From access to advocacy: co-creating better services with tenants

In my role as an organisational development business partner at Golden Lane Housing (GLH), I spend a lot of time thinking about development opportunities for our colleagues. But increasingly, I’ve been asking a different question – who is shaping that learning? 

At GLH, we are working to make sure our answer is clear. It is tenants that should inform our training and services. 

Why we started this work

We know that if we want to deliver better services, we need to understand the people who use them. That sounds simple, but in practice it means doing more than gathering feedback or running surveys.

It means creating real opportunities for tenants to shape how we think, how we design services and how we train our colleagues.

For tenants with a learning disability, and autistic people, this is especially important. Too often, services are designed without fully understanding the barriers people face. This can lead to systems and cultures that feel confusing, inaccessible or excluding.

We want to change that. At GLH, that means demonstrating a move from tenant access to advocacy.

Co-creating learning with tenants
 
One of the ways we are supporting a move to advocacy is by co-creating training for colleagues with tenants.

We have called these sessions ‘Knowing Our Tenants’, and the idea for them initially came from one of our tenant representatives. From their idea, we have worked more widely with tenants to shape the programme collaboratively, informing sessions with tenant ideas, feedback and lived experiences.

Recently, we delivered our first session – focused on understanding learning disability and autism. While tenant involvement is something we have always done at GLH, playing a key role in influencing decision making and shaping our strategic direction, this felt like an important step to understanding how that involvement translates into organisation-wide learning.

Tenants helped shape the session by sharing what matters most to them and what they want our colleagues to truly understand based on their day-to-day experiences. It was an opportunity for tenants to share what good communication looks like to them, including what does not work and why, and where small changes can make a big difference.

This shifted the training from something theoretical to something real and practical. It also changed the dynamic in the room. Instead of talking about tenants, we were learning with them and directly from them – their experiences bought the session to life.

We will continue to review and evolve the session with tenants to make sure it stays relevant, reflects current experiences and continues to focus on what matters most to them.

What we are learning so far

It is still early days, but the impact has been really encouraging.

Our face-to-face sessions have received an Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) of 95, with consistently strong feedback. Colleagues have told us that hearing directly from tenants was the most valuable part. Many reflected on how powerful it was to hear personal stories and better understand the realities of independent living.

Other colleagues spoke about practical changes they would now make, particularly around communication and being more aware of how every day actions can affect tenants.

In addition to our in-person session, our digital version has been well received with 100% of attendees saying it increased their understanding. The main feedback from online colleagues was to allow more time for discussion, which we have already built into future sessions.

While both digital and in-person sessions have value, there is something particularly powerful about learning together in the room, hearing directly from tenants and creating space for honest conversation.

When our colleagues better understand the lived experiences of tenants, you can see the difference in how they work. For example, they start to notice when something is not quite right and feel more confident adapting their approach to meet individual tenant needs. Colleagues are also more likely to seek out tenant views and have open, honest conversations.

From access to advocacy

Our approach to co-creation is not just about training. It is the foundation of how we work with tenants.

This work is led by our Tenant Involvement Lead at GLH, Abigail Conaghan, and is something we are proud of. It goes beyond standard involvement and is shaped by a focus on person-centred coaching and personal development. This means bringing tenants on the journey with us. 

Abigail, supported by tenant buddies, focuses on building individual skills, confidence and understanding so tenants are not only able to take part, but feel ready to do so. For some, it is the first time they have had the opportunity to have their voice heard in this way.

We are supporting tenants to better understand how our services work and what they can expect from them, whilst creating space for them to build confidence and feel able to share their views and shape improvements. Over time, we hope that this will promote collaborative discussions and decision making in a way that is meaningful to tenants and reflective of their experiences. This is what moving from access to advocacy looks like in practice. It is about making sure tenants are not only able to use services but are equipped to shape them.

Creating the conditions for meaningful scrutiny

A big part of this work is stepping back and asking what meaningful scrutiny feels and looks like for tenants. It is easy to talk about involving people to scrutinise services, but in reality it only works when people feel comfortable enough to take part. That does not happen from a single meeting or a one‑off invite. It builds gradually.

People need the right information, catered to their needs so they know what they are looking at and why it matters. They need to feel able to ask questions, including the difficult ones and most of all, they need to trust that speaking up will lead to actual change.

That is where our role comes in. We spend time creating spaces where people feel safe to share their views, where honest challenge is welcome, and where we are clear about what happens next.

When that process becomes established, the tone shifts. It feels less like a formal process and more like a real conversation. The feedback becomes clearer, more thoughtful, and far more useful in helping us improve what we do.

Looking ahead

We are proud to have been awarded the highest grading from the Regulator, G1, V1 and C1. But it doesn’t stop there. We are still learning, and this work is helping us move in the right direction.

By co-creating training with tenants, we are not only improving how colleagues learn, we are also strengthening tenant voice across our organisation.

We are really looking forward to delivering our Knowing Our Tenants session to colleagues at the National Housing Federation today, 21 July 2026, where our tenants will share their stories directly.

When tenants help shape how we learn, they also help shape how we work. And that is where real change starts.