Bill Payne, Chief Executive of Metropolitan Housing Partnership.

As a social housing landlord and provider of specialist care and support services we know that our customers, be they tenants or service users, may be anxious about how the announcements made in the Coalition Government Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) might affect them and their families. So what do we know so far?

It is still early days and we will need more details about how the CSR is to be implemented – it’s not law yet. The intention is that existing tenants will not have changes to their rent and security of tenure forced upon them. However, there will be changes for future tenants; but again, we need to wait for the complete picture to unfold.

At Metropolitan Housing Partnership (MHP) we will work hard to monitor what is happening and will keep all of our customers informed as we find out more about the changes and analyse their impact. We will work with politicians and civil servants to make sure that our customer interests are represented because their views count. We plan to work our socks off to find innovative ways to make things work for all of our customers and will look for opportunities in these difficult times. We will have to find ways to use our resources more imaginatively and we are already examining the way we provide our services to customers, looking for efficiencies and asking ourselves “is this the best way we can do things?”

Over the coming months we’ll be deciding how we can change what we do and paying close attention to what is happening outside the organisation, so we can adapt to the new external environment. The standards we are measured against will change as a result of a new regulation framework and we can’t be afraid to meet these challenges head on.

There is no doubt we will continue to do our best for our customers, but we all know that tougher times are on the way. Our aim is to understand the needs of the people we deliver services to in order to make the best decisions we can.

We want to be “Improving life together” as a partnership – and that requires teamwork. We rely on our customers sharing their opinions with us. Wherever we can, we will implement their suggestions and communicate their concerns to influence the approaches taken to social housing, and care and support.

We are committed to listening to our customers and some MHT London tenants and leaseholders are already making their voices heard. The videos below reveal that there is still a lack of clarity about the impact of the cuts, but as we get more detail our understanding is likely to change and so we will revisit our customers’ views. Here are some initial reactions from a few of our residents.

View videos