Thomas Vale accredited for Quality in Resident Involvement

Thomas Vale was awarded the Tenant Participation Advisory Service (TPAS) Quality Mark in Resident Involvement & Customer Care for Contractors this week. TPAS is the leading national Tenant Participation Organisation, working to promote tenant empowerment within communities.

The TPAS Quality Mark for Contractors Accreditation for Resident Involvement recognises companies who demonstrate best practice in the way they work with and engage residents when improving local authority or housing association homes or building new houses.
Thomas Vale applied for the official quality mark to demonstrate their commitment to providing the highest level of service to their Clients and Tenants.

This is such a worthwhile process that has really brought our approaches together and helped us to validate what we do and will help us to continuously improve our involvement performance for tenants and clients ongoing and in the future.’
Sarah Cowap, Customer Care Manager, Thomas Vale.

To gain the accreditation the company underwent a Two Stage process. Stage 1 was an assessment with TPAS who gave them a series of modules to comply with, these modules contained areas such as tenant consultation procedures and policies, communication practises, client management relationships, community involvement initiatives and training of staff and tenants. A submission was compiled and presented for evaluation and scoring. Stage 2 was a number of interviews with a TPAS Assessor carried out with Thomas Vale, their Client and randomly selected Tenants who had an involvement with Thomas Vale who is working with Wolverhampton Homes on its Decent Homes Programme.

The secret of Thomas Vale’s success is quite simple. They are very responsive and proactive and really listen to tenants. They react very quickly to what tenants say and as a result have reduced any potential problems in the delivery of the Decent Homes programme in Wolverhampton.

Margaret Wright, director of customer services and performance, for Wolverhampton Homes.

Results of the assessments are then sent to a scrutiny panel who determine whether the company pass. Thomas Vale who completed the process in just over four months ahead of the allocated time of 9 months got a positive pass from the panel.

The Scrutiny Panel commented - We had a definite feel that the organisation wants to deliver excellent resident engagement and we congratulate the company for how well embedded resident involvement is within the culture of their organisation.