Accessible Communication: The Key to Housing Compliance

Accessibility sits at the heart of effective communication and compliance - enabling tenants and housing providers to stay connected, accountable, and on track with appointments. By making communication inclusive and open to everyone, we reduce information gaps, keeping tenants informed at every opportunity.

With challenges such as high no-access rates and new legislation requiring asset management teams to solve issues within stricter time-frames, efficiently managing maintenance appointments and ensuring tenants are sufficiently informed every step of the way is more crucial than ever.

At our Customer Conference, Voicescape’s Lewis Murray talked in-depth with our North Wales customer Adra about how we’ve been helping shape their appointment management strategy, looking at the best measures to keep tenants engaged and standards high. Keep reading to discover why accessible communication is an essential part of improving your compliance operations and preventing no-access cases.

Contents:

• Why compliance is a tenant requirement as well as a standard
• What sector challenges are we facing for compliance?
• Accessible Tenant Engagement in Action: with Adra Homes
• What providers can do to improve compliance communications
• Discover Voicescape Compliance to streamline appointments

Why compliance is a tenant requirement as well as a standard

Whilst compliance is often interpreted as a government reporting requirement, it is also a tenant requirement – if information or communication on safety checks isn’t accessible to tenants, how can they understand what appointments are happening and why? When situations like this happen, tenants feel isolated, and it becomes a risk if left unchecked.

Compliance and service standard documents are usually published in English and full of technical jargon that the average tenant will find hard to digest. For residents where English is not a first language, or with limited English proficiency or literacy difficulties, this is a further barrier preventing tenants from taking accountability or committing to an appointment request. Rather than this being solely a communication challenge, this becomes an equality issue for those who require more tailored communication or additional support. When communication isn’t accessible, this leads to tenants who cannot engage due to obstacles such as communication mediums or modes, and ultimately, this causes no-access cases. This then causes a risk for providers with non-compliance, as this impacts the tenant's ability to engage with policies and hold housing providers to account if they are experiencing issues. 

For this reason, taking the time to ensure that your tenants are aware of upcoming compliance checks is essential. Nonetheless, we appreciate that engaging with tenants is difficult, especially when tenants may face barriers in their daily life; such as mobility issues, language challenges, or limited access to digital technology. However, ensuring tenants are supported with accessible methods and mediums of communication is definitely beneficial for organisations, and our customers have seen the direct benefits themselves.

What sector challenges are we facing for compliance?

We work extensively with organisations like yours, and while every situation is different, the same kind of challenges tend to cause the most headaches. So far, team priorities have been around:

• Improving access rates is a top strategic objective
• New Legislation for EICR checks to be completed every 5 years from 1st May 2026
• High volumes of EICR and LGSR Home Safety Checks to be carried out annually
• Increasing cost of no access appointments
• Tenants not engaged in the process

With these challenges come new expectations for organisations, and we believe that the power of automation and more accessible mediums of communication can help tackle them – which is why we designed Voicescape Compliance. Tenants need to feel engaged to meet new standards in compliance, and improving access rates is a priority.

Accessible Communication in Action: with Adra Homes

What providers can do to improve compliance communications

Housing associations must have accessible communication with their tenants. For instance, they need to ensure that, if they are doing outreach in a tenant’s native language, they have a speaker already within their compliance team to set up the right tenant expectations. 

Other ways organisations can improve are by reviewing how communications are currently shared with tenants; as audit trails should indicate accessible current formats, and if translation or interpretation services are easy to request, this should also be included. Additionally, providing your tenants with a choice over the format they receive appointment booking and compliance information makes it easier for tenants to use their preferred method of contact. This makes information more accessible, digestible and tenants more inclined to respond.

With no-access visits costing on average £75 (including postage, travel and other expenses), Voicescape Compliance is a game-changer for landlords struggling to access their tenants’ homes and make that vital connection.

Discover Voicescape Compliance to streamline appointments

Voicescape Compliance recognises tenants' need for respect and trust, which is why our compliance software can step in to give them options and support. 

Our award-winning Voicescape Compliance solution provides a best of both worlds approach when it comes to appointment booking, maximising tenant engagement and proactivity in the booking process. Utilising digital technology in our automated solution will help you meet your property maintenance statutory obligations and boost the efficiency of your compliance officers' time. Headline benefits include:

• Increases first-time access rates
• Significantly reduces escalations and calls into contact centre
• Reduces workload
• Tailored to meet your processes
• Intuitive user experience

With Voicescape, streamline the booking process and improve your inspection and compliance regime. Have a conversation with us today to discuss how we can help your book, confirm and reschedule appointments and reduce the operational costs associated with remaining compliant. 

You can also download our Compliance brochure if you are interested in learning more about our solution.