Voicescape Blog

Rethinking Compliance: How Social Landlords Can Improve Access

Written by Rebecca Hargrave | Jun 19, 2026 2:25:06 PM

 

Securing access for essential safety checks remains one of the most persistent operational challenges in social housing. Whether it’s gas servicing, electrical testing or wider home safety activity, every missed appointment creates pressure: delayed compliance, wasted engineer time, increased costs and poor customer experience.

In a recent Voicescape Compliance webinar, Adra Housing shared how they tackle the issue of no-access by moving away from inconsistent manual reminders and towards automated, two-way resident engagement. The results are a more efficient process, lower cost-to-serve, better tenant communication and a measurable reduction in no-access.

Contents

Social housing compliance challenges

Despite the sector’s continued commitment to resident safety and compliance, social housing providers report growing difficulties in securing timely access to homes for essential safety activity.

Social landlords we’ve spoken to are reporting being under increasing pressure to evidence timely action, maintain accurate records and respond quickly to risks in the home. The challenges include:

  • Persistent no-access.
  • A more demanding regulatory environment (Awaab’s Law, mandatory five-yearly EICR checks).
  • High volumes of responsive repairs, EICR and LGSR Homes Safety Checks needed to be carried out annually.
  • Increasing costs (engineer, time, fuel, letters).

Addressing these challenges requires more than reactive processes. Social landlords should be adopting resident-first appointment booking strategies that make it easier for tenants to engage - helping improve access rates and support a more proactive approach to compliance.

Approaches social landlords should be taking with appointment booking

Whether appointments are imposed through a prescriptive process or shaped around a tenants’ needs through a more consultative model, landlords are moving towards an approach that gives residents greater control and choice. In practice, most landlords use one of two broad approaches to appointment booking: a “prescriptive” model or a “consultative” model. Both have advantages, but both also create trade-offs.

 “Prescriptive” approach  “Consultative” approach
  •  A landlord-led process where appointments are scheduled based on operational efficiency, engineer availability and route planning.
  •  A resident-led approach where tenants are contacted to agree or amend appointment times based on their availability and needs.
 Typically used for:  Typically used for:
  •  Gas service appointments where volumes are high, and the cost of no-access is less than the cost to manually schedule appointments with customers.
  •  Generally used for electrical servicing where volumes of appointments are low, and the cost of no-access is greater than the cost to manually schedule appointments with customers.
 Benefits:  Benefits:
  • Sends high volumes of appointments
  • Plan appointments based on engineer routes and availability.
  • Requires less staff time.
  • Customers are positively engaged, informed and empowered.
  • Improves likelihood of access.
  • Fantastic customer experience.
 Drawbacks:  Drawbacks:
  • Likely to have low customer engagement.
  • Results in increased access challenges.
  • Expensive postage costs.
  • Poor customer experience.
  • Requires a lot of staff time.
  • A significant proportion of that time is wasted on aborted calls.
  • Inefficient route planning.

 The challenge is that landlords often need the scale and efficiency of a prescriptive model, but the engagement and resident experience of a consultative model. So, how can landlords harness the correct approach with the right solution to prevent costly no-access? The opportunity is to combine the operational efficiency of prescriptive booking with the resident engagement benefits of a consultative approach using automation.

Introducing Voicescape Compliance: an award-winning, top-rated social housing compliance solution designed to transform the appointment management process with a “best of both worlds” approach to streamline appointments, improve compliance outcomes, protect tenant safety and effectively comply with regulations.

Customer experience with Voicescape Compliance

Adra Housing’s success using Voicescape Compliance

In the webinar, Gethin Armstrong, Customer Services Manager at Adra Homes explained how the organisation used Voicescape Compliance to reduce no-access and improve the resident experience around compliance appointments.

The Challenge

  • High levels of no access appointments.
  • Inconsistent manual reminders.
  • Missed visits creating pressure for teams, contractors and residents.
  • Implications for both efficiency and compliance.

The Solution

  • In March 2025, Adra implemented Voicescape Compliance to automate outbound resident engagement.
  • Residents could confirm appointments, request a reschedule or raise an issue.
  • Communications were tailored with bilingual Welsh and English messaging and local voice recordings.

The Results

  • Improved tenant engagement and experience.
  • Reduced workload for staff.
  • Better data quality and contract records.
  • Routine tasks are handled effectively by automation.
  • Staff can now focus their time where it adds most value.
  • 33% reduction in no-access.

They had additionally seen measurable impact, such as:

  • 18,000 calls made during the campaign period
  • 88% delivery rate
  • 70% of messages listened to
  • £35k in cost savings

“There’s no way my agents would have got through that many calls [without Voicescape’s Compliance solution...].” – Gethin Armstrong, Customer Services Manager at Adra.

“It’s not just about the savings we’re making. Voicescape Compliance really improved the efficiency of our operatives as well. There’s nothing more frustrating than trying to gain access to a property, especially in rural locations, which also makes rescheduling really difficult. It’s also helped significantly with backlogs and pipeline.”

What are the benefits of using Voicescape Compliance?

Voicescape Compliance helps social landlords:

  • Reduce no-access for essential safety appointments.
  • Cut avoidable costs linked to missed appointments, letters and wasted visits.
  • Prioritise staff resources to focus on complex cases where human intervention adds most value.
  • Reduce manual reminder activity and administrative pressure.
  • Gain better visibility of appointment outcomes and resident responses.
  • Improve resident engagement through automated, two-way communication.
  • Tailor communications around different compliance programmes, resident needs and regulatory requirements.

Ready to improve access, operational efficiency and tenant satisfaction?

Watch the full webinar on Voicescape Compliance here

To see how Voicescape Compliance could help your organisation reduce no-access, improve resident engagement and release staff capacity, book a meeting with our team.

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