How do Resident Panel meetings work?

Resident Panel meetings are always hosted virtually because we have panel members that live all over England. When we plan to host a meeting, we will contact you via email to provide a link to register for the meeting.

You will be asked to provide your email address and full name.

Following this, you will receive an email directly from the host platform (Zoom) with a joining link and the option to add a reminder to your email calendar.

Please note, if you do not receive an email please check your junk mail. If you have not received an email containing a joining link you will need to register again (please check you entered your email address correctly).

If there is an agenda for the meeting, we will send the agenda and meeting reminder email around a week before the meeting to ensure you have everything you need.

When you join the meeting, Zoom will ask you to write your name and test whether your camera and microphone are working. You will then be added to the waiting room ahead of the meeting start time.

Once panelists are admitted to the virtual meeting, you can put your camera and microphone on. Everyone is muted when a speaker is talking.

During the meeting, the speaker will be the screen's focus, and you will also be able to see other members if you are watching in gallery view. Sometimes we may show you slides from a presentation.

If you have a question, you can raise your hand or use the Q&A function and write your message in the chat screen. Please ensure that any comments made in the chat are relevant to the topic/ discussion.

We will always turn on captions for the main speaker. If this option does not appear for you, then you will need to click on the three dots labeled 'more' and select 'turn on captions'.

During some meetings, we may allocate members to breakout rooms for smaller group discussions. These rooms will be facilitated by a member of the Housing Ombudsman team. These sessions are a fantastic opportunity to share ideas and feedback which the facilitator will take down and share after the meeting.

After the session we will send you a survey asking for your feedback on how you found the meeting and to provide any other thoughts or information. We will then write up a summary for our website and share the feedback we received with the relevant teams across the organisation to feed into the work we do.

We use Zoom as the platform to host online meetings. This is because Zoom is free, easy to use and accessible from most devices.

Zoom also allows us to turn on a chat transcript which provides subtitles when speakers are talking. We can also use the app to allocate members to breakout rooms for smaller group discussions.

Please note: we kindly ask that if you are having technical difficulties you do not use the chat function to let us know during the meeting as this notifies every member in the meeting chat.

Further information about how to use Zoom on various devices can be found in this support article.

Join a Zoom meeting without downloading the app

You can join a meeting from a web browser without downloading any plugins or software.

Invitation links will be sent via the Resident Panel mailing list or direct emails to your inbox. The link will redirect you to register for a zoom joining link.

1. Locate the meeting invite link from your email or calendar invitation.
2. Click the join link to join the meeting.
   On your web browser, a pop-up window will prompt you to open or download the application.
3. In the pop-up window, click Cancel.
4. At the bottom of the page, click join from your browser.
   You will be directed to a new page.
5. Click Allow to allow Zoom permission for your microphone and camera.
6. Sign in with your name to join the meeting.
7. (Optional) Select the Remember my name for future meetings check box.
8. Click Join.

Find out more about joining a meeting from a web browser via this Zoom Support article.