Trivallis housing association has launched a new Community Housing service, built around a groundbreaking ‘team around the tenant’ approach. This innovative model, inspired by best practice in social care, is a pioneering initiative for Wales.
With over 10,000 homes in Rhondda Cynon Taff and Cardiff Bay, Trivallis is one of the largest housing associations in Wales. The new service aims to strengthen relationships between tenants and the housing team, making support more tailored, proactive, and accessible. By introducing smaller patches, increasing staff numbers, creating collaborative area teams, and building strong partnerships, Trivallis hopes its new approach will help tenants manage their homes, well-being, and community relationships more effectively.
Trivallis has designed the new service with tenants in mind.
- More personalised support: community housing officers will oversee smaller areas (350 homes instead of 700), allowing them to build closer relationships and provide proactive help to tenants.
- Collaborative teams: staff across housing, safeguarding, lettings, and well-being now work together in local teams to deliver joined-up services.
- Seamless service: a new staff portal ensures smooth communication and faster resolution of tenant issues, from repairs to income support.
- Stronger community connections: partnerships with health, education, and local services will connect tenants to the right support when they need it.
- Proactive problem solving: early intervention will help address challenges like anti-social behaviour before they escalate.
This new approach is expected to improve tenant satisfaction, reduce anti-social behaviour cases, and create stronger, healthier communities. For new tenants, extra support will help them settle in, connect with their neighbours, and feel at home in their community.
More information can be found on the Trivallis website.
Chief Executive of Trivallis, Duncan Forbes, stated:
“Our new Community Housing service is a game-changer for Trivallis. We’ve listened carefully to tenants and staff and recognised that our previous service model, with large patch sizes of 600-700 homes per Housing Officer, made it difficult to provide personalised, proactive support. It often felt reactive and transactional, limiting our ability to truly empower tenants. It was clear we needed to change to better meet the needs of our tenants and communities.
“Our new team around the tenant model has been inspired by some exciting work done in the social care sector, which the housing sector hasn’t really explored. It has required a major restructure and expansion of our teams, and a big investment in our frontline services, but we are confident that it will make a positive difference to our tenant services and improve outcomes for tenants and local communities.”
