The Director's Cut - Resident engagement: why stop at higher-risk buildings?

For RMC and RTM directors, that should prompt a wider question.

Why should good resident engagement stop at higher-risk buildings?

Whether your block contains 15 apartments or 500, surely it makes sense to have some form of resident engagement strategy.

I am not suggesting that a four-storey RMC-controlled building needs the same document as a complex 25-storey mixed-use development. A smaller block may need only a concise plan. But the questions are much the same: who lives here, what do they need to know, how should they hear from those responsible for managing the building, how can they raise concerns – and how do directors know whether it is working?

Too often, “resident engagement” simply means sending information out.

An email is issued. A notice goes on the board. A PDF appears on a portal.

But that is communication. It is not necessarily engagement.

Real engagement has a return journey. Residents should be able to ask questions, express concerns, give opinions and see evidence that somebody has listened.

One of the simplest questions an RMC or RTM board could ask annually is:

“Do you feel safe in your building? Yes or no – and why?”

Repeat that every year and trends emerge. Are residents feeling safer? Has confidence dropped? Is one issue appearing repeatedly? Two good questions may tell you more than 40 mediocre ones.

There is another opportunity here which resident directors should embrace: education.

Blocks of flats contain safety measures that most people walk past every day without really knowing what they do.

Passive measures might include compartment walls and floors, fire doors, self-closing devices, smoke and intumescent seals, fire stopping, cavity barriers and protected stairways. Active systems can include fire detection and alarms, emergency lighting, smoke control systems, sprinklers, dry or wet risers, and firefighting or evacuation lifts.

Why not explain these things to residents? Better still, show them.

A photograph of the actual smoke vent, fire door or dry riser inlet is far more meaningful than technical description. Graphics can explain compartmentation, evacuation strategies and escape routes far better than jargon.

This is why, in the resident engagement strategies I write for clients, I like to use the document as an accessible guide to the safety measures already protecting the people who live there.

Fire doors provide a perfect opportunity.

The Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 require regular checks of fire doors in buildings above certain heights, including annual checks of flat entrance doors on a best-endeavours basis in buildings over 11 metres.

Why treat that inspection simply as another access appointment?

If the resident is home, spend another minute showing them the important features of their door. Explain why the closer and seals matter, why the door needs to shut properly and why damage should be reported.

As a director, that means asking your managing agent not only, “Have the fire door inspections been completed?” but also, “What did we use the inspection programme to tell residents about fire safety?”

The same principle applies to the new Residential PEEPs regime. In buildings within scope, Responsible Persons must use reasonable endeavours to identify residents who may have difficulty evacuating without assistance and, where appropriate, engage with them through a person-centred process.

That exposes a question every RMC and RTM director should be asking anyway:

How well do we really know our residents?

There is a difference between knowing who owns a flat and knowing who actually lives there. The person behind the front door may be a tenant, family member or other occupier with different communication or accessibility needs from the leaseholder whose email address appears on the service charge database.

And this is where we often miss the best engagement opportunity of all: the day somebody moves in.

In a long-leasehold block, a new owner arriving should receive more than a service charge demand and a copy of the regulations. Give them a proper welcome. Introduce the directors or management team. Explain how the building works. Show them the resident portal or app and help them get registered. Tell them how to report problems, find information and participate in the community.

Make being connected feel like a benefit, not an administrative chore.

And if the leaseholder will not be living there, ask them to introduce their tenant. That tenant may never see a service charge demand or attend an AGM, but they are the person sleeping there every night. They need safety information, building communications and a way to report concerns. Where RPEEP requirements apply, knowing who actually occupies the flat is essential.

So make the move-in process count. Capture the right contact information, explain why it is needed and give owners and occupiers a reason to stay connected. If the best opportunity to engage somebody is when they first arrive, grab it with both hands.

Methods of engagement matter too.

Many buildings still rely heavily on email. Others use noticeboards, letters and resident meetings. Technology has widened the possibilities enormously.

Platforms such as Dwellant, RiskBase, Ark, Qube and Spike can issue messages, host information and gather feedback. But their greatest value comes when residents use them for everyday life as well as building safety.

If residents already use an app or portal to report a repair, find a document or receive an update, they are much more likely to notice a message asking them not to leave items in a corridor or reminding them about fire door inspections.

Building safety should be part of the normal conversation, not a separate conversation that appears only when somebody needs access to a flat.

The same applies to digital information screens in entrance halls, lifts and other high-footfall areas.

Traditional noticeboards can become wallpaper: cluttered, out of date and ignored. Digital content can be changed instantly and mixed with everyday information.

Lift maintenance tomorrow. Window cleaning on Thursday. A resident event next week. Then a short reminder about keeping escape routes clear.

That is what I mean by little-and-often engagement.

Most residents do not wake up thinking about compartmentation, mandatory occurrence reporting or the Building Safety Act.

They want to enjoy their home. They want the lift to work, the communal areas clean, repairs completed and service charge money spent sensibly. When something goes wrong, they want somebody competent to respond.

That is where meaningful resident engagement begins.

For an RMC or RTM board, it should be about much more than compliance. Good engagement can identify concerns before they become disputes, make major works easier to explain, improve access for statutory inspections, strengthen community and make safety messages more effective.

And it should sometimes result in the simplest of responses:

“You said. We listened. This is what we did.”

That feedback loop is often missing.

So is measurement. Survey response rates, meeting attendance, portal usage, successful access rates for inspections and recurring themes in resident enquiries can all tell directors whether engagement is actually reaching people.

The Building Safety Act has given resident engagement a formal legal framework in higher-risk buildings. That was necessary.

But the edge of the HRB regime should not become the edge of good practice.

Whether you are a director of an eight-flat RMC or an RTM company responsible for several hundred homes, the people who live in the building are not merely recipients of property management. They are part of the building community.

The best time to create that relationship is not when there is a fire, a major works dispute, an evacuation problem or a serious complaint.

Ideally, it starts on the day they move in.

And then it continues every day.

About the Author

Jonathan Channing is an independent property management consultant working across the residential leasehold sector. A Fellow of The Property Institute (TPI), an Associate of RICS and an Honorary Consultant to the Federation of Private Residents’ Associations (FPRA), he also co-founded Proper Talk, the industry panel discussion series. Jonathan serves as an RMC director for two residential developments himself and regularly supports RMCs, share of freeholders and RTM companies in sourcing, assessing and appointing managing agents – helping boards navigate the market, structure tenders and make informed governance decisions.

THE DIRECTOR’S CUT is News on the Block’s regular column written by industry consultant, RMC director and TPI Fellow Jonathan Channing. Aimed squarely at leaseholders, share-of-freehold companies, RMC and RTM directors, the column lifts the lid on what really happens inside the block management sector – from navigating managing agents to understanding building safety, technology, service charges, contractors and the realities of running a residential block.