Equipping tenants and leaseholders to challenge their landlord’s performance

Exeter City Council involves residents in scrutinising its performance through their membership of the Council's Performance Review Committee (PRC).

A HouseMark facilitated workshop helped residents develop understanding and confidence about performance information and how it can be used as a business tool to drive up performance. Attendees felt empowered and invigorated, and as a result some new faces will be joining the PRC.

Resident involvement in improving performance

Exeter City Council residents are consulted and contribute to improving performance through:

• satisfaction surveys
• monthly meetings of the Tenants and Leaseholders Committee (TALC)
• an Editorial Board (formed of residents and officers and which sees and comments on all the Housing Service’s publications and publicity)
• a Resident Auditor Team (a group of independent, empowered residents who undertake their own research and make recommendations from their findings)
• the Performance Review Committee itself.

Resident scrutiny

In 2007, the council set up the PRC to scrutinise and challenge its performance as a landlord. The Committee is a sub group of TALC which is the elected Exeter-wide group representing Exeter City Council’s tenants and leaseholders.

The PRC comprises seven tenants and leaseholders and two Councillors (the Portfolio Holder for Housing and the Chair of the Community and Environmental Services Scrutiny Committee). Its role is to drive forward performance and service improvement across the whole housing function. The PRC meets quarterly to monitor performance but also meets another four times a year to look at other aspects of performance management in general. In the last year it had special meetings to fix targets for the forthcoming year and to examine and comment upon the affordable house building programme for the city.

Quarterly Performance Digest

Every three months, the PRC receives a Quarterly Performance Digest – a comprehensive document that presents performance information from all sections of the housing department.

Information is presented in the form of:

• a numerical table and a simple chart of data drawn from the previous three years
• traffic-light indicators combined with a ‘smiley’ (or sad, or indifferent) face to show:
  • direction of travel (whether the service getting better or worse)
  • whether the relevant target has been met
  • how performance compares with peers (from HouseMark benchmarking data).

The Digest has evolved organically over time under the direction of the PRC and is now quite comprehensive. Satisfaction data has recently been included and cost comparisons from HouseMark’s Business Overview Benchmarking service will be added shortly.

Supporting the PRC

Exeter wanted to improve the effectiveness of the PRC to ensure that the residents who form the majority of the Committee have the confidence, ability and capacity to challenge officers over the performance of their teams and to really drive service improvement across the board. It also wanted to expand the membership of the PRC beyond the small pool of residents who tend to become involved in housing activities.

To help achieve this goal, Exeter engaged HouseMark consultant Carole Halfacre to facilitate a one day workshop – Getting to Grips with Performance – in September 2009 at Exeter City Council’s offices. It was attended by nine residents. Four of these were already members of the PRC – the remaining five were recruited from a list people who had previously expressed an interest in becoming involved with the Council.

The day was a great success and most people who attended felt empowered and invigorated. Comments from attendees included:

“[We learned how] to get the real answers, not just the ones they think will keep us happy”

“[We gained] wider knowledge about how council performance is scrutinised”

“[We learned how] real life narratives from council tenants are made effective, accountable council policies”

As a result, Exeter now has at least two or three more people interested in joining the PRC and a more confident and knowledgeable Committee keen to contribute to the next meeting in December 2009.