Resident Influence and Engagement

If you don’t want to engage with us regularly, but you’d like to check in to see what we are doing and how we are doing it, Be Aware is the level of engagement for you.

Here you will find detailed information about the services we provide and how we’re performing. We also tell you how your feedback has helped to change the way we do things in our ‘you said, we did’ section on The Place.

You can also follow our social media channels to keep up to date with the latest news. You will find us on; Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

You can engage with our bi-yearly magazine, Havebury News. If you want to give us feedback on any of the articles or surveys you see, contact our Communications team via communications@havebury.com.

You can sign up to The Place via our website.

You can use this to take part in current surveys and consultations, as well as seeing the results from previous ones. It also includes any changes we’ve made following your feedback.

Feedback really helps us understand how we are doing. If something’s gone wrong, you can make a complaint to us, in a number of ways.

We also really appreciate it when you tell us when something’s gone well, so please continue to send us your compliments. You can find out how to make a complaint or compliment on the main homepage of our website or by clicking here.

You may want to get involved in something more local to you, such as carrying out an estate inspection or helping us to organise or take part in a community day, where you live.

Over the summer in 2022, we carried out six clean-up days in some of our communities in Bury, Haverhill and the surrounding villages.

It’s great to get our team, tenants and the wider community together to keep our green spaces looking their best. We are usually joined by the police, the councils and other partner agencies, who are all on hand to speak to you about any issues you might be having, or to simply answer any questions.

We would love to link up with some of our resident groups to host more events in our communities. If you would like to help us organise similar events near where you live, let us know.

Estate inspections 2023

We’ve started carrying out estate inspections in our communities again and we encourage you to join us.

As part of the inspection, you will check the condition of your estate and communal areas. You can advise on concerns you may have, such as rubbish & fly-tipping, and report any issues to us or our partners, who will also be attending.

You will receive a text message or leaflet through your letter box when we are due to attend your area.

31 August 2023 – Priors Estate, Bury St Edmunds 10 am – 2 pm
14 September 2023 – Stowmarket 10 am – 2 pm
28 September 2023 – Thetford 10 am – 2 pm
12 October 2023 – Great Barton 10 am – 2 pm
26 October 2023 – Stanton 10 am – 2 pm
09 November 2023 – Barningham 10 am – 2 pm

Click here to sign up.

Almost all of our options co-create in some way, but there are a few options under this.

We have an annual fund of £50,000 to invest in our local communities. When an application comes in, we ask everyone that’s signed up to The Place to vote whether they think we should support a local project or not. We will let you know about which projects have been supported on our website, social pages and in our annual report.

Where we have a short-term project we’d like some feedback on, we will create task and finish groups.

This will be a group of tenants working with a member of our team to help us shape or improve a service. Examples of this include designing new customer service standards or improving the service we provide to our shared owners and leaseholders.

It means that there will be something for those of you that don’t have as much spare time or are only interested in a specific subject. We will usually get in contact with you if you have previously used the service we are looking for feedback on. It’s entirely up to you whether you choose to engage or not.

This level of engagement varies in the amount of time it takes – some projects might last one or two sessions, and some might last three to six months. You’ll receive a £10 voucher for every full hour that you spend engaging with us. We’ll keep a record of this across the year from 1 September – 31 August and we’ll send you the total amount in September each year. There will be a choice of vouchers that you can choose from.

Our Performance and Scrutiny Panel is made up of tenants and independent members of the community. They focus on how we are performing in our services and will carry out a scrutiny exercise with the team that delivers that service.

They also measure our current performance, interview our team, and make recommendations to our Leadership team and Board so that we can improve things even more.

We are always seeking tenants to be part of this group. If this is something that you’d be interested in knowing more about, please get in touch and we’ll send you some more information or talk you through it in a bit more detail.

If you’re an involved tenant, you may be able to sit on our Complaints Review Panel. This is a small group of tenants who review complaints at stage two of our process, with a member of the Leadership team.

You can find out more about our Performance and Scrutiny Panel here.

This year we have introduced our new Tenant Voice Panels.

We have two panels -both that meet digitally. Each panel is made up of between seven and 11 tenants who help influence and shape the services we provide. They also share their views on our policies and procedures, as well as what’s happening in the local area. Essentially, anything that is important to them and their fellow tenants.

If you are interested in joining our Tenant Voice Panels, please send an email to engagement@havebury.com.

Tenants sit on our Board and Committees to make sure the tenant voice is being heard loud and clear in everything we do.

Our Tenant Experience Committee does not have any current vacancies, but we will advertise these positions as they come up – please keep an eye out for them.

Each vacancy will have a specific role description, but most importantly, we ask that you draw on your lived experience of being a tenant.

It is helpful if you’ve got basic computer skills as you will need to access and read meeting papers online, plus attend virtual meetings on TEAMS. But we will provide training, plus any equipment that you’ll need to do this role.

If you have never taken part in a more formal meeting before, we know it can be rather daunting at first, but everyone is very friendly and welcoming, and you will soon settle in!

We will carry out some basic checks. We need to ensure that you are fit to hold office, are not bankrupt or insolvent, and have the capacity to carry out your duties.

If being involved on our Board or Committees is something you’d be interested in, please contact governance@havebury.com.