Tenant Scrutiny: ELTRP and East Lothian Council Work in Partnership to Improve Housing Services
Updated: 5 days ago
Giving Tenants a Voice and Making a Difference
Tenants should be at the heart of decisions about the housing services they receive. In East Lothian, the partnership between East Lothian Tenants and Residents Panel (ELTRP) and East Lothian Council demonstrates how working together can help ensure tenants’ views are heard, valued and used to drive improvements.
Through tenant engagement, collaboration and scrutiny, ELTRP helps tenants influence the services that matter most to them. A recent review of the Council’s repairs satisfaction survey is a practical example of this approach in action. By examining how tenant feedback is collected, identifying barriers to participation and recommending ways to improve the process, the Tenant Scrutiny Group has helped highlight opportunities to make services more accessible, effective and responsive to tenants’ needs.
This article explores how partnership working and meaningful tenant involvement can turn feedback into opportunities for change, strengthening accountability and helping shape better housing services for communities across East Lothian.
ELTRP: Working in Partnership to Improve Housing Services in East Lothian
The Power of Partnership and Tenant-Led Scrutiny
Meaningful tenant participation is about more than giving residents an opportunity to express their views. It is about creating a genuine partnership in which tenants can influence decisions, examine the quality of services and help shape improvements that make a real difference to their lives.
The East Lothian Tenants and Residents Panel (ELTRP) plays an important role in supporting this approach through its partnership working with East Lothian Council. By bringing tenants, residents’ groups and the Council together, ELTRP helps ensure that the experiences and priorities of local people are recognised when housing services are reviewed and developed.
An important part of this partnership is tenant-led scrutiny. This enables tenants to examine how services operate, question existing practices and make evidence-based recommendations for improvement.
A recent example is the East Lothian Tenant Scrutiny Group’s review of the Council’s Repairs Satisfaction Survey process, undertaken during July and August 2025, with support from the Tenants Information Service and East Lothian Council.
The review demonstrates how tenants can work constructively with their landlord while providing independent challenge, identifying inefficiencies and recommending practical changes to improve services.
Putting Tenants at the Heart of Service Improvement
Effective partnership working recognises that tenants have valuable knowledge and experience of the services they receive. Their feedback can help identify issues that may not be immediately apparent from performance figures alone.
Through its partnership approach, ELTRP supports opportunities for tenants and residents’ groups to contribute to discussions about housing services, raise concerns and examine whether services are meeting residents’ needs.
This approach brings several benefits:
A stronger tenant voice: Ensuring residents have opportunities to influence housing services and raise issues that matter to them.
Constructive challenge: Enabling tenants to question existing processes and examine service performance using evidence.
Greater accountability: Encouraging open discussions about service standards, performance and opportunities for improvement.
Better decision-making: Bringing tenants’ experiences alongside the Council’s operational knowledge and performance information.
Continuous improvement: Helping turn feedback and scrutiny findings into practical recommendations for consideration and action.
The relationship between ELTRP and East Lothian Council provides a platform for this work, demonstrating how partnership and scrutiny can complement one another in the pursuit of better housing services.
Case Study: Scrutinising the Repairs Satisfaction Survey
Why the Review Was Important
The repairs service is a vital part of the housing experience. Tenants want repairs to be completed within appropriate timescales, work to be carried out to a satisfactory standard and communication to be clear throughout the process.
Customer satisfaction surveys provide an important way of understanding how tenants feel about the service they receive. However, the information collected must be sufficiently representative, accessible and reliable if it is to provide a meaningful picture of tenants’ experiences.
The East Lothian Tenant Scrutiny Group examined the existing Repairs Satisfaction Survey process, looking at how surveys were distributed, how feedback was collected and analysed, the resources required to administer the process and the opportunities for improvement.
The review identified several issues, including low response rates, limited survey coverage, a reliance on paper-based processes and the costs associated with administering the system.
Rather than simply highlighting these concerns, the Group developed recommendations aimed at making the process more accessible, efficient and effective.
This is tenant-led scrutiny in practice: examining the evidence, identifying weaknesses and proposing constructive solutions.
What Did the Review Find?
The report highlighted several important findings relating to the Council’s 2024/25 repairs satisfaction surveys.
Low survey coverage
A total of 19,238 non-emergency repairs were completed during 2024/25. Of these, 13,931 were eligible for the Council’s survey, excluding 5,307 repairs carried out by Richard Irvin (Gas Safety).
However, only 8,901 surveys were issued, representing 64% of eligible repairs.
This meant that a significant proportion of eligible repairs did not generate a survey, limiting the breadth of feedback available to the Council.
Declining response rates
Of the 8,901 surveys issued, 896 were returned, representing a response rate of 10%.
The report also found that responses represented just 6.4% of eligible repairs and 4.6% of all non-emergency repairs completed during the year.
The response rate had fallen from 24% in 2018/19 to 10% in 2024/25.
The Group identified this decline as an important concern because low response rates can limit the reliability and representativeness of the feedback used to assess service performance.
Costs and administrative demands
The existing contractor-led, paper-based survey process cost just over £10,000 annually, with additional internal staff costs estimated at approximately £2,372.
The report calculated an average cost of £11.16 per usable survey return, rising to £13.80 when internal staff time was included.
The Group also highlighted the manual work involved in processing survey responses and the dependence on contractors to distribute surveys.
These findings raised questions about whether the existing approach represented the most efficient use of resources and whether alternative methods could deliver better value.
Accessibility and engagement
The review found that the survey process, which had been in place since 2014, was labour-intensive and limited in accessibility.
It also identified a lack of clarity about the purpose of the survey, limited encouragement for tenants to participate and an absence of consistent follow-up when written feedback raised concerns.
These findings highlighted an important point: collecting feedback is only part of the process. Tenants must also understand why their views matter and have confidence that concerns will be considered.
Figures and findings are drawn from the East Lothian Tenant Scrutiny Group’s Repairs Satisfaction Survey Review Report, November 2025.
From Findings to Recommendations
One of the most valuable aspects of the review was its focus on practical improvements.
The Group made four key recommendations designed to modernise the process and improve the quality of information available to East Lothian Council.
1. Modernise the Survey Process
The Group recommended introducing online and telephone survey options alongside a redesigned, more accessible paper survey.
It also proposed reviewing the survey questions and adopting a mixed-method approach to reach a wider range of tenants.
A more flexible process could make it easier for tenants to participate and provide feedback in a way that suits their circumstances.
2. Improve Tenant Engagement
The review recommended communicating the purpose and value of the survey more clearly.
It also called for follow-up contact to be reinstated where tenants raise issues or concerns.
This recommendation recognises that tenant engagement should not end when a survey is completed. Where feedback identifies dissatisfaction or a problem, an appropriate response can help tenants feel heard and may provide valuable information about how services could improve.
3. Improve Cost Efficiency
The Group recommended assessing whether the survey process could be managed in-house and whether money currently spent on contractors could be redirected towards digital tools or existing internal digital capacity.
It also highlighted the importance of capturing the full cost of staff time when assessing different options.
This recommendation reflects the Group’s approach of examining not only service quality but also how resources are used.
4. Increase Survey Coverage
The Group recommended expanding survey distribution to reach a greater proportion of tenants and monitoring allocation to support fairness and representativeness.
Improving coverage would give the Council a broader evidence base on which to assess repairs satisfaction and identify areas requiring attention.
Together, these recommendations provide a practical framework for improving the collection and use of tenant feedback.
How Partnership Working Supports Change
The Repairs Satisfaction Survey review illustrates how partnership working and tenant scrutiny can reinforce one another.
The Tenant Scrutiny Group examined the existing arrangements, identified shortcomings and developed recommendations based on its findings. The report provides a foundation for discussions about how the Council could improve its approach.
This process depends on a constructive relationship between tenants and the landlord.
Tenants bring their experiences, questions and independent perspectives. The Council brings its operational knowledge, service information and understanding of the practical considerations involved in delivering housing services.
By working together, both parties have an opportunity to identify solutions that are informed by evidence and focused on tenants’ needs.
However, effective scrutiny also requires follow-through. Recommendations need to be considered, responses communicated and any agreed actions monitored so that tenants can understand what has changed as a result of their involvement.
The report sets out the Group’s findings and recommendations. The next important stage is to establish how these recommendations are considered and what actions are agreed.
Making Tenant Scrutiny Meaningful
The success of tenant-led scrutiny should not be measured solely by the number of meetings held or reports produced. Its value lies in the quality of the examination, the recommendations developed and the improvements that follow.
The Repairs Satisfaction Survey review highlights several principles that can support effective scrutiny across housing services.
Evidence matters. Access to reliable information allows tenants to examine performance, identify trends and ask informed questions.
Tenant experiences matter. Statistics are important, but they need to be considered alongside the practical experiences of people using the service.
Recommendations should be practical. Scrutiny is most effective when it identifies achievable improvements and explains why they are needed.
Partnership requires openness. Tenants and the Council need opportunities to discuss findings, explore challenges and consider possible solutions.
Impact should be monitored. Communicating progress and outcomes helps demonstrate the value of tenant participation and supports continued confidence in the process.
These principles can help strengthen the relationship between ELTRP, tenants and East Lothian Council, creating opportunities for scrutiny to contribute to service development beyond the repairs survey alone.
Looking Ahead: Building on ELTRP’s Partnership Approach
The Repairs Satisfaction Survey review provides a clear example of tenants taking an active role in examining a housing service and identifying opportunities for improvement.
The Group’s findings highlight the need to improve survey coverage, reverse declining response rates, make feedback more accessible and consider more efficient ways of administering the process.
The proposed move towards automated survey distribution, multiple response channels, centralised reporting and more consistent follow-up could provide a basis for further discussions about modernising the system.
For ELTRP, this work reinforces the importance of maintaining a strong partnership with East Lothian Council while ensuring that tenants retain a meaningful role in scrutinising services.
Looking ahead, the key opportunities include:
Continuing to support tenant involvement in service reviews and scrutiny exercises.
Ensuring that tenants have access to the information needed to examine service performance.
Encouraging constructive dialogue between tenant representatives and Council officers.
Following up on recommendations to establish what actions are agreed and how progress will be monitored.
Sharing outcomes with tenants and residents’ groups so that the impact of their involvement is visible.
By building on this approach, ELTRP can continue to support a culture in which tenant participation is an integral part of housing service development.
Conclusion: Working Together to Deliver Better Housing Services
ELTRP’s partnership approach with East Lothian Council demonstrates the value of bringing tenants and their landlord together to examine services, discuss challenges and identify opportunities for improvement.
The Repairs Satisfaction Survey review is a practical example of this approach in action. Through a detailed examination of survey coverage, response rates, costs and administrative processes, the Tenant Scrutiny Group identified weaknesses in the existing system and proposed a series of constructive recommendations.
The review also highlights an important principle: tenant participation must lead to more than gathering opinions. It should help inform decisions, challenge existing practices and support measurable improvements.
The next step is to build on the findings by considering the recommendations, agreeing appropriate actions and keeping tenants informed about progress.
Through continued partnership, constructive scrutiny and a shared commitment to improvement, ELTRP and East Lothian Council can help ensure that tenants’ voices remain central to the development of housing services across East Lothian.
Ultimately, effective partnership working means listening to tenants, acting on evidence and demonstrating how their involvement can make a difference.
Why this version is stronger
The revised article now demonstrates ELTRP’s approach through a real scrutiny exercise rather than relying on general statements about tenant engagement.
It highlights three important messages:
Partnership: ELTRP and East Lothian Council can work together constructively while tenants retain an important scrutiny role.
Evidence: The review identified measurable issues, including a 10% survey response rate, 64% coverage of eligible repairs and an estimated annual internal staff cost of £2,372.
Accountability: The recommendations provide a basis for further action, but their implementation and impact need to be tracked rather than assumed.
One important distinction: The report confirms the findings and recommendations made by the Tenant Scrutiny Group. It does not establish which recommendations East Lothian Council has accepted or implemented. The article therefore avoids claiming that improvements have already been delivered.
If this is intended for an ELTRP newsletter, website or annual report, the strongest next addition would be a short “What happened next?” section setting out the Council’s response and any agreed actions. That would help demonstrate not just the value of the scrutiny exercise, but its practical impact.
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