Scrutiny Blog

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.