The service improvement panel (SIPS) for service charge ran for a 4-month period from June 24-October 24.

Service Charge was chosen due to an increased number of complaints in this area, also from our feedback from the Tenants satisfaction Measures results.

Members for the group were recruited through recommendations from teams within the business of tenants who currently had or previously had an active complaint about their service charge, or who has a service charge responsibility to Pa housing within the address.

  • Two members were recruited via our strategic Resident Assembly panel (RA).
  • The group choose the leads through a voting system anyone interested on the lead roles was voted on and two leads represented the group.
  • The SIP Panel meetings took place online via MS teams, monthly for a 2-hour period.
  • Two lead members were recruited via the main group
Residents meeting - man in purple shirt

Weekly meetings

The weekly meetings involved working as a team to scope out via group discussions within the sessions to decide what the key focus areas would be for the Service improvement panel to focus on.  This allows the group to stay on track prioritising the key areas from the scope this allows the group to stay on track and allow a thorough review of specific areas.

At each meeting the group would request information from the PA housing member of staff facilitating the meeting. The request could be anything from policy, or procedures, workflows, breakdown of job roles. Anything the group require to look at the service area at hand was provided to the group to ensure they had all the information they needed to consider improvements required and understand key areas of the business.

As part of their review, the group decided that they needed to conduct interviews to understand how cases are managed from the front-line staff to managers to find out more information regarding a particular area and how the processes work. These interviews took place as a partnership approach. This involved the panel members conducting interviews with four staff members. These interviews were planned and conducted by the panel members. The group felt they needed to get feedback from customers on how their experience of the service areas was, so the group issued a survey to 1,000 randomly selected properties from across all tenure types and geographies. This was to gain a perspective from the residents in receipt of the service to find out what their experiences of service charges was.

Once they conducted all interviews and received survey results the panel were then able to start mapping out the report from all the information they reviewed. The panel 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.  

Simon Hatchman

The report

Once they had produced a draft of their report they met with the Exec lead, Simon Hatchman, to present their recommendations to him to check if these were manageable and so they could agree timeframes on the factoring of the recommendations and then to finalise their report. To support the work of the panel, the lead Resident Involvement Specialist developed a tracker to retain oversight of the recommendations assigning each action to the colleague responsible for that area. We will report these to the Resident Assembly monthly and ensure we are implementing the recommendations within the agreed timeframes. The main themes that have come out in the recommendations are around communication, accuracy of information being provided as well as ensuring the information is sufficient and the importance of monitoring contract management and ensuring the services being paid for are in fact being delivered. 

By having two members that sits on the RA this allows the work which is completed within the SIPS process to feed directly back into our residents strategic panel, this is important part of the process the RA will be ensuring that the recommendations highlighted within the report are completed tasks the RA will review this monthly.

Read the report

Quotes from customers

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

Your Voice

Your voice

Our residents are PA Housing. That’s why we love it when you get involved and help make decisions about the services we provide. You know where you live better than anyone else, that's why we’ll see how we can make changes, based on your feedback.

You won’t always be available to be involved in these opportunities, but we’re proud to offer different ways for you to engage with our colleagues and other residents.

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