Scrutiny Blog

At the meeting today we discussed:

Board Meeting:

Mary shared her experience from attending the Board meeting. She has raised issues of setting expectations regarding Board Tours and increasing number of board members with social housing background, which we are pleased is in pipeline.

National Inclusion Week:

Today is the first day of National Inclusion Week. We are celebrating by having range of case studies, experiences and training for staff to raise awareness and move to action. Governance team is also having international snacks at their team meeting, which Sonny suggested to do for in person meetings in December.

Virtual Customer Meetings:

Tomorrow is first face to face live Q&A session with Directors. More information here: Virtual Customer Meeting | YourVoice

Telecare Recommendations:

Scrutiny Panel's recommendations are still being implemented. Telecare Team Leader has left and we are recruiting replacement. In the meantime Interim Living & Support Service Manager will ensure actions that can be done by other departments are progressing.

Scrutiny Review - Voids:

Panel is struggling to find best practice information, so they will now focus on interviewing staff. We have reached out to Void Supervisor in Boston and provisionally booked meeting for 3rd October at 11am.

If you have suggestions on what information about the Voids (empty homes) process you would like to know, please share it with us by commenting below.

Customer Inclusion & Insight Team:

Elwira is going on holiday and not back until next Customer Forum. Therefore Scrutiny meeting on 29th September has been cancelled.

We have discussed agenda for next Forum meeting which is Cracking Data and Repair Projects updates. Next meeting is online on 1st October at 10am.

Our Annual Customer Report 2024- 2025 – Customer Scrutiny Panel

The LHP Annual Customer Report is an opportunity to demonstrate our impact, celebrate achievements, and show how we’ve delivered against our promises.

The previous report from 2023-2024 has been reviewed; we have compared our approach to other providers and looked at the reports produced by those holding a full suite of top regulatory grades (C1, V1, G1), to see how we compare to other Housing Associations.

One consistent finding stands out: the strongest reports reflect their organisation’s brand, tone of voice, and narrative, making them distinct and meaningful to their audiences.

Insights from a recent HQN Annual Reports briefing underline that the most effective reports are:

• Clear – easy to read and understand
• Concise – focused on what matters most
• Visual – using graphics and design to engage readers.

We have taken the opportunity to further strengthen our 2024-2025 report by:

• Streamlining content making it easy to read and understand
• Strengthening the link between the annual report and our refreshed corporate plan, creating a clearer strategic narrative
• Increasing visual content, graphics and icons to improve readability, design and impact
• Keeping the language in the report customer focused in both content and tone
• Designing each section to be short and engaging, with key stats and visuals
• Including links to further information and full content on our website, for those customers who want to delve deeper
• Adding some detail about things we will be doing in the future, highlighting priorities and plans where appropriate

The Annual Customer Report has been written in conjunction with teams across Lincolnshire Housing Partnership (LHP), collating information to put together the narrative and performance figures of LHP over the past financial year.

Customers have been highlighted, including more in-depth case studies.

A summary version of the report will also be produced in the form of an animation and will be distributed electronically via email and on LHP’s social media channels for our customers.

Please review the document and give any feedback for us to consider from a customer point of view. The Customer Annual Report will also be shared at the Customer Forum meeting on Wed 3 Sep, where Sam Douthwaite, Communications Manager will attend along with Jane Atherton, Director of People and Change.

Anthony Reid - Chair of the Board has joined Scrutiny Panel meeting.

He started with a short update on the Exec team and board member recruitment and then answered series of questions from the panel.

Nicola Ebdon gave an update on Regulator of Social Housing inspection and John O'Hanrahan spoke about EDI project.

Panel has met with Danielle - Neighbourhood and Allocations Manager, Wendy Walker - Corporate Head of Income and Enforcement, John O'Hanrahan - Corporate Head of Customers and Nicola Ebdon - Assistant Director of Governance and Regulation to give their feedback on Customer Tenancy Standard LHP's self-assessment.

Customer Scrutiny Panel were happy with the work being done to work towards the consumer standards but mentioned that more needs to be done to share what we do for customers, with the wider customer base. Recommendations together with the report will be presented to the Board.

You might have seen article about Board Annual review here: Board Review 2024 | YourVoice (yourvoicelhp.com)

Nicola Ebdon - Assistant Director of Governance and Regulation at LHP has met Scrutiny Panel to gain their feedback on this also.

We were discussing these questions from the Panel experience:

Where would we like to connect with our Board members?

Board wants to get an idea from customers what is actually that they want to do: event, walkabout or maybe online meeting?

Another question was about engagement with Board in influencing decisions, is that effective and what does a good Board look like?

Then the next one was about whether the Board had sufficient access to the insights.

The last one looked more into whether we think that Board needs to consider diversity and inclusion more to improve decision making.

On another note Andrew will be representing Scrutiny Panel on 12th June at Board Meeting when Customer Scrutiny Panel Report – Neighbourhood and Community Standard will be discussed.

27th May was bank holiday therefore there were no meetings.

However, Customer Scrutiny Panel attended LHP staff conference on 22nd May.

Day was packed full of invaluable insights and networking opportunities with staff and board members.

LHP partners and suppliers also had stands to chat with attendants about some of the projects they work on with LHP. Many have also kindly offered to support LHP's Charity of the Year - Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust, which aided in raising £1,446 on the day.

Last year colleagues raised £1,411 of funds for The Trussell Trust, which will go towards their work with disadvantaged people across our region.

Although we are doing reality checks of LHP's Customer Standard self-assessment, we are still constantly looking at other projects and checking performance and customer satisfaction, so watch this space on what we will review next!

We met with managers from across LHP to review one of the four new Consumer Standards, the Neighbourhood and Community Standard.

We came up some extra recommendations to help LHP become more compliant with the Neighbourhood and Community Standard.

You can read more about the Consumer Standards here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/regulatory-standards-for-landlords

We had a little break over Easter, but we're straight back to regulatory changes, looking at the new Consumer Standards again and scoping a project to carry out 'reality checks' on them.

We also had an update on the future plan for our Grounds Maintenance service, which sounds really positive and looks to be a huge improvement!