February Summary:
•Meet Executive Director of Governance & Regulation - Nicola Ebdon
• Mutual Exchange, Assignment and Subletting Policy
Customer Forum has reviewed Mutual Exchange, Assignment and Subletting Policy at the meeting on 5th February and then were given time to send any additional comments in by 10th February.
Danielle Toyne - Neighbourhoods and Allocations Manager has explained the process at the meeting and clarifications made to the policy such as Key Steps, examples for reasons for refusals, 42 day decision deadline meaning and appendix with legal grounds for refusals. She has also answered questions about Renters Reform bill affecting the process as well as LHP’s tenant alteration process, recharges and conditional consent resulted from this.
Panel has discussed the risk of people exchanging properties without seeing property in person or inspecting it properly. Danielle has reinforced the point of tenant responsibility to mitigate this risk as well as Officers doing all they can to support and provide reasonable adjustments.
Panel has asked for this point to be highlighted more in the policy, so that tenants are aware that they are responsible for adaptions & alterations they would like to add ‘ Please see Conditions of the Home section below for more info on alterations’ under Section 5 ‘What is conditional consent?’ - alterations carried out to the property with consent.
Panel has commented that they would also like to see explanation of RTB and RTA and how discount is affects by Mutual Exchange.
•Safeguarding Policy
Andy Tyler - Empty Homes Manager, has given overview of the policy and internal processes of reporting concerns and working with external organisations to give context and help Panel understand what it means in practice. Panel has asked what are we doing about cases where we have difficulty gaining access to the property. Andy explained that any staff member can report concern and staff & contractors had training on how to recognise and report concerns. Reports from neighbours will also be investigated. Andy has also discussed examples of consent and capacity in Adult cases and ability to raise concerns without consent in Children cases. Panel was impressed with the way policy was written. It was easy to read and it covered all the information that they would want to know. The only thing they have requested was to put full name of EIA (Equality Impact Assessment ) before using abbreviation in the guidelines and include section for carers, especially young carers. Additional comment Panel made was to replace the use of word 'disabled' with 'person with disability'. Panel also suggested doing campaign about safeguarding, reporting concerns and sign posting.
•Equality, Diversity & Inclusion statistics
EDI Working Group | YourVoice
• ARK consultation - Customer Survey
Customer Workshops | YourVoice
Our Customer Forum met in July 2024 in our Grimsby Office.
Forum was attended by Danielle Toyne - Neighbourhood & Allocations Manager who gave an update on Housing Ombudsman Fairness & Respect Report:
LHP is only non compliant in 3 out of 23 criteria and current EDI survey will help to resolve it. Any Comments from Customer Forum session will go to Operations Committee.
Next Customer Forum have done mystery shopping on communication between LHP and customers by reviewing random selection of 10 redacted letters. Main suggestion was to make letters more succinct.
Lastly with new Head of Repairs we are taking fresh look at the service. There will be series of workshops to find out what we want from service from staff perspective, involved customer perspective and non-involved customers perspective.
We want to hear from you if you have ideas on how to make it better!
Please email Customer Engagement Team on getinvolved@lincolnshirehp.com.
*** If you need to report repair or complaint about one please email info@lincolnshirehp.com ***
In June panel members had opportunity to attend Climate Change Awareness Training.
It was a full day interactive workshops looking at LHP’s Net Zero Road map, what we need to do to meet our government targets and the steps everyone can take to reduce own carbon emissions at home as well as at work.
You can calculate your carbon footprint here: WWF Footprint Calculator
Tips: How to reduce your carbon footprint | WWF (panda.org)
Our Panel met online in May, and we had a jam-packed agenda as usual!
First on the list was reviewing our new Customer Engagement Handbook. Our panel had some great ideas to help customers understand what it means to be involved with LHP and how getting involved can make a difference, improve services and support communities.
We then looked at how we can better support customers to access digital services, reviewed our brand new Neighbourhood Action Plans, which you'll see more of towards the end of 2024, and shared a new events calendar which will be published very soon.
Our panel meet on the first Wednesday of every month and you can find out more about joining by clicking this link: https://yourvoicelhp.com/join-our-customer-forum
Our Customer Forum met in April 2024 in our Boston Office.
Here's what they got up to on the day:
- Reviewed and approved changes to our Tenancy Policy
- Reviewed and approved changes to our Lettings Policy
- Learned about the new Consumer Standards, which are new regulations introduced for housing providers
- Had an overview of performance information from the last year
- Worked with us to decide the performance information we'll include in our Annual Report.
- Spent some time with HQN to talk about our performance against the Consumer Standards.
The Forum meets monthly, sometimes online and sometimes in person.
Find out more about joining the Forum here
