We’re created a tenant recruitment toolkit, designed to help housing providers to put meaningful resident involvement at the centre of retrofit work— and make it easy to put into practice.
Designed to help housing providers build effective, people-centred strategies, the toolkit draws on Lancaster West’s pioneering tenant recruitment model—an approach that has built trust, improved services, and delivered retrofit success. It makes the case for recruiting tenants into retrofit roles and offers practical guidance on how to support them.
What’s Available
We offer a variety of resources tailored to different topics:
🎥 Video – Hear from senior managers and tenant employees about Lancaster West’s approach and its impact.
📄 Case Study by Shortwork – How the tenant recruitment model delivers better and fairer outcomes for tenants, staff, and retrofit projects alike.
📘 Practical Guide – Why social housing retrofit programmes should recruit tenants, the characteristics of successful resident skills and employment initiatives, and inspiration for putting the model into practice.
Access the Toolkit’s Resources
How to Use These Guides
- Secure senior leader and board buy-in for tenant recruitment initiatives
- Review your current recruitment model
- Benchmark against proven, real-world practice
- Shape the design of future retrofit programmes
- Inform internal discussions between sustainability, HR, resident engagement, and delivery teams
- Share the video and case study internally to build organisational buy-in
- Use it in training and onboarding for new staff and contractors to help them understand the motivation and principles behind your recruitment approach
- Use it as an ongoing reference throughout your retrofit programme
⚠️ These resources are not designed to market or promote retrofit works or to gain initial buy-in from residents.
When to Use These Guides
These guides help at all stages:
- When making the business case for tenant employment and skills to senior leaders or boards
- When refreshing or reviewing existing recruitment approaches
- Before commissioning contractors, to shape expectations around social value and resident involvement
- When preparing funding bids, where evidence of people-centred delivery strengthens your proposal
- During staff induction or training, to introduce people-centred retrofit principles
- When developing partnerships with training providers or employment teams
- At any point when strengthening people-centred delivery is a priority
⭐ Resources Already Available
Resident Liaison Officer Toolkit
The resident liaison officer (RLO) toolkit is designed to help housing providers build engagement strategies that work — and make them easy to put into practice.
We offer a variety of resources tailored to different topics:
🎥 Video – Hear from a senior manager, an RLO, and a resident about the Broadacres approach and the results it delivers.
📄 Case Study 1 – How Broadacres’ in-house customer liaison model delivers better outcomes, faster and fairer.
📄 Case Study 2 – How Broadacres works with contractors to build resident buy-in, removing barriers.
📘 Practical Guide – The case for establishing RLOs in retrofit programmes, and practical guidance on how to support them.
Easy Read and Plain English Guides
Created to make retrofit communication clearer and more accessible for tenants, these guides turn complex information into simple, supportive formats. They’re designed to help residents feel informed, confident, and genuinely involved in preparing their homes for retrofit.
Topics covered
- Energy Efficiency Improvements
- Loft Insulation
- External Wall Insulation
- Ventilation Work
- Air Source Heat Pumps
- Gas Meter Removal
🔍 Want to go deeper? Explore the research behind the resources
Insights from Registered Providers and Delivery Partners
This report draws on conversations with social landlords and delivery partners across Greater Manchester. It sheds light on the structural, organisational and practical challenges of delivering people-centred retrofit — and highlights what is working well to overcome them.
Download here.
Tenants’ Experiences of Retrofit
A powerful collection of lived experiences from tenants who have completed, or are preparing for, retrofit works. The report offers an honest view of what retrofit really feels like: the disruption, the communication gaps, and the small but important things that helped tenants feel informed, respected and supported.
Download here.