How the Service Improvement Panel reviewed Service Charges

Service Charges was chosen as a topic to be reviewed due to an increased number of complaints in this area, also from our feedback from the Tenants Satisfaction Measures.

The Service Improvement Panel (SIP) members were recruited through recommendations from teams within PA who identified residents who at the time had an active or previously had a complaint about their service charge, or residents who had a service charge responsibility to PA Housing. Two members were also recruited via our strategic Resident Assembly.

The SIP chose the leads through a voting system, the SIP voted on anyone who was interested in leading and two members were chosen to lead the SIP.

Meetings

The Service Charges SIP ran from June - October 2024. The SIP held weekly meetings that involved:

scoping out the key focus areas

requesting information from relevant teams

reviewing policies, procedures, workflows and breakdowns of relevant job roles

conducting interviews with four members of the Service Charges team

surveying 1000 randomly selected residents regarding their recent experiences with service charges

Once the SIP had conducted all interviews and received the survey results, the panel were able to map out the report from the information they had collected.

The SIP met individually outside the sessions to develop the report. They worked closely with PA housing facilitator to ensure they had all the information needed to complete the report and final recommendation.

The report

Once they had produced a draft of their report they met with the Executive Director, Simon Hatchman, to present and agree their recommendations, as well as agree timeframes to implement the recommendations.

To support the work of the SIP, the supporting Resident Involvement Specialist developed a recommendations tracker. The tracker is reviewed by the Resident Assembly monthly to ensure we are implementing the recommendations within the agreed timeframes.

The main themes that have come out in the recommendations are:

communication
accuracy of information being provided to residents
providing sufficient information
the importance of monitoring contract management
ensuring the services being paid for are in fact being delivered

Quotes from residents

"I found the whole experience very positive and rewarding. The sessions were well lead by PA staff, and I felt the members of the panel worked well together, and there was a good mix of ideas, skills, experiences as well as good team morale.

I didn't find the teams channel intuitive to use, both logging in and the filing of documents, but circulating documents by email for editing seemed to work better. When collating our questions and results of the interviews, there were times when I felt it was tricky to get the balance right between the expectations of PA staff and those of the panel in terms of level of detail, but we got there in the end."

"Everyone on the panel was passionate about getting a fairer service charge for tenants and residents alike."

"It was really to get involved and to see the team trying to help , which indicated on a good culture inside PA"