Scrutiny Lounge York 21st January 2014

Scrutiny panel members attended the Scrutiny Lounge from the following organisations:

Cobalt Housing York Housing AssociationMagenta Living York City CouncilPickering & Ferens Homes North Lincolnshire Homes

The Scrutiny Lounge begins with an exercise that allows scrutiny panel members to vote on the areas of scrutiny they would like to discuss. The following questions were the most popular. For each question short discussions were held around the tables and then a group wide discussion followed. Some of the main issues raised are shared here. How did you recruit your Scrutiny Members?

1. How did you recruit your scrutiny members? Scrutiny Members feedback revealed a variety of recruitment techniques are used to advertise vacancies and recruit Scrutiny Members including; Word-of-mouth, informal chat, Formal Interviews, Online Applications, Formal Application and Interview processes, Expressions of Interest, CIH Housing Qualifications are used to entice people to join, Taster Sessions, and ‘try before you buy’ type arrangements where residents attend meetings before they join to see if they want to join.

2. Should Members of Scrutiny be paid?Scrutiny Members generally felt that Scrutiny Members should not be paid. Although acknowledged a growing opinion and a recent Guardian article that paying Scrutiny Members could drive up standards and expectations of Scrutiny. Members worry that this could lead to Scrutiny Members benefits and Scrutiny Funding Budgets being affected. Scrutiny Members also felt that the provision of Laptop, Tablets and Broadband are just the organisation giving therm the tools to do the job.

3. Independence - What does it Mean?Scrutiny Members feedback revealed that Scrutiny Members feel that Independence means to; be free from interference from Officers and Elected Members, be able to conduct reviews with free access to information, have confidentiality of discussion, make evidence based decisions.General CommentsScrutiny Members made the following comments:

We are completely open everything goes on our Website. We need to keep strong links to the organisation as scrutiny is only possible with the

cooperation of staff. Staff can be a wealth of information.

4. How do you select Topics?Scrutiny Members feedback revealed a variety of ways to select topics, Including; using Key Performance Indicators (KPI)s to determine, We choose 2 a year and the Board choose one a year, We phone residents on a regular basis and look for trends, We monitor (KPI)s and complaints looking for trends.

5. Do you have free access to information? Scrutiny Members feedback revealed a variety of comments including; Our first review was

Block Cleaning and we had free access but we have never really had it since, Its vital to get the ‘access to information’ process agreed and clearly laid out in the Terms of Reference right from the start, We are in our first year and are in a state of flux we only really have access to Housing Managers.

6. What kind of recommendations have you made and how successful/unsuccessful have these been at board level? Scrutiny Members made the following comment;“We have made 5 reports that include 80 recommendations of which only one was rejected and in this case a full explanation was giving to us by board.”

TPAS asked “Do you present Recommendations to board yourselves and do you submit them to Senior Management beforehand?”

Scrutiny Members generally present recommendations themselves directly to board, Trustees and Head of Operations and where recommendations are submitted to senior management before hand, this is just as a courtesy for comments.

TPAS asked, “Do you use Benchmarking?”

Scrutiny Members generally use HouseMark to Benchmark and made the following comments:

“At Cobalt we Benchmark with guidance 5 members of the Panel have access to HouseMark due to licensing”.

“HouseMark is not particularly Tenant-Friendly”. “It is important to be positive where performance is good in the form of

acknowledgements and ‘Thank You’ Letters. “Scrutiny needs to develop strong Terms of Reference documents and strong

working relationships with Boards.

Scrutiny Members made the following comments; “Our Scrutiny Panel reports to the Board, the Board then reports back to the Scrutiny Panel. The agreement is between the Panel and the Board not the staff. This principle is crucial to ensure the independence of the Scrutiny Panel”.

“We have a Quarterly meeting between the Scrutiny Panel and the Senior Management Team and a Bi-Monthly meeting between the Chairs’ of the Board and Scrutiny”.

“We present to Senior Management then to Board and then feedback to the Residents Panel to give us the full circle”

7. How are you transparent to wider Tenants’?Scrutiny Members feedback revealed a variety of accountability mechanisms that ensure transparency to the wider Tenant body including:

Website updates (including Scrutiny Reports), Standing Scrutiny Articles in Newsletters.

TPAS asked, “Who Scrutinises Scrutiny”?

Scrutiny Members made the following comments:

“We complete an evaluation against an assessment framework after each scrutiny review”.

“Scrutiny Panels should assess Scrutiny Panels from other Organisations”. “We are Scrutinised through our One-to-Ones and Annual Skills Assessment Audits”. “Can’t organisation’s like TPAS do this”?

8. How often do you meet?Scrutiny Members feedback revealed that generally Scrutiny Panels meet Monthly. However during reviews this usually changes to weekly for those members involved directly.