Making every contact count

Making every contact count means using routine and planned interactions with residents as opportunities to gather information about the condition of their homes and their needs. This information can be used to proactively identify residents with issues in their homes or support needs that the landlord should address. 

The Better Social Housing Review highlighted how important good quality data is to understanding the quality of residents’ homes, the support residents need, and how equitably services are delivered to different groups of residents. The panel recommended that social landlords improve how they use data to assess how equitably services are delivered, to address structural inequalities and the experiences of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people. To help the sector with this, the National Housing Federation started a project called Knowing our Homes. 

The first stage of Knowing our Homes was to understand what landlords are already doing to collect data, and how residents feel about their landlord asking for personal information. This involved input from several organisations that are developing an approach called ‘making every contact count’. 

Today we’ve published 'Making every contact count', a full exploration of how social landlords of different types and sizes can use, or further develop, this approach. The report draws on interviews conducted by Campbell Tickell with 11 different social housing providers. Each is presented as a separate case study, together with an explanation of the common themes, challenges and opportunities.

This report is essential reading for a range of people working in social housing, from board members and executive teams to repairs, maintenance and customer service teams.

Related

• Press release
• Following feedback from members earlier this year, we have also updated our proposals for the key pieces of information about residents we suggest social landlords collect.