London Council – Testing a council’s compliance FITness

Background

We were asked by a London council to assess its performance against the new regulatory consumer standards. The council had previously received attention from the Regulator of Social Housing and the Housing Ombudsman so it wanted to be proactive in responding to changing regulation.

Approach

We approached this project using many of the elements of our FITness test so we checked compliance with the consumer standards through examining the building blocks of a high performing organisation.

To do this we:

Provided a template for the council to complete an initial self-assessment
Worked with the council to give focus to the self-assessment, concentrating on the evidence of compliance
Reviewed a wide range of documents including policies, minutes of meetings, information to tenants, and performance reporting
Held focus groups with staff to understand their issues and to test the building blocks of a successful organisation.

Outcome

We provided a focused report to help the council concentrate on key issues around regulatory compliance. The council was already delivering many improvements so we are helping to build the identified compliance issues into these plans.