Project date – February 2023

Project brief

Through Consumer Regulation, the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) expects landlords to provide tenants with meaningful opportunities to influence and take part in decision making on the housing services which affect them.

This Scrutiny is aimed at reviewing our approach to tenant involvement in the procurement and contract management services but also providing assurance that we’re providing our tenants with the opportunity to use their voices to shape the services they receive.

Recommendations

My Scrutiny concluded that, whilst we’ve shown that there is some tenant involvement in the procurement and contract management of services, there were a number of recommendations that could support a strengthened and more consistent approach.

  1. The Tenant Scrutiny team will work with contract managers to identify which contracts require tenant engagement and support the manager to deliver this in a timely manner.
  2. Enhance the current guidance around the use of tenant feedback in procurement and contract management. The guidance should clearly state when tenant feedback should be sought during the procurement and contract management process, and how this should be evidenced and validated prior to tender.
  3. Establish a subgroup of My Impact within the My Voice framework, which will provide assurance that the tenant voice has influenced the specification of a tenant facing contract and that decisions have been evidenced.
  4. Communicate the impact of tenant feedback on procurement and contract management to all tenants affected by the resulting changes.

Action update

We’ve reviewed the procurement process to ensure tenant involvement is used to shape the services.

Pre scrutiny project, we reviewed a sample of policies and found that 2 out of 10 had tenant insight clearly demonstrated. Then one year post scrutiny, 6 tenders had tenant insight clearly demonstrated (repairs, tree lopping, windows and doors, roofing, kitchen and bathrooms, planned responsive repairs).

We now have a procurement tracker in place which allows details of the tenant insight to be used at policy review.