A crucial part of our strategy was to meet as many tenants and leaseholders as possible on their doorsteps to ensure that they understood the facts about the preferred option of establishing an ALMO, which would help them make an informed decision when voting.
But first came the problem of how to recruit staff from all parts of the council, as well as tenants and leaseholders, to join an ‘army’ of doorknockers? Equipped with posters and leaflets we went around the Civic Centre in search of volunteers. The response was tremendous – soon our team had expanded from a handful to over a hundred!
The next step was planning training seminars to ensure that all of our volunteers were sufficiently informed about the background to the consultation and given an understanding on how the council reached its decision on the preferred option to establish an Arms Length Management Organisation (ALMO).
A fundamental part of the training was to provide details of what an ALMO would mean for all stakeholders. In particular we focused on the improvements in housing management, the decent homes standard, and the potential for substantial additional funding. Volunteers were also trained how to achieve effective face-to-face interviews without unduly influencing, by making use of an agreed generic script, and how to deal with opposition and/or aggressive situations.
For ease of control and flexibility, the decision was made that people would work in groups of five, each made up of one supervisor and four door knockers, mixing male and female where possible. Two people would cover each side of the road with the supervisor available in between, advising which houses to call upon and providing the names of tenants for the ‘personal touch’. Each door knocker would report back to the supervisor the outcome of their interviews which he/she recorded for analysis purposes.
This methodology was trialed and reviewed, revised and then re-trialed down to the minutest detail by the project team, ensuring we got it right before going live.
This methodology was trialed and reviewed, revised and then re-trialed down to the minutest detail by the project team, ensuring we got it right before going live.
As an extra health and safety precaution a minibus was hired for the duration of the door knocking, and our six supervisors undertook the Council’s mini-bus driving test. This was useful for a number of reasons, including the knowledge that volunteers would not get lost or be late, there were no car parking problems, the availability of additional literature supplies, the safe keeping of key fobs for access to flatted estates and as a comfort zone for any unexpected emergencies.
All volunteers on a particular evening would meet at the Civic Centre at 5.00pm with the supervisor undertaking a roll call prior to boarding and transportation to the designated neighbourhood.
In an effort to ensure that the process was effective, we started initially during the first two weeks, with only two teams of five and one minibus driver. By week four we had progressed to six teams of five and two minibus drivers. In total, over a six week period we knocked at 7,462 homes. |
