Tenant Scrutiny Panel

Tenant Scrutiny Panel - previous Meeting Minutes

Tenant Scrutiny Panel Meeting - Tuesday 4 August 2026 Minutes

Present:

Julie Hood, Housing Equalities and Engagement Facilitator
D. McLaren, tenant
E. Middleton, tenant
R. Dobson, tenant
S. Scott, tenant
G. Mountford, tenant
Councillor C Steward (first agenda item)
Councillor A Waller (first agenda item)
Councillor J Rose (first agenda item)

Apologies:

A. Robshaw, tenant

Stephen welcomed everyone to the meeting. Introductions were made.

Minutes and matters arising
People Scrutiny Committee
Mystery Shopping Scripts
Tenant Scrutiny Panel Conference
Housing Management Officers
Action Plan
Any Other Business
Next Meeting

Minutes and matters arising

The minutes were agreed as a true record of the meeting.

The following were actions at the last meeting:

Mystery Shopping Scripts to be sent to Senior Managers
- Sent, awaiting response
Independent Living Community Visual Survey of Communal area survey to be sent to Senior Managers
- Sent, awaiting response

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People Scrutiny Committee

People Scrutiny have a Task & Finish group looking at satisfaction levels with our Repairs service.

Councillors Steward, Waller, and Rose have also been asked to look at the Tenant Voice. They asked to join the meeting to gather feedback from members.

They are working to identify where improvements can be made and how to make the best use of resources.

Panel members gave feedback on the following areas:

Contacting repairs

Communal area repairs are difficult to report because a communal repair is logged as a ‘block repair’. As a communal repair is not logged to a tenant or individual home, there is no communication with the tenant who reported it.

They do not know when it will be done, e.g. a repair to communal gates was reported approx. a year ago. The gates have now been removed but tenants don’t know why or how long they will be missing.

NB: this was discussed at the Building Services Conference in June. Work is underway to find a solution.

Is the repair ‘right first time’

This depends on the information given to the operative in the original phone call. Sometimes it is not recorded properly and sometimes, if tenants are very concerned about the repair needed, they don’t give the right information.

NB: to try to support the Customer Support Officers the Panel are working with Building Services Officers to produce ‘scripts’ for each area of repair. These will be tested with a Mystery Shopping exercise in Autumn. It is hoped that these will help to gather the right information.

The Councillors asked if they could be kept updated with the findings as the information gathered might help their project.

Action: Julie to update the Head of Democracy to update the Councillors.

Repairs being timely

Contractors delivering repairs do not work to the same high standards as City of York Council Operatives.

When a City of York Council operative visits to do a repair, they will also do another repair if they have the skills and equipment. A contractor will only do what they have been told to repair.

Keeping appointments

If appointments need to be rearranged, there is no problem at all. It can be done easily and quickly – within a minute or so.

Mandatory services, e.g. gas servicing, are brilliant; the non-mandatory services are where problems can occur.

Opportunities to feedback satisfaction with repairs

The surveys that are sent work well. You can say exactly how satisfied you are quickly and easily.

Following up repairs

Making a formal complaint isn’t easy – “I don’t know how to”. It’s difficult to navigate a problem, you have to keep ringing to try to sort it out.

Sometimes repairs take a lot of visits to solve the problem. If it is OK for a couple of days then happens again, you have to start again from the beginning.

Councillors were asked what proportion of complaints about repairs they receive directly from tenants.

Councillors are contacted as part of their role of being a Councillor. It should be noted that they usually only receive the issues, not positive feedback. Also they are not often contacted if complaints are directly raised with the council.

Emergency repairs

Very hit and miss!

Two recent emergency repairs have been reported, one was a complete nightmare, the other was brilliant.

As when reporting a repair during office hours, the correct information has to be passed to the operative, which doesn’t always happen.

Communal area repairs

As previously noted, this seems to be a very weak area and feedback for tenants is poor.

Listening to tenants about issues that affect them

Communication between tenants and Housing and other departments – all communication.

Also information - tenants are not always told about what is going on.

A quick text to say ‘we are still waiting for the part needed for your repair’ (or explaining the delay) means that the tenant knows what is happening and doesn’t think the repair has been forgotten.

There is a big problem with scaffolding – if it is needed for a repair to a block of flats, all the tenants are not told. This means that often scaffolding is put up without tenants knowing. It can be a shock for anyone living above the ground floor when someone walks past their window!

The scaffolders block paths which can block entry by wheelchair users, pushchairs etc. They also leave it up for a long time after the repair – do they not have anywhere to store it? It can be an access route for a burglar.

Residents Associations

There are not many Residents Associations at the moment.

Where there is a Residents Association, they could be given information about what is happening in the area to support their communities. Maybe not for individual repairs but for large scale work.

Using technology better

Texts could be used more frequently. Most people have a mobile phone and use texts.

Texts are better than a phone call as a large number of people don’t answer the phone if they don’t recognise the number – most people pick up texts.

There will also be a number of people who prefer letters.

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Mystery Shopping Scripts

Awaiting a response from Senior Managers.

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Tenant Scrutiny Panel Conference

To be held September/October at Hazel Court.

The day will start at 9.30am and finish about 3.30pm.

Refreshments and lunch will be provided.

Agreed topics for the day:

Repairs
Empty properties - the process from when a property becomes empty to when it is handed back to the Housing Management Team
Capital Projects – the changes to Home Improvement Programme

Action: Julie to book the Stephenson Room and begin programming the day.

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Housing Management Officers

It was agreed that as this role is currently being advertised, an up-to-date job description will be sent.

Panel members will identify areas they would like clarifying for discussion at the meeting in September.

Action: Julie to send up-to-date job description with the papers for the next meeting. Panel members to bring their identified areas of work to the next meeting.

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Action Plan

To be updated.

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Any Other Business

Feedback from recent recruitment campaign

The following feedback has been received:

I feel I could not join because it cannot be a genuine conversation. I looked at the minutes of the last meeting and it does not look like genuine conversation. It looks sterile. I also cannot join because my name and everything I say would be published online. Council tenants see a lot of issues but if they are published speaking about the issues on these estates with their name published they will face consequences from their neighbours. Also if the video is published I don't think anyone will want to join.

The letter/email isn’t understandable.

The Panel wanted to thank those who took the time to send their feedback. The points raised have been noted.

Induction pack

An induction pack is being drafted for new members of the Tenant Scrutiny Panel and Performance Panel.

Based on the content of induction packs provided by other housing providers, our pack contains:

Terms of Reference
Code of Conduct
Virtual Meeting Protocols
Recent Minutes and Agendas
Action Plan
Hints and tips
Role Profiles (similar to a job description)
Organisational charts
TPAS Successful Scrutiny for Council Tenants

If Panel members think other documents would be helpful, they will pass their ideas to Julie.

Adaptations Survey

We are due to send this soon and have received feedback that it is not clear that these are only ideas, not that they will be included.

The Panel were shown the covering letter and the survey. They thought that the covering letter and the beginning of the survey were clear - that the survey was to gather feedback on ideas before the policy is drafted.

Action: Julie to feed this back to the relevant Officers.