TPAS Conference Birmingham 2009

As members of the Tenant Management Team (TMT), we attended the annual conference run by the Tenant Participation Advisory Service (TPAS), at Birmingham August 2009.


Having only recently established itself back in April 2009, our members who attended the conference, some of whom, had had no previous involvement, took the opportunity to gain valuable experience from this and to see how tenant involvement impacted on other providers of social housing.

Our aim was to attend workshops in order to gain ideas of what can be achieved within our aims and objectives as the TMT.

We split up into pairs to attend the workshops, reporting back to each other with feedback of our findings. Workshops included topics such as mystery shopping, resident inspection, neighbourhood plans and community control.

Workshops were held throughout the weekend, but there was also opportunity for networking with other organisations, socialising with the team and recreational activities.
It was agreed by the team that one of the best workshops we attended for our own role was on scrutiny, held on the Sunday morning. This gave us an indepth knowledge of scrutiny and assisted us as a team to move our project forward.

Overall we gained valuable experience from the event, including what other providers of social housing were achieving, new ideas, professionalism, confidence, team building and networking. This also led to us planning and running a joint conference on Resident Led Self Regulation with Salix homes.

A very informative and enjoyable weekend.