Scrutiny Webinar; taking the learnings from our colleagues in Wales

Today we had another successful webinar where we were joined by Michelle McGregor and Leigh Cavaney from Housing Associations based in South Wales. They joined us to talk about Scrutiny and how they set up a Scrutiny Network for customers throughout South Wales.

An interactive event with over 20 tenants and officers in attendance. The webinar provided an overview of the Scrutiny Network in Wales and then we joined breakout workshops to discuss the skills everyone could bring to a scrutiny network and the support required.

It was agreed that everyone could bring various skills, and the more the better! It was also agreed that tenants found TPAS Scotland and the Scottish Government were very helpful in supporting tenant groups through a series of activities – training, advice and funding.

Scotland’s Regional Networks and Netralt were used as examples of scrutiny networks that already exist in Scotland, offering joint training and events. A detailed discussion took place around Scotland having the benefit of tenant participation being regulated, which means landlords need to sit up and take note of what their tenants are saying. This is not the case yet in Wales!

Wales gave a great example of how they use mystery shoppers to phone tenants and find out about current services. Many organisations have already done this in Scotland and agreed it was good practice but sometimes the legislation around confidentiality could be an issue.

It was agreed that not everyone had the time or the resources to join scrutiny groups, so we had to ensure that various options to scrutinize were made available to suit everyone’s needs. Whether this meant just sending information to tenants for their comments or using a more blended approach to scrutiny involving a mixture of online and face to face meetings, or even arranging some meetings outside.

Everyone agreed it was a very successful webinar and we hope this is the start of many.

Some feedback we have received already ‘Just wanted to say how much I enjoyed today’s time with our counterparts in Wales. Informative with good conversation between all.’

Are there any subjects you would like to know more about? Contact us with your ideas for future webinars and let’s make it happen.