Scrutiny Blog

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!

For anyone living in social housing, or working in the sector, 2024 is THE year for changes.

You may have heard the term ‘Consumer Standards’ a lot recently. This is a set of four key principles that landlords must meet:

Each of these principles has a set of rules that landlords must follow, and it is the landlords responsibility to ensure these standards are met.

We have been self-assessing against these new standards in preparation for them to be introduced on 1 April 2024 and we have given ourselves a rating of Red, Amber or Green, depending on our level of compliance for each criteria.

Scrutiny have agreed to take on a project to independently review our self assessment. This will start with assessments of our ‘Amber’ rated criteria, followed by a series of ‘reality checks’ to ensure that we are actually delivering the expected outcomes against the standard.

The new Consumer Standards are focussed on outcomes for our customers, so simply having a policy or procedure in place is not enough to show that the standard is met, which is why the reality checks are really important!

We are expecting LHP to be one of the first landlords to have an In Depth Assessment from the Regulator later in the year, and our Customer Scrutiny Panel will play a vital role in supporting this assessment.

We'll keep you updated on how that goes!

Our Customer Scrutiny Panel carried out a review on Pets in late 2023, with 8 recommendations approved.

These recommendations had the overall intention of:

• Making the process of applying to keep a pet in your home easier and more transparent
• Ensuring our teams are consistent in their approach when they have requests for pets.
• Reviewing the need for permission in some circumstances, freeing up time for our officers to spend in our communities instead.
• Setting the expectations of appropriate care for your pet.

In March 2024 - all of their recommendations had been implemented, which means that we have changed the way we work, based on our Scrutiny panel's recommendations!

Our Customer Scrutiny panel had picked Grounds Maintenance as the topic of their next scrutiny review, as there has been a noticeable drop in the standard of grounds maintenance across our stock.

They had spent time planning their review, had an overview of the service and how it’s delivered by the project manager, and decided how they were going to proceed with their review.

In early February, they were advised that Glendale, our Grounds Maintenance contractor had given 3 months notice, to end their contract with us on 19^th April.

Our Scrutiny Panel therefore decided that it would not be the right time to investigate grounds maintenance and would be involved in the procurement of new contractor/s when the time came.