New Landlord Strategy - we want to know what you think

We’re your landlord, which means we’re responsible for keeping your home safe, well maintained, and fit to live in.

As your landlord, we’re also committed to providing services that treat you fairly and with respect.

This Landlord Strategy is our plan for how we will manage council housing over the next few years to improve services to you, meet legal and safety requirements, and make sure your voice is heard. It also explains how we’ll be held to account if things go wrong.

This is a summary of the Strategy.

At the heart of the strategy are two simple aims:

·       To deliver high- quality services that meet your needs and expectations.

·       To meet the requirements of the Regulator of Social Housing, whose job it is to ensure that we’re managing housing effectively.

The strategy covers all the main services you get from us, including:

·        Repairs and maintenance to your home

·        Health and safety checks (gas, electricity, fire, lifts, water, asbestos)

·        Management of estates, blocks of flats and neighbourhoods

·        Rent collection, and help if you’re struggling financially

·        Lettings

·        Services for leaseholders

·        How we listen, handle complaints and act on what you say.

We manage over 24,500 homes across Nottingham, including houses, high-rise and low-rise flats, and bungalows. Homes vary greatly in age and design. Because of this, we plan carefully to make sure they are all safe, well maintained, and improved in the right way at the right time.

We have around 1,500 homes, mostly flats sold via the Right to Buy, in which the occupants are leaseholders. The council has responsibility for maintaining communal areas where leaseholders’ flats are located, and leaseholders pay an annual service charge for this. Leaseholders are also liable for some contributions to repairs and improvements. Because of this, their needs and expectations must be considered alongside those of tenants.

The people who live in our homes are of many different ages and backgrounds.

• 60% are female
• About 60% are aged between 35 and 64
• 36% are from minority ethnic backgrounds
• 14% live with disabilities
• 60% are in receipt of Universal Credit.

We celebrate the communities we serve, and we’re committed to:

• Treating everyone fairly and with dignity
• Understanding everyone’s different needs and circumstances
• Making reasonable adjustments so services are accessible to all.

The overall annual cost of delivering services to council tenants and leaseholders is around £135million. This breaks down approximately as follows:

Tenancy and estate management - £22million

Responsive repairs, cyclical maintenance and voids - £45million

Other services and costs - £68million

These costs are met from the Housing Revenue Account (HRA), which is made up of rent and service charge income. The HRA is ring-fenced, which means that the money in it can only be spent on services that benefit tenants and leaseholders.

Social housing, including council housing, works within a set of regulations. These have increased since the Grenfell Tower disaster in 2017.

Regulation is not limited to building safety and compliance; it also places tenants’ overall satisfaction, wellbeing, and lived experience at the centre of housing provision.

Key legislation includes:

The Fire Safety Act (2021) strengthened fire safety requirements in multi-occupied buildings such as blocks of flats.

The Building Safety Act (2022) improved resident safety through the design, construction and management of buildings, particularly high-rise blocks. This Act saw the introduction of the Building Safety Regulator.

The Social Housing Regulation Act (2023) expanded the powers of the Regulator of Social Housing. It enhanced inspection powers and introduced both financial penalties for non-compliance and Performance Improvement Plans. This Act also sets out the standards that housing providers must meet to be considered an effective landlord.

Awaab’s Law (2025) - introducing strict timeframes for landlords to address hazards such as damp and mould problems and emergency hazards. Additional hazards, including excess cold or heat, fire and electrical faults, and risks of structural collapse, will be incorporated at a later stage.

The Consumer Standards set out what we’re expected to deliver as a social landlord: safe, good-quality homes and services that genuinely work for you.

The Regulator of Social Housing’s Code of Practice sets the Standards as follows:

The Safety and Quality Standard

This is about making sure your home is safe, well maintained, and comfortable. This includes meeting all gas, electrical, fire, water, asbestos, and lift safety requirements, as well as keeping homes warm, secure, and in good repair in line with the Decent Homes Standard.

We’re also responsible for tackling hazards and complying with Awaab’s Law. We do this through a mix of responsive repairs, planned maintenance, adaptations for residents who need them, and strong building safety arrangements. We track how well we’re doing using surveys of Tenant Satisfaction Measures, particularly around repairs, safety, and maintenance.

The Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard

This one’s about how we treat you, and how easy it is for you to have a say. We’re committed to treating people fairly and with respect, recognising the diversity of the communities we serve, and making sure we’re communicating clearly, offering meaningful ways for you to get involved, and showing how what you tell us influences decisions. It also tells us how we must measure and report our performance to you - handling complaints satisfactorily is a big part of this, and we use feedback and learning from complaints to improve our performance.

The Neighbourhood and Community Standard

This standard focuses on the place where you live, not just your home. We work to keep communal areas in blocks of flats clean and safe, tackle antisocial behaviour, and support tenants affected by domestic abuse. We do this through strong estate management, partnership working, and targeted neighbourhood improvement programmes.

The Tenancy Standard

This makes sure that we’re allocating homes fairly, make the best use of our supply of homes, and supporting you to sustain your tenancy. With demand for housing so high, this is especially important.

Together, these standards guide how we deliver safe homes, strong relationships, well-managed neighbourhoods, and secure, sustainable tenancies.

We believe that your views and experiences should sit at the heart of everything we do as a landlord – and we know that meaningful tenant influence only works if tenants have a direct voice that feeds into how decisions are made.

To make this happen, we have the Housing Assurance Board (HAB). The HAB gives representatives of you as tenants and leaseholders a direct route into talking to senior housing managers about the services you receive. It provides a space for residents to influence how services are delivered, scrutinise performance, and help shape policies and procedures that affect your home and community. The HAB also helps set our strategic direction.

The Council’s Executive Member for Housing and Planning attends the HAB and acts as a key link between tenants and senior decision-makers. This makes sure that the HAB’s recommendations and action points are properly considered and fed into formal decision-making at the highest level.

The HAB is part of a wider tenant and leaseholder involvement structure which you can find out more about in our Resident Influence Strategy. The approach to involvement is built around six key elements:

• What you think about services, and how we can change them for the better
• Inviting you to scrutinise services
• Providing training and support
• Encouraging and supporting you to be involved in your neighbourhood and have a say on what goes on there
• Offering practical resources and funding
• Learning from your feedback.

The ways in which residents can have their say and influence decisions are designed to suit the level of commitment they want to make – ranging from simply responding to surveys and giving feedback to being fully involved in service improvement reviews.

All of this means that you have a genuine voice and real influence over housing services.

Between 2026 and 2030, we will focus on:

• Keeping you safe in your home
• Improving repairs and maintenance
• Treating you fairly and with respect
• Listening to your views and acting on them
• Investing in homes and neighbourhoods.

We’ll do this by following and meeting the Regulator’s Consumer Standards. We will set out detailed annual service plans that focus on new needs and requirements, particularly in terms of what tenant feedback tells us.  Services have their own set of service standards, again influenced by tenant feedback and expectations, but set honestly and realistically based on available resources and priorities.

We will continue to involve you in shaping our services.