Here is Labour’s green paper for housing. The government will publish their paper in the summer.

Housing-for-the-Many-final

Some interesting ideas include:

• the real definition of affordable rent
• scrapping the right to buy and bedroom tax
• ensuring replacement of homes for social rent
• a major house building social housing programme not seen since WW2.

Its an easy read.

Lifting the lid on hidden homelessness, a report by Manchester-based charity JustLife was launched this week.

The report, which builds on IPPR North’s earlier work on the true extent of temporary accommodation in England. One of the recommendations from IPPR North’s work was the establishment of temporary accommodation boards, and now Mayor Andy Burnham has pledged to establish them in all 10 of Manchester’s boroughs.

Here is the report:

JL_UTA-Report-2017_HR_Web-Ready

A new discussion paper by Chief Economist Catherine Colebrook for the Commission on Economic Justice warns that the focus on a small number of economic indicators, such as GDP, makes it harder to identify and tackle the UK’s biggest economic problems.

Catherine proposes a new ‘dashboard’ of indicators which would directly measure our progress against the outcomes the public wants the economy to deliver.

Here is the report:

cej-indicators-april18

IPPR say:

This discussion paper sets out two key propositions on rethinking the way we measure the economy and define economic success:

1. New technologies, business models and economic goals require significant improvements in the measurement of key economic statistics.
2. New indicators of economic outcomes can better define and measure the goals of economic policy.

Joseph Rowntree have produced another excellent report.

The Private rented sector REIT, which buys properties to be rented on the private market, issued an interim dividend for the period to 31 March 2018 of 1%.

Half of this came in the form of a portion of the trust’s rental income.

It is aiming to provide a 5% dividend yield to investors by 30 June 2018.

Homes England, a body responsible for increasing the delivery of new homes, has invested a total of £30m in the PRS REIT, meaning it owns 6% of shares in the trust and will have received £300,000 in this interim dividend – so Homes England have had an early bonus.

Here is the interim report on Fire safety following Grenfell, the next and final report is immanent.

Building a Safer Future

The national tenants organisations have been pressing for the following inclusions in the green paper  on Housing – due before the government’s summer recess as a result of the fire:

• Statutory obligations on “duty holders” to consult / engage with residents
• Obligations to increase transparency / publication of information
• Supply basic information routinely
• Strengthened FRAs
• Log books
• Resident involved in regeneration sign off
• Escalation to an ‘Enforcement Authority’ for fire safety
• Mandatory electrical testing
• White goods registration schemes
• Vulnerable groups – audit tool?
• National body for residents – strategy and advice
• Consumer regulation – more proactive on fire safety
• Broader scope for the Ombudsman

This is a useful documents from G320 (small HAs in London) who have explained their contribution and potential to support the increase in homes in London.

Many of these points apply nationally:

171030-Development-Capacity-report-v2.0

Thanks to Habinteg for hosting in sunny Bradford.

Here is the agenda and some of the presentations and some contributions for sharing from members:

Agenda S.Net 11.4.18, Habinteg docx

Value for Money

The new standard directive is out. The indicators are mainly financial, but we know that customers are good at spotting waste and identifying changes which lead to improved services and reduced costs.

• There is still a need to demonstrate VFM to stakeholders and to publish this in any easy to understand way. How can we do this?
• How can we focus customers on VFM in their work with us?
• How can we engage customers in setting and measuring the qualitative indicators on value for money?

Here is my presentation

VFM -New standard RSH

We discussed how far VFM appears on tenant agendas and is a focus of their work:

• Incommunities Scrutiny Panel consider VFM, Inspectors look at costs and both make VFM recommendations
• Southway Scrutiny Panel make VFM recommendations and the Consultative group review some performance information
• Connect Scrutiny Panel review VFM, they reflected that their service improvement panels has just started to include this
• Habinteg tenant scrutiny panel have a VFM section in their report
• Plus Dane refelected that their ” Your Voice” panel do not specifically highlight it but that this might be appropriate

We discussed the areas of reporting crossover and challenge in the new VFM standard and drew comparisons with the requirements for transparency and performance monitoring and challenge expected from the TIE regulatory standard.

Views taken into account and acted upon – best in class

Here is my presentation

Views taken into account S.Net 11.4.18

We discussed:

Generally, landlords don’t do that well on this Housemark Indicator.

Southway have been doing some research into “best in class”.

We shared what we have learnt so far and discuss together what we do and might do increase this satisfaction indicator.

Habinteg

• Have removed tenants from the Board and set up a tenant panel to have delegated powers from the Board to be determined. strategy is being written
• They have one involvement officers who supports mystery shopping, task and finish and will develop a new framework for involvement – a new strategy is to be written
• Community rooms and other contacts to use these are being investigated

Connect:

• Are reviewing their involvement strategy
• Tenants as critical friends have a heavy influence on the business – but are a small number
• Have revitalised tenant inspectors and the scrutiny panel
• The SP have to leave any work they do as critical friends at home at Panel meetings
• Started to review social media engagement with the communications team
• Use more videos now to ask questions about gardens and cleaning contracts
• Have local offers which need reviewing
• Looking to pilot a digital newsletter
• Looking to feed in involvement to their annual maintenance review
• Are reviewing what meetings have costed and achieved
• have had issues in using community rooms as tenants pay a service charge for them

Trafford HT

• THT are about to review their involvement strategy and have a big business transformation budget of £1million.
• They do STAR 4 times a year.
• they have looked at options and have bought QUALTRIX which they consider to be a better version of Survey monkey to ask questions, it enables text questions without links to websites and enables increased contact with customers and suggests questions to ask.
• THT have a policy improvement panel and a performance improvement panel and a scrutiny panel.

Connect

• Have engaged their tenants in the Rethinking social housing debate and as part of this used the opportunity to ask some extra questions for themselves

Incommunities

• Have a community trust panel -n a scrutiny panel which is part of the governance structure reporting to Operations Committee
• The CTP commissions more in depth scrutiny from a Panel of Inspectors
• Work on tenancy sustainability is to enable tenants to be job ready
• TARA work focuses on attracting their own funding

PlusDane

• New strategy 1.5 years ago
• Landlord plus work focuses on health and well-being, engagement and support
• Embedding the need for staff to consult in other teams is a focus
• Srutiny panel have just completed a review of Communications and repairs
• 3 community centres continue to get dowrys of £1/4 m between 3 of them
• Focus on engagement is to try and look at engagement without buildings
• they run holiday clubs and football clubs

Leeds

• 11 Housing Advisory Panels in 33 wards, officers work with the HAPs and are accountable for a £1/2m budget and support TARAs
• A high rise advisory group, a repair group and a group which brings together all the HAPs in Leeds
• A digital voices team and a digital focus in a concentration of activity
• The strategic housing services plan has input from tenants and focuses on practical differences which LCC can make

WVHT

• Refocused groups and some new members – new scrutiny panel and new customer voice panel
• More representative and focused
• 7 active groups
• 1 community centre and work with others who have a community centre locally,work with partners in these
• Reviewing the strategy -looking at more task and finish groups

Customer insight – Together Group Instant feedback

Rant and Rave is used by half of the FTSE 100 companies to proactively communicate with and gather fast feedback from their customers, through customer engagement. Together introduced the tool in 2017/18 and have been using it to get quick and active feedback from their customers.

Daniel told us about what Together set out to do and how they use the tool and will demo in real time what customers are saying about their service.

We discussed how we get instant feedback and how helpful is it/could it be for customer insight?

Daniel’s presentation

Scuntiny presentation – 11 April

Discussion:

Previously, telephone service to assess impact in some customer service areas with monthly and quarterly impacts.

Together sought to get better VFM from the outlay which was in the region of £153K a year from the cost of calls for service and £210K on completion of STAR.

There was no longer a need to collect this for the regulator.

Feedback was not used to improve services to this value and some information was set aside due to it being out of date at the point of reporting or designing and improvement plan.

Having viewed a number of options, Rant and rave enabled more instant feedback:

• Data reviewed by leadership team 6 monthly, but can be pulled off every second of the day
• all data is up to date
• all feedback is requested on the same day at 6pm to all those who requested a service today
• feedback can be attributed to individual staff and can be seen by them and their manager
• instant feedback patterns of dissatisfaction lead to an additional question – if the score is less than 5/5
• instant negative feedback  can be collated on staff for discussions at 121s
• staff get to see positive feedback about themselves
• introduction was deliberately slow to get buy in
• staff are now used to the system and the feedback can be further developed
• Costs= £20K set up, £65K for 6 surveys a year – licencee; and £5K a year for texts sent by the company – cheaper than previous feedback and will still do STAR
• Together may look to develop rewards/non pay benefits for all staff with the highest possible scores

We discussed that a few landlords were looking at options for more instant feedback:

• Impact is used at One Manchester
• Impact and Qualtrix are being reviewed at Weaver Vale
• THT have bought Qualtrix – early days, when we visit them for a meeting in October, they will share their experience to date.

We discussed GDPR and the need for confidentiality and clear guidance. Plus Dane and Connect are looking at this and we will come back to that at our next meeting.

There were a number of forms being designed for opting in and out of data and newsletters and matters of importance but not expressly in the landlord/tenant tenancy agreement. there have been discussions about the newsletter needing to have commercial adverts – like new homes for shared ownership removed as adverts.

Members contribution – WVHT and  THT- impact measurement

Here is One Manchester’s model of instant feedback

Impact Proposal – WVHT

Impact for Housing Associations

Impact will present at the next meeting in July 18

On the Couch

Estate champions

• Leeds are looking at Block Champions post Grenfell
• Strong HAP chairs and chairs meeting on high rise groups include councillors as well as residents
• Hard to get people to come forward to sit on a panel due to formality and looking for ideas from members
• Are keen to increase engagement with people in flats and to be more confident to comment in meetings or otherwise

THT

• Have neighbourhood champions, for green, estate and blocks – they have 8 high rise and lots of low rise
• Their work is mainly about local opinions on caretaking and cleaning services, meeting standards and reporting
• Have just set up a high rise living board, looking at everything about high rise living, including parking ans gas safety
• they report traditionally but are looking at gamification – like sending in pictures and videos now.

Neighbourhood Champions handbook- needs to be edited

Neighbourhood Champions Procedure

Neighbourhood Servicing Standards

WVHT

Have green inspectors, similar to THT, with local councillors on some of them

Habinteg

Have quarterly estate inspections and need to close the loop on post activity feedback to tenants

Incommunities

Have block inspectors who do estate inspections with housing officers and have green block inspectors similar to THT

Connect:

• Have a guide for estate volunteers who manage their local offer
• A traffic light system of gradings
• Once a year they recruit volunteers to this and give them some training
• The volunteers go out and about in their area and have 6 weeks to complete the feedback
• They come back and explain and agree actions
• Reports go to Audit Committee

Everyone who had forms or processes agreed to share their wisdom

Members contribution: Connect Housing:

The following documents which I hope you find useful following the discussion we had about block champions:

• Checklist with communal areas
• Checklist without communal areas
• Process map

Well Managed Estate Checklist. non communal

Well Managed Estate Checklist. communal areas

Process map – volunteers checklists

The 2 checklists incorporate a user guide and traffic light system.

The local offer that relates to this area of work at Connect – 2. A Well Managed Estate

The local offer (Connect Commitment) which relates to the volunteer and staff checklists, please follow this link to our website:

http://www.connecthousing.org.uk/AboutUs/ConnectCommitments.aspx

THT Service Standards

Neighbourhood Servicing Standards

More promised and will be added here when received.

Scrutiny reports – how contents have changed.

We all agree to share out most recent scrutiny reports, those so far are as follows:

Final Report Environment of Estates

Final East Leeds Repairs Report

Scrutiny report final version 21.11.17

Updated ASB Report

Future events

Tenant Advisor Unconference – 26^th April 2018 in Manchester

www.manchesterunconference.eventbrite.co.uk

Future meetings for 2018/19

• Wednesday 4^th July, Weaver Vale Housing Trust, 10am – 2pm
• Thursday 4^th October, Trafford Housing Trust, 10.30-2.30
• Wednesday 23^rd January, Southway, 1030 – 2.30

Agenda items July include:

• A major focus on digital and social media engagement
• Local offers – where now and next?
• GDPR – updates on impact on engagement
• Impact measurement of instant feedback – presentation from One Manchester and Places for People

Agenda items for October include

• A presentation from THT on their engagement and a demonstration of Qualtrix, a new instant feedback tool

Here is the latest update to this document from the regulator.

It goes hand i hand with publication of the new VFM standard – see my other article on this

Regulating_the_Standards_April_2018.

It is a very helpful summary – see in particular the section at the end on Consumer regulation, which summarises the approach of the regulator.

Don’t forget too that:

Page 31

21  Providers have principal responsibility for dealing with and being accountable for complaints about their service; the Tenant Involvement and Empowerment Standard requires that they have clear and effective mechanisms for responding to tenant complaints. A tenant with a complaint against their landlord should raise the matter with it in the first instance and follow its complaints policy. Should the complaint remain unresolved, tenants can contact a designated person (a local housing authority councillor, MP or recognised tenant panel). Or, after eight weeks, they can also pursue the matter directly with the Housing Ombudsman.

Any designated person can passport and refer to the HoS directly (the 8 weeks rule is then removed, enabling the tenants complaint to be considered quicker)

Annual accounts compliance with regulation statement

In annual statements on compliance with the Governance and Financial Viability statement in accounts you need to

1.1 (b)  comply with their governing documents and all regulatory requirements

And

2.8      Registered providers shall assess their compliance with the Governance and Financial Viability Standard at least once a year. Registered providers’ boards shall certify in their annual accounts their compliance with this Governance and Financial Viability Standard.

Again is regularly missed in Governance reviews by Boards – in the tenant involvement and empowerment standard:

2.2.4 Registered providers shall consult tenants at least once every three years on the best way of involving tenants in the governance and scrutiny of the organisation’s housing management service

Make due you comply!