Here are the presentations from this years conference:

http://docs.northern-consortium.org.uk/uncategorised/1024-resident-involvement/

A clutch of leading landlords have begun planning for the introduction of Pay to Stay, six months after the government opted to make the policy voluntary for housing associations.

However, doubts remain over implementation and at what level the income threshold should be set.

Brian Johnson, chief executive of Metropolitan, confirmed that the 38,000-home landlord is in favour of introducing Pay to Stay, despite concerns about the income threshold.

The government made the policy voluntary for associations as part of its drive to deregulate the sector and undo the reclassification of debt as public.

Responding to an Inside Housing survey, nine of the 20 largest associations said they are actively considering or will consider implementing the policy.

Three said they had not yet considered it, with none ruling it out entirely. Eight others declined to respond.

The Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) hopes to use its direct commissioning pilots to set up a housebuilding model that can be replicated by local authorities and other public sector organisations.

According to Inside Hoousing at Housing 2016

“Ian Piper, head of land at the HCA, said it is exploring how its direct commissioning pilot could be used by local authorities and public sector bodies to increase housing supply.

He said: “We have been developing principles and mechanisms which are capable of being rolled out on a wider portfolio of sites. This is a pilot programme and the government’s ambition is if we can develop a model that other public sector bodies and local authorities could utilise, then that would be our ultimate goal because that’s the only way that we can make a real dent in housing supply.”

Mr Piper said the target is to have 40% Starter Homes on every site included in the pilot and the first sites will go out to the market in the next four to six weeks.

The HCA wants to avoid commissioning construction through a housing contractor because this would mean the total cost “would have to come on to the public sector balance sheet”, he said.

He added: “The government would have to find very significant amounts of capital in order to fund that. We don’t believe that’s where we want to be, so we’re looking at how we can reduce down the amount of capital the government has to find and tap into the private financial resources the providers can come up with.”

The HCA is seeking to share any housing sales risk with provider partners, but would retain “some level of prescription” over the tenure mix and timing of the homes built, he said.”

Follow this link to see the discussion on twitter run by Nic Bliss and the tenant organsiations:

@ScrutinyLive

Here are the notes of the meeting and the presentations.

When i get the promised constitutions i will add them here too.

1            Presentation and Discussion

              HCA Regulatory Update

We discussed the HCA new requirements on VFM which came out the previoous week:

Scrutiny.net VFM & reg req 21.6

We discussed messages on how customer and boards can support assurance from the regulator at the Blackpool RI Conference.

We discussed how tenants can get tenants engaged in the VFM debate.

We agreed it was important to raise the profile of how CI staff and involve customers could help agree the statement and stakeholder involvement of tenants in statements was lacking.

We discuss the VFM of some involvement groups/methods and whether these can be justified in future – see review of CI below.

Various methods had been tried around the table, including:

1. LMH – review of regulatory standards day with all involved customers invite and then split into groups to review whether the standard was delivered and then ask about VFM as a standard in itself, following a bit of discussion/training.
2. All tenants of the NW small HAs met last year to review each standard and then went back to their organisation with some agreed questions to measure VFM through their association
3. Helena partnerships have a great web version of their VFM statement, aimed at tenants. It was one of the first for tenants and held up by the HCA as an example of good practice and has been copied by others (including four housing group). The regulator in its statement has said that their recent publication that VFM statements need to be more transparent for stakeholders
4. Thirteen – role of the Customer Council to review the outcomes of last years’ VFM statement and to input to this years’ statement. They had also reviewed an easier to read statement and inputted into that 2 years ago with Yvonne. This last year, they have done the same again and published the statement with the annual report to tenants which are due at the same time. This supported the development of a tenant friendly version of the VFM statement in 2015.
5. Nehemiah United Churches HA have set up a VFM panel of tenants to oversee the development of their statement last year
6. PlusDane in an efficiency drive a couple of years ago, set up a suggestions team for rewarding tenants who submitted VFM ideas

2            Approaches to changing your involvement

              There was a general agreement that the numbers involved needed to be expanded            to get a more realistic and wider view of service quality.

Most have lost budgets and staff, or been subsumed by other departments.

We shared approaches around the table, some of the highlights included:

1. Recent rent reductions

Magenta and Southway senior staff had both delivered presentations to their tenants on the reasons for changes to staffing levels and some services.

1. Service standards

We generally agreed that whilst the staff had been cut, there was much to do to get tenants involved in shaping a new and possibly simpler or reduced cost service offer. This is a regulatory obligation in the TIE Standard during major changes to services

1. Meeting regulatory standards on Involvement

A statement covering approach to each standard should be included in the involvement policy, or covered in there on approach.

The general rule (aside from major change, rent and VFM) is for involvement in policy, service standards/local offers, monitoring, suggestion for improvement and  a 3 yearly review of CI in involvement/scrutiny and governance.

1. CI on major change

Aside from presentations on cuts, there has been little involvement in a new way to involve customers or involvement in reshaping services – which is a regulatory obligation.

Change – Yvonne relayed her experience. A review of CI was best commissioned by Boards to enable them to appreciate the problem and get engaged in expectation for the future. Tenants with an interest in retaining their own group, or other groups should be consulted and their views available in the Board report and monitoring the delivery of outcomes promised

1. Mini Scrutiny and tenant research

This is a quicker, more task and finish scrutiny, over about 8 weeks, using focussed work projects and where staff support by writing up the report dictated by tenants. Following training, this is possible quickly and is very possible with exchangeable groups of tenants who have declared an interest. Task and finish examples of the approach include Thirteen (mini scrutiny) and Family Mosaic (tenant researchers).

1. Umbrella Group

Magenta has a group of residents – 2 from each involved group who meet to be consulted upon and feedback to their group. They felt this can only work with a level of high level of commitment from those who attend.

1. Review of Involvement with tenants

Wulvern Scrutiny panel have reviewed their scrutiny methodology, they are now reviewing complaints. LMH and South Liverpool Homes scrutiny panels are reviewing involvement. Great Places are reviewing adaptations. Thirteen Panel is reviewing concessionary gardening. All have VFM elements to their work.

1. Tenant Voice

Most have a data base of some sort with involved tenants and their interests. Thirteen reviewed this last year and added in those who completed surveys, those who sent in comments and those who attended community meetings and formal groups – they captured their interests and have been able to engage those interested in smaller groups to work on policy reviews with managers and to increase interest in mini scrutiny (Customer Service Investigators – CSIs).

Activities are recorded – 1500 on the list now

1. Tenant reward

Southway operate a tenant reward scheme, it is due for review after 12 months – but those sending in information for surveys have been put into prize draws for tablet computers etc. Those in the reward system have clear accounts and have to register for services on line from Southway – they are entered into a monthly and quarterly cash reward prize.

1. Digital Involvement

Yvonne took the group through the Adactus presentation on gamifying CI. Their tenants are rewarded by £1 for every 10 useful pictures (requests on line) on reviewing the work of communal gardeners and cleaners and they have taken pictures of boilers to enable procurement of parts etc.

Their work is being expanded to take picture of a message on what they most value about services, and to take pictures pre and post repairs to help diagnosis and parts for Right first time repairs – which save the surveyor doing the total 10%, post inspection.

1. Using data from the contact centres in scrutiny to capture the view of a wider audience

Sadeh Lok/Incommunities joined their inspectors up into one groups, following the joining of the organsiations. The inspectors have done major reviews on allocations, voids and repairs – so the panel have listened into calls to record more detail of the reasons why people call, to support the removal of wasted calls from staff – by making suggestions in scrutiny of how those calls could be removed from the system as waste. Under lean they use and collate the number of calls that are first time requests (value calls) and those which are repeats (failure calls).

1. Geographical Challenge

Trafford and others are considering opportunities for on line to save travel costs and to ensure engagement/information gathering to support views coming from a wider audience to feed into small scrutiny panels and to ensure the wider tenant’s voice is heard

1. Engaging Working people

Whilst this contribution might be by survey or on line, Yvonne reported that Great Places had been successful in getting people to get engaged who work on scrutiny, reviewing documents and setting questions for the SP members who don’t work to ask and supporting the panel occasionally in their final report

1. Standing groups

There was a need to prove the worth of these groups in terms of outcomes and provide a useful challenge, when trained to do so. They can take account and monitor consumer standards but changing roles of Boards means they are duplicating involvement in governance and financial viability due to increased pressures on boards to change their role for more assurance from the HCA. The groups are useful on VFM, annual reports on equalities, complaints etc. they are often a useful group to form a challenge when tenants are removed from boards as part of skills audits and can provide a good level of assurance to Boards on consumer standards.

1. TARAs

Different approaches, but most used a standard code of conduct, constitution etc prior to recognition and access to grants for self-sufficiency. It was agreed that once initial support was given, the approach was usually for neighbourhood staff to take these on. Some neighbourhood/involvement staff are working really hard to try to sustain groups that need a lot of support and service. The approach in this respect was something for review under any review of CI.

Southway, THT and LMH promised their contributions, they will appear here when they arrive:

Southway Model Constitution

The Constitution- new group

mark.karlisle_04-07-2016_08-42-11

1. Representative

A discussion on being representative and getting young people involved (outside London) was really difficult. Whilst the majority tenancies are now run by those over 55 and older, this was not necessarily recognised, but clearly daytime meetings do support only one demographic being engaged and exclude working people. We discussed the need to offer a variety of meeting times

1. Code of Conduct and Terms of Reference

Trafford discussed the need to review and enforce TORs and COCs of involved groups, who may not be delivering the whole of their TORs or adhering to the COC. Not adhering to the COC was responsible for putting other newly involved tenants off continuing involvement after a few meetings.

It was felt that these needed to be reviewed, even if they stayed the same and fully delivered so the panels showed their accountability to the board for all matters for which they are responsible. The COC needs to be enforced once reviewed.

Northwards trained a shadow scrutiny panel of 16 members to join the original scrutiny panel to prevent individual new members leaving. This changed the dynamic of the older group too and supported transparency, focus and challenge.

1. Social Media

Thirteen Scrutiny Panel supported by the Contact centre, sent out messages over 5 days of their review of communications. The first one asked – what would you like to see on this page.

LMH had used a sort of big brother tent for tenants to comment on video about their services.

1. Links to Governance

A new approach should outline the links of the groups to boards, on reporting on activity for board assurance on the TIE standard, but also on where scrutiny and other investigatory groups report. This is usually an Operational Committee or an Audit Committee of the board, who also perform a monitoring role on the actions (by exception) until they are concluded. Some groups review the impact of their recommendations after 12 months, or ask tenant researchers or other groups to do this.

1. How to do the involvement review – quick and cheap

Over 3 days, you can review the documents, make a plan for improvement and spend the year implementing the plan, rather than a year agreeing the plan (YD – South Lakes Housing). Staff and board and tenants can be seen in groups, to cut down on interviews

or, you can do an accreditation or a review of a specific group (3 days – including all interviews)and use that to change the delivery of the group (YD – Wythenshawe Scrutiny Panel) – gold standard achieved and about 40 suggestions for improvement made

1. Rent free properties as office basis for TARAs

Need to review usage – local employment promotion events expected in LMH constitutions

1. Guest Rooms- sheltered schemes

LMH enable any rental costs to be ploughed back into the social fund of the sheltered scheme (£5 a night)

1. Newsletters

Editorial groups are still common for newsletter and commentary on website and standard letters – customer had been really useful to support messages to other customers in universal credit. PlusDane had gone to pubs, hairdressers and other places to raise awareness following advice from customers on the bedroom tax.

1. Youth Group

South Liverpool has a youth panel who promoted engagement in the local elections to increase the votes of YP on the estate. They also have a shadow junior board.

LMH did the Duke of Edinburgh award to engage YP; Southway have a specific officer to engage YP; Helen promote YP involvement in walling blocks through social media and then buy them a pizza afterwards. THT used their YP group to scrutinise lettings and access to waiting list and void quality/reasons for refusals. They suggested a 6 month lease and then a 12 month lease first for new tenants.

1. Community Grant Panels

LMH have a panel which meets 4 weekly to distribute what is now a much smaller grant. Thirteen also administer grants to panels

1. Quick surveys

what is good and what needs improving are the usual short survey questions – Matthew at Thirteen demonstrated how easy it was to create a google document  which can be badged by the landlord and looks better but still collates the information like survey monkey – easier to use.

Everyone felt they needed to work with the digital lead and the performance lead to test survey questions before they are used on mass.

Adactus website shows how they use surveys – 4 x £30k (Inc. overheads staff) replaced by £10k computer system and £15k budget for tenant rewards for their opinion.

3            Recruitment

              We discussed the need more people involved and shared some techniques.

1. Thirteen customer voice – see above
2. Bring a neighbour to a meeting – prize draw
3. Staff door knocking
4. Following up on the 6 weekly interview with visits to new tenants by involvement or neighbourhood staff
5. Using customer profiling to fill gaps in gender/age. neighbourhood representation or to bring people into task and finish groups or to complete surveys
6. Great Places working people (as above)
7. TARAs posting leaflets through doors as part of their annual grant conditions
8. Social committees and neighbourhood meetings – Southway staff joining existing events to consult.
9. bringing people in for health checks, dog tagging etc was a useful way to engage
10. Big events are useful if a stall can be targeted at recruitment or engaging through comments and surveys
11. LMH use their big events – picnic in the park in the summer – one in the city north and one in city south to recruit and also have stalls on farmers markets in the city where they are local to boost involvement. This is also used for recruitment of Board Members who are also tenants.
12. Recruitment to a hybrid customer committee with links to the board and training to be a tenant who wants to take up a board member position based on the new skills based board. Wythenshawe have a committee of tenants who agree policy and review performance and report to board.

4            Capacity Building

              Under the regulatory code to capacity build involved tenants –we need also to  demonstrate that we have built the capacity for meaningful challenge.

Budgets for staff and tenants training have reduced considerably, with some refusing access to eternal training and conferences altogether.

Wythenshawe completed a comprehensive training course with each manager, over  6 months once a fortnight to increase the capacity to comment and challenge of     their tenants. Not compulsory but heavily encourage.

Induction of new tenants and the policy update of existing tenants were felt to be the most useful. These near Trafford Hall could secure cheap training.

Some panels are used to train new staff when inducted.

Some tenants are allowed to attend staff induction (LMH).

Creative writing had been a useful course for training the scrutiny panel to support improvement for the scrutiny panels to write their reports at Trafford HT.

We discussed the opportunity to do something through this group to jointly identify  and procure on line training for tenant to increase their capacity – for the next agenda for grater exploration.

5            Up and coming conferences and training

YD to run a policy event close to the autumn budget – at cost for members – about £30 each

NHC will run an event in November 2016.

This report was produced by the NHF and Housemark.

It provides an in-depth look at the industry and its work to cut costs whilst improving services:

Efficiency_Report

This comes at the same time as the HC have been producing their major project to compare the largest housing associations’ costs per home.and increasig pressure on RPs to deliver VFM:

the HCA publishes its long-anticipated ‘regression analysis’

Loneliness and the impact it has on health and wellbeing – linked to a 30% rise in the risk of stroke or coronary artery disease – already among the biggest killers in the UK.

According to the Guardian on line:

“Researchers behind the study say it ties in with wider public health concerns about the importance of social interaction on good health and wellbeing.

For many years, housing associations have quietly played a role in building homes designed to tackle loneliness, encourage social interaction and boost wellbeing.

From sheltered housing and extra care schemes to whole retirement villages with fitness suites and activity rooms, these homes may have different names but the overarching aim of them is the same: to help older people remain independent and socially engaged.

We need ‘later homes’ for older people, not just starter homes for the young.

The research reveals the terrible impact that social isolation can have on physical health, the housing that plays such an important role in tackling it is under threat. The local housing allowance (LHA) cap is set to see new residents of supported and sheltered housing, managed by housing associations, have their rent levels capped to the allowance rate in the private-rented sector.

While initially set to be implemented from 2016-17, a year’s grace has been given for the government to review the proposal and have a new funding mechanism in place prior to April 2018.

However, the continued risk that a cap might be imposed in the future means substantial uncertainty remains for both residents and housing associations.

Through supported and sheltered housing, housing associations provide homes to thousands of older and disabled people up and down the country.

Some of these include older people who have downsized from large homes that physically didn’t meet their needs any more and that had left them emotionally cut off and lonely.

If the LHA cap is applied to those living in supported housing schemes, some rent levels will be higher than the level of the cap, meaning residents will have to make up the shortfall.

For vulnerable elderly and disabled people with limited incomes this could have a catastrophic impact on their lives and their standard of living.

There is concern that it will put residents off moving into the homes that will have significant health and wellbeing benefits for fear of having to make up a shortfall in funding.

There is an indication that new housing schemes have been put on ice until a clearer way forward is known. Earlier this year, Tony Stacey – chief executive of South Yorkshire Housing Association warned that the cap would mean many supported housing schemes would be unviable.

The benefits of supported and retirement housing on people’s health aren’t anecdotal. A three-year study by Aston University in Birmingham for the ExtraCare Charitable Trust, found their village housing model delivered a 14.8% reduction in depressive symptoms over 18 months. This was accompanied by a 64.3% reduction in people with significant clinical level depression over the same period.

Yet it’s this very kind of housing that could be placed at jeopardy if this cap is introduced. The housing sector can, and is, playing a key role in alleviating some of the root causes of loneliness, such as inappropriate housing, isolation and poor health. We only hope this can continue once the one year exemption comes to an end. ”

There are key five areas that will shape the implementation of Voluntary Right to Buy says the NHF:

• eligibility
• discretion
• application and sales process
• portability
• one for one replacement.

For each of these five areas, this document outlines recommendations made to date and points to be considered further.

As these issues are still under discussion, this document will be regularly reviewed and updated by the Federation, here is th laets from the NHF in June 2016:

VRTB_-_live_policy_document_-_June_2016

A joint investigation by BBC Radio 4 and Inside Housing revealed 721 sales out of a total of 4,538 were to tenants in receipt of benefit when they applied.

A sale to a tenant on housing benefit does not prove fraud, but has been described as a “red flag”.To gain a mortgage, someone else would have to be providing the funds. The figures date back to 2012.

Commenting on the research, Mick Hopkins, executive officer at The Local Authority Investigation Officers Group (LAIOG), said to Inside Housing: “It wouldn’t necessarily be fraudulent, but it would be a red flag where you would expect councils to go through due diligence.”