedback has helped us – October and December 2025

Tenant involvement summary

This is a summary of our tenant involvement activity between October and December 2025.

21 housing events ranging from housing hubs in Dunstable, Houghton Regis and Leighton Buzzard libraries, to our tenant open morning. We also carried out door knocks across different neighbourhoods.

These activities allowed us to connect directly with residents, provide support, and gather valuable feedback at a local level.

1 focus group for Accuro Cleaning, inviting tenants living in blocks of flats to share their experiences and opinions on how the cleaning contract is performing. The feedback received will help inform ongoing monitoring and future improvements to the service.

We were also pleased to see increased resident involvement, with 10 residents signing up to our Tenant Register, enabling them to play a more active role in shaping services and engagement moving forward.

Alongside this, we supported 4 community-led engagement events, including the Older Persons Healthwatch event in Flitwick and the Community Event Day in Houghton Regis, delivered in partnership with organisations such as Community Safety teams and the Fire Service. These events strengthened partnership working and helped ensure residents could access a range of support services in one place.

Together, these activities demonstrate our continued commitment to listening to residents, working collaboratively with partners, and building stronger, more connected communities.

Outcomes from involvement

Following door-knocking activity in the Linslade North area, a Neighbourhood Community Clean-Up Day will be held.

The objectives of the day are to:

encourage better waste management practices among tenants
reduce incidents of fly-tipping and issues with overflowing or contaminated bins
foster community engagement and shared responsibility through group activities
remove barriers that prevent tenants from safely storing personal belongings, ensuring communal areas are kept clear

The success of the Priory View Games Festival reflected residents’ feedback being actively listened to and addressed:

Residents shared that the communal areas were too cold to sit in. In response, a clear how-to guide has been created for security and day staff on switching off the air conditioning.

.Social events for the scheme are currently being discussed with staff to further support resident socialising and becoming more of a community.

How your feedback has helped us – July and September 2025

This is a summary of our tenant involvement activity between July and September 2025.

16 housing-led engagements
2 focus groups
16 residents involved
7 community-led engagements

Outcomes from involvement

Our Complaints Panel highlighted the need for staff to show more empathy and understanding when responding to tenant concerns. We’ve taken this on board and added extra focus on empathy and support to our feedback training for housing staff, which is taking place this November. This step will help us improve tenant satisfaction and ensure your concerns are always handled with care.

Our new tenant involvement web pages are now live and thanks to your valuable feedback we have made great improvements. You will now find a new calendar of involvement dates to easily see what is happening, where, and when. We have also added a menu for involvement, outlining the ways you can take part, from completing a survey to joining one of our panels as an active member.

As a result of your comments, we are currently reviewing how tenants access our housing services, to ensure tenants reach us in a way that works best for them. To help us get this right, we’ve created a quick survey for tenants to complete. If you haven’t filled it in yet, please take a few minutes to share your views. Your feedback will guide us in making our services easier and more accessible for everyone.

Take part in our survey for tenants.

Thanks to the success of our Safety-First event and the great feedback you gave us, we’ll be holding more group sessions this autumn and winter, both face-to-face and online. These sessions are another chance for you to learn more about how to keep your home safe and to ask any questions.

What we've been doing

A day of fun and connection at All Saints View – 15 November 2025

There was plenty of fun and great conversation at All Saints View Independent Living Scheme on Saturday, 15 November. After the success of our summer tenant open day, we held another community information event, inviting tenants to come along, meet the team, and chat about the services we provide, what they love about their homes, and life in their community.

The tenant involvement team has been out and about talking rubbish!

At the end of November, our Tenant Involvement Team spent time out and about in Leighton Linslade North, meeting residents living in local blocks to talk about their communal outdoor spaces.

How your feedback has helped us – during 2025

Make it easier to speak to your housing officer

We have:

set up more housing hubs across the county at times more convenient to you
invited you to attend 2 open days where you could meet staff and have your say about all aspects of the housing service
created postcards with your neighbourhood officers details on, so you can reach out to them about your community

A repairs service you can depend on

We have:

added an additional priority code for general repairs, called "urgent" – this is where is it not seen as an emergency but does need looking into quicker than a general repair of 20 working days
created a tenants repairs panel, offering you the opportunity to scrutinise the repairs service and offer suggestions for improvement at face to face bi monthly meetings
held face to face and on line events sharing tips and giving advice on how to keep your home safe with the support of our compliance team

More training for housing staff

Housing staff who handle complaints have recently received additional complaint training.

Front line staff have attended customer service training.

In the next few months we will be launching our elearning complaint training which will be mandatory for all staff.

Make our estates greener and cleaner

We have:

carried out door knocks in Linslade North, completing surveys on waste management – several clean-up events are taking place in the spring as a result of the survey
held a face-to-face group for Downside residents to discuss areas for improvement and what improvements have already been made
promoted the Fix My Street app supporting tenants on raising concerns, such as graffiti, blocked drains

Better communication

We have:

created a calendar of events offering different types of tenant engagement
created a quarterly newsletter providing details of what we have improved, how to get involved as a tenant in shaping our services and where you can find us across our area
re-designed our housing portal giving you 24/7 access to report a repair, check your rent account, report anti social behaviour and much more