Tenant involvement in performance scrutiny

To be able to challenge the performance of their landlord effectively, tenants need to be provided with performance information that all can understand. this will help staff, board members and tenants can work together to monitor, scrutinise and drive up the standards of service delivery.

South Kesteven District Council recently decided to tackle this issue head on and, supported by HouseMark consultancy, ran a workshop for their staff and “involved” tenants which aimed to help them understand performance information, develop measures which were important to the tenants participating, and decide the format for the presentation of performance infomation.

They have now agreed on a set of indicators which will help their tenants get a picture of how they are performing in areas of the service that matter to them. The group will review the information on a regular basis and challenge areas where performance is weak. The training should ensure that those involved have the confidence to do this effectively by having a better understanding of performance management and their key role in this.

Background to the project

South Kesteven District Council (SKDC) in south west Lincolnshire has retained its housing stock of over just over 6,200 homes following a majority vote of its tenants in 2006.

All landlord services were brought together in a single department in 2005. Since then, the Council has been working on improving services and developing resident participation. The Housing Consultative Group (HCG), which consists of 5 tenants, 5 councillors and 5 members of staff, has been meeting monthly since 2007 to look at policies and procedures and make recommendations about the housing service’s strategic direction. This provides a structure through which residents can scrutinise and challenge their landlord’s performance.

Although performance information was provided at regular intervals to the HCG and to all tenants through newsletter articles, residents were not effectively involved in target setting or performance monitoring. The Council asked the HCG to get more involved in scrutinising its performance as landlord.

Training day

The HCG decided that, if it selected its own performance indicators, it would be better placed to challenge the Council’s performance. It needed some help with this, which is where HouseMark’s tenant powered performance support came in. The group decided the task was so important that they needed to put aside a whole day to gain a common understanding of the principles of good performance management and how to recognise good performance.

The first step was for the HouseMark consultant to meet a small subgroup of the HCG – a tenant, a councillor and two members of staff – to plan the day.

The training day looked at ‘why we measure performance’. The group debated what areas it needed to look at to get a balanced picture of the housing service, and how performance information should be presented to make it clear and concise. At the end of day a set of performance indicators had been drafted.

A follow-on session was held with the HCG to confirm the measures that they wanted to look at and agree a framework for challenging performance, with the first set of performance information presented in December 2008.

A councillor from the HCG commented “Performance management can be daunting to the layman , but I have been pleasantly surprised by the enthusiasm shown by tenant members of our group. They have tacked what would appear to be a very laborious subject with so much enthusiasm and positive thinking that it has become a pleasure to have these tenants on board with Councillors and staff alike.”

New performance indicators

The HCG developed a set of measures which concentrated on front line services, including:

• repairs
• lettings and empty property management
• planned and cyclical improvements
• preventing and tackling nuisance and ASB
• resident involvement
• rent collection and arrears.

It was no surprise that repairs performance was top of the list, and six repairs indicators were chosen. The remaining services each have three measures.

The main focus of the chosen indicators is measuring customer service. Tenants wanted to know that people dealing with them would answer the phones quickly, and would know what they were talking about. The information they had received in the past concentrated on quantitative measures such percentage of rent collected and number of homes made decent.

The new framework means that SKDC has to report on many more qualitative measures gathered through surveys and mystery shopping exercises. But this is not a problem. The Council was already moving in the right direction and many of the changes identified by the HCG were also part of its action plan following a housing inspection in 2008.

Outcomes

Without customer involvement in target setting and performance monitoring SKDC could not be sure that it was measuring and reporting on those aspects of performance that were most important to customers. It now has:

• 21 new indicators being reported regularly to the HCG
• a framework to challenge poor performance.

Already the tenants on HCG have more confidence and have challenged the Council on whether notices are being sent to tenants whose arrears are due to housing benefit delays and questioned whether customer surveys need to be better co-ordinated.

However, the key outcome will be an improvement in service that is recognised by tenants, and an improved rating when the Council’s landlord service is re-inspected.