Customer Scrutiny Panel (CuSP) – Getting ready for our first scrutiny exercise
What a busy few months it's been for our newly formed Customer Scrutiny Panel (CuSP) - formerly the Customer Feedback Panel.
We have been making the journey from simply providing feedback to being able to scrutinise different strategies, policies and services delivered by Alliance Homes to customers and communities.
We have been on a steep learning curve helped and facilitated by Claire Blacka from Tentacles Consultancy.
We have met as a panel each month in April, May and June to build our knowledge and scrutiny skills with Claire’ leadership and support.
Things we have done include:
- We prioritised topics and service areas for scrutiny, then we met with the relevant service leads. This included discussions with the Lettings team, the Repairs team and the Empty Homes lead.
- Explored methods for scrutiny including Appreciative Enquiry, which focuses on identifying and building on existing strengths and successes, as well as more traditional methods.
- Angela, Alisa and I from CuSP attended the regional South West Tpas conference in Barnstaple along with Michael Williams and Rachel Johnson from Alliance Homes’ Customer Engagement team.
- At the conference, we heard from others about best practice for engagement and scrutiny. We also listened to the Regulator of Social Housing talk about how standards are assessed and evaluated.
- We trialled different ways of taking notes to make them clear, understandable and interesting when delivering scrutiny.
- Jack Smith, Assistant Director of Assessment and Tenant Engagement at the Regulator of Social Housing, introduced the Journey Planner tool – designed to help tenants and landlords work together to tackle stigma in social housing. You can find out more about it here: https://stopsocialhousingstigma.org/journeyplanner/
- We also formed a new Engagement Delivery Group with members of Alliance Homes’ Board and Strategic Leadership Team to ensure that recommendations from Tentacles Consultancy’s engagement report are actioned and monitored for progress.
- Finally, we developed an annualised work plan to make sure that we can take forward all the scrutiny work we have identified across the coming year.
It’s been such a busy few months but also very enjoyable in getting to know each other and our different stories about why we feel so passionate about this work. I look forward to the next quarter and sharing progress with you all.
If you want to become a panel member, visit www.alliancehomes.org.uk/scrutiny-panel to find out more.
