Plain English from Asia

A team of Asian students from Wigan & Leigh College is helping the borough’s biggest landlord improve the information available to thousands of council tenants.

An innovative partnership between the college and Wigan & Leigh Housing, which manages the borough’s 25,000 council homes, has seen the students join forces with members of the tenant readers group to review the new tenants’ handbook. The handbook is an important document that provides advice to council tenants about every aspect of their tenancy.

The readers group checks all the leaflets and booklets published by Wigan & Leigh Housing to make sure they can be easily understood. With their familiarity with rented accommodation and the different perspective they bring, the students were invited to join existing members to work on the 14 different sections of the new handbook.

Wigan & Leigh Housing Chief Executive, Peter Gee says:

“We were really pleased with the way that the students worked with the group to tackle this important publication. Whilst they were generally happy with many sections of the draft, they also came up with lots of ideas about how it might be improved. We have taken most of these ideas forward into the final draft.”

College students Yang Mei adds:

“We really enjoyed meeting and working with members of the readers group. They were able to tell us how services were delivered and that helped us to form ideas about how things might be improved.”

And colleague Hormuz Elahbadi says:

“Wigan & Leigh Housing also asked us to check the translations of some of their key messages and we were happy to help. Overall this has been a worthwhile and rewarding piece of work.”

Note to Editors

For more information or to contact any of the students to discuss the project in more detail, please contact Phil Brown, Business Services Manager, Wigan & Leigh Housing, on (01942) 486535.