Transcript – Part 1, Consumer Standards in Practice Podcast Mini-series

 Transcript for  Part 1, Consumer Standards in Practice Podcast Mini-series

[00:00:00.000] – Catherine Little

Hello, I’m Katherine Little. I’m a Director at Campbell Tickell, and I’m delighted to be joined today by Alan Leicester, who’s Director of Housing and Environment, and Chris Twomey, who is Acting Chief Executive at West Lancashire Borough Council. Well, firstly, huge congratulations both. You’re one of the first local authorities to achieve a C1 grading by the regulator of social housing. I wonder, how did you find the inspection experience overall?

[00:00:33.620] – Chris Twomey

Thanks, Catherine. We were delighted to receive that grading. Essentially, what I’d say is it’s the culmination of a couple of years of work, really. We did a gap analysis very early on and developed a continuous improvement plan, which was really with a view to exceeding the standards outlined within the new regulatory framework. We’d listened to the regulator talking about what C1 really being the minimum standard and it being a platform build on. Approach that we took from a very early stage was basically a programme management approach, so standard project management approach to addressing the areas that we identified within the gap analysis. We set up a number of work streams. We had a strong governance wrap around it, which was overseen by our exec management team. But I think one of the key milestones for us was about 12 months into our plan, we had a rehearsal inspection with support from Campbell Tickell, and that was a critical part of our preparation, really. As you expect, really challenging. Took us out of our comfort zone, but a really worthwhile experience. It helped us prepare managers and our politicians and give us that healthy challenge that we really benefited from to ensure that our focus was on the right things.

[00:01:48.620] – Chris Twomey

There’s a couple of key outcomes, I think, from that. Firstly, we did refocus our project planning. It helped us reprioritise. It gave us an external opinion on some of the areas which we were strongest at, and also some of our areas for improvement. We were able to focus our resources on the key things that were going to add the greatest value to our residents. That was really important to us. Also, I guess from a personal perspective, and I know our elected members found this helpful and managers, was that constructive feedback on the interviews, which really helped us prepare and feel more comfortable and confident about the process as we moved into it. I think with something like inspection, you’d always like a little bit more time before the inspectors land. But you just need to appreciate that’s not in your control. Have confidence in the work that you’ve done to date, and also just be clear for me about what is planned in the future and have that clear plan ready for you. I think we were strong in those areas. I think from my perspective as acting chief exec, the time the inspectors were with us was probably one of the easier parts of the journey, but Alan and his team probably have a different view on that.

[00:02:58.400] – Chris Twomey

But they’re clearly done desktop research on or around the time they made initial contact with us. It was about that preparedness up front.

[00:03:06.860] – Catherine Little

Alan, what would you say? What was your experience?

[00:03:10.420] – Alan Leicester

Not disagreeing with anything Chris said. I think in general, because it was 18 months, 2 years of preparation. I think the stress came prior to inspection, really, and all the work and effort we were putting in to get ready, but also to strive to be better than the standards, I think is what we were aiming to do. The actual inspection itself and the days that they were on site was okay. They were very supportive. They were helpful through the process. I think what people need to recognise, though, that the two days in the inspection is just a small part of that inspection process. Our inspection process probably went on from end of September to mid January, where there were pre-emptive information coming forward. We were having to supply information. But after the actual on-site inspection, they were continually asking for further information to back up what they said or what we’ve said, and just to make sure we were achieving the aims we we were going to. We had a five-person inspection team, which I think is unusual because we had a number of people that were training at the time. That was quite daunting, having five inspectors in a room during the interview process at times with all of them asking questions.

[00:04:13.280] – Alan Leicester

But I think, as I say, our preparation with yourselves and the other external assurance we’ve got in many areas has helped us throughout the process. Our planning to get people into a state of mind of being honest and open. That’s certainly our approach has been to the inspection is to be honest, open, and upfront with everything that we do. But that comes back to the approach we have within the organisation across officers and managers, being able to challenge constructively, being open to that challenge and making sure that we’re delivering the things in the right way. So generally, I felt The actual inspection, the two days inspection were fine. We covered everything. We weren’t really surprised by anything too much. But again, that was our preparation at the beginning to make sure we had everything in place for the inspectors while they were on site, making sure we asking questions throughout the process because they were open to those questions. It didn’t matter how small or difficult the questions were. They were picking up and they were responsive to that approach. I think overall, I think we found it okay. I think we were a little bit stressed at the beginning.

[00:05:14.260] – Alan Leicester

We’ve seen many of the early results with C3s and C4s and the expectations of where we were. But I think the next steps for us has always been that, right, that’s okay. What’s next? We’ve still got an 18-month, two-year housing transformation programme that we want to deliver that will make our services It’s better, as Chris has alluded to, to make sure that we’re achieving what our tenants want, because the more the tenants get involved, they are now, the more we’re introducing things, the more challenging they’re becoming, which is exactly how it should be.

[00:05:41.620] – Catherine Little

That’s great. Thank you. You’ve touched on some themes related to my next question, which is to do with governance, because, of course, the regulator doesn’t give a grading to councils for governance, unlike colleagues in housing associations and other private registered providers. But we really sense that a very important part of consumer inspection, for example, demonstrating good oversight of landlord services. Would you agree with that? Can you talk a bit about the approach you have at West Lancashire?

[00:06:12.500] – Chris Twomey

Yes, I strongly agree with that. I think Although it isn’t part of the inspection regime, it’s a thread, I think, that clearly runs through all of the work within the new regulatory framework. There’s a little bit of context for us because in 2023, we started moving from a cabinet system to a committee system, which was implemented in May 2024. There’s obviously a significant amount of work to be done for a borough council to move from one system to another. It is a fundamental change in governance. When we were developing the committee system, we did take account of the regulatory framework and look to see how we could embed it within the new arrangements. There’s lots of stuff that simply, I guess, when carrying out your gap analysis, needs to be done anyway and can be done. But we had a specific focus on this because we wanted to make sure that it was embedded in the right way, and we test ourselves really against this. A key enhancement for us was the review of an existing group that we had, which is our Landlord Services Working Group. This is our key tenant and elected members, Scrutiny Group.

[00:07:23.420] – Chris Twomey

When we were looking at that, we looked to see how we could strengthen it. We created an opportunity for an independent member to join, which has been a really positive step for us. We revised the terms of reference as well, giving it more teeth, and refreshed the training programme for participants, and also increase the tenant representation on there as well. I think all of that, and particularly with the training that we’ve done, has made it a very effective form of scrutiny. We as officers certainly held to account as a result of that. But just more widely around the governance side, we did review assurance arrangements across the council in in line with the new regulatory framework. This was something we would have needed to do anyway, regardless of whether or not we were looking at a governance review. We looked at assurance arrangements, both elected members and within the management team, really, and we strengthened it where appropriate.

[00:08:17.500] – Alan Leicester

I think from my perspective, from the beginning of the inspection process, even in the first meeting with them, it was evident that that assurance around governance was going to be delved into and asked about. I think that can be seen with also who they interviewed. Obviously, they interviewed from our perspective, the leader of the council, the lead member for housing as well. During those questions and those interviews, they did talk about the assurance that they had as governance as members, that things were being delivered as they were supposed to, not just against the consumer standards, but in relation to all compliance areas and aspects of the housing service. As Chris said, the Landland Services Working Group, which is our top tier for tenant involvement, and reports directly into our Policy and Resources Committee, as it is now, has had a real refresh and retrain, and they’ve been doing a lot of work with us to develop that governance framework that we have in place and the insurance framework that we have in place. We’re quite clear now with our process that who gets to see what reports, what information, how regularly it’s reported, and when that’s done, really.

[00:09:23.780] – Alan Leicester

It’s been really effective in helping us to develop that process because the requirements of consumer standards has led a little bit. But I think also the process from yourselves, we had a lot of conversation with you around the insurance framework and what that should look like. I think that’s been very key as well. But certainly the questioning and the information they looked at in the first interview they had with us, they did refer to the website quite heavily and some of the information on there, and they were aware of our working groups and our committee approach. They’ve obviously had a really good look at that and start to ask a lot of questions with it, not just of the members, but some of the questions with the the interview process were, how do you know the governance is being delivered? How do you know the assurance is going to members? And what do you do to deliver that assurance? They did pick us up on specific areas of work as well with reports that we were writing or weren’t writing.

[00:10:15.260] – Catherine Little

That’s really interesting. Thank you. I think the development that you commented on in terms of that landlord services working group and really thinking about the composition as well as the nature of reporting and challenge and so on is so critical. Thank you for for sharing that. One of the things the regulator commented on, and we were really pleased to see this because we really enjoyed working with West Lancashire Borough Council, was the culture of respect and fairness to To our view, we saw that in terms of the approach to tenants, but also the ability of staff to really challenge and speak up. What do you think is really important in establishing that culture?

[00:10:56.540] – Chris Twomey

I think from my perspective, it’s some of the stuff that’s It’s probably usual in most organisations, but it’s having a clear vision and priorities, clarity of purpose for each team, individuals knowing what our priorities are, and also what good looks like as well. I think the regulatory framework certainly helped us within the housing side of the business around that. But I guess from the initial meeting with the inspection team, we had an opportunity to provide a presentation to them, which we were able to touch on some of the that we felt were our real strengths and also part of our journey for improvements, so where we felt we were at. But it was also really an opportunity to talk to them about what we hoped that they’d find. There’s three key things for me. I really wanted them to find that we were a self-aware organisation, that we were customer-focused throughout the organisation. We also pride ourselves on being a learning organisation as well. There isn’t any defensiveness around any of this. I really wanted to hear their external objectives views on that because they’re the things that we are really trying to drive forward culturally within West Lancs.

[00:12:07.640] – Chris Twomey

We’re not precious by existing practises, especially if it’s a better way of doing things. We’d love to know. We actively It’s been a bit of a challenge from colleagues across the organisation, and Alan will probably touch on that in a little bit. But I think it’s fair to say we’ve also undertaken a fair bit of recruitment within the housing service over the last two years. All of the recruitment that we’ve done as a council for over five years now, it’s been behavioural-based recruitment. Customer-first is one of our core behaviours. But also we’re keen to bring people in who will challenge how we do things and are very open to that. As acting chief exec, I meet all new staff and really set that challenge to them. We’re bringing people into the organisation with a fresh perspective to improve us, not to just continue doing the same. We found real strength in that, and I think that certainly us within the housing service in particular. I think the other thing which we talk about being customer-first, it’s the relationship that we have with our tenants as well. We’ve really focused on this area over the last two years.

[00:13:14.820] – Chris Twomey

This is about co-designing services. This is about when we’re identifying the challenges that we face as an organisation, not thinking we have all the answers, but reaching out to our customers to help us find those solutions in a meaningful way and doing a whole variety a variety of different things with our customers, which is customer inspections, to really help them show us the evidence from their perspective, not just ours. Then we can blend that together. That’s really driven us to create really strong outcomes. I think some of the real value in that also is that it’s self-fulfilling by way of colleagues at every level across the council then see that and see the value and strengthen it. We then do more and we get better outcomes, and then we continue doing more and get better outcomes as a result. It’s a real win-win from my perspective.

[00:14:02.680] – Alan Leicester

I think from my perspective, I joined West Lancet in August ’22, and that was clear for me. Certainly with my recruitment, it was definitely clear around a customer focus, I think, was where I was heading and the organisation was heading. One of the things we have tried to push extensively is that, as I mentioned earlier, is that challenge, and making sure that everybody’s open to have that challenge, that we do review and drive that change. We talk a lot within the housing service around continuous improvement, and although we obviously got a C1, we still have a lot to do and we know that, and we were honest with the regulator in respect to that presentation that Chris mentioned. I think our last two slides were talking about where we needed to go and what we needed to do next. So that was quite clear. But that comes from the teams themselves, challenging each other. We’ve done a lot of work, certainly with the managers within the service, to be able to challenge, to do that challenge. But we encouraged it. So if somebody was doing a piece of work in one area of the business, we gave to somebody else in another area of business to review and challenge that and ask those questions that perhaps weren’t as clear as the person actually doing the piece of the work.

[00:15:08.140] – Alan Leicester

We do a lot of in that relation. In respect of consumer standards, we made it a council-wide It wasn’t a housing priority. It wasn’t a housing priority, it was for the whole council to deliver. As a consequence, we got a lot of people from across the council supporting that delivery. It was a council programme of work that was required to be done. We regularly updated every member of staff within the council about what was going on, how we were moving forward, and how they could help and support the delivery. But also, again, getting them involved in asking questions and challenging what the service was doing. I think just one of the things that we’ve talked about, Katherine, in the past that we find quite funny, I think, is what we call our fight Fridays. I think this is a situation where during that or the part of the encouragement to challenge is, let’s just get it all on the table. Let’s just be open and honest about what we think, no matter what it is, no matter what it is we’re and really push that against each other. They were usually followed by with a Friday chipping as well, so it was about a bit of engagement there.

[00:16:09.790] – Alan Leicester

But it was just creating that environment for everybody to be open about what the real issues were, all the concerns. Because if I do a piece of work, other people might not think it’s very good, and I need that to be challenged and pushed back, and that doesn’t matter who is doing that challenge. And certainly the senior exec team are open to that challenge across the board from whoever is in the organisation to drive that change. I think as a consequence of all that, that helped us to get to where we needed to be, particularly when you look at our self-assessment, we’re getting everybody to challenge everybody’s service area to say, what could How could we done differently? How could it be different? How could we drive that change? What would make the impact? What would make it achieve what we’re trying to do? But also with the external review that we had against many of our areas of work, it wasn’t just an internal We brought in organisations to do that external review, people like yourselves, people like Resolve. We continue to do that because we’re bringing in an external company shortly to look on our damp and mould work.

[00:17:11.820] – Alan Leicester

Again, it’s accepting that challenge from wherever to make the right choices and get the service to where it needs to be and delivering the best that it can do.

[00:17:23.380] – Catherine Little

I just reflect really. I did find the name Friday quite funny, but I thought the concept itself is, I I think it’s really good practise because essentially, as you say, Alan, you explicitly gave permission to each other to challenge, and the conversations we heard were, Is that assurance? Is that enough? Is that evidence? How robust is it? To be able to have that net worked approach to whole organisation change and people able to challenge on their area, but also areas where they’re not the technical expert, can ask some really good questions, I think was really evident in what we saw and in your regulatory judgement management. I wonder then just finally, could you please draw out perhaps two or three lessons? Chris will come to you first. A couple of lessons that you’d want to share for others preparing for inspection.

[00:18:14.260] – Chris Twomey

Absolutely. I’ve tried to think of some practical things here. The three that I think are probably the most important that I would share would be, one is to be self-aware and therefore you have your plan, and that’s your delivery plan, really. Not Everything needs to be perfect and be done within the plan because obviously you’re working within an environment of continuous improvement. But if you do have a track record of delivery, then this will give the inspectors the assurance that you will deliver what you’re saying you’re going to. That was some very clear feedback that we had from our inspectors, that they had the confidence, because we had a track record of delivery, that we were going to continue to improve and those areas of focus we’d identified for the future we would deliver against. I think that was a really, really important one. I think what I would say is if you haven’t got a fully developed plan now, it would be good just to get that in place and look at the next two years of your improvement plan. You are clear around the areas that you’re going to prioritise for improvement because that clearly does show you you’ve got a level of self-awareness.

[00:19:25.720] – Chris Twomey

The second key area, which I think was hugely helpful for us, was the inspection rehearsal that we did with that external support. Just having a fresh set of eyes, an objective set of eyes, come into our organisation to help us understand some of the areas where actually we were stronger in than maybe we’d felt we were ourselves. It helped us identify and largely agree with us, actually, with the areas which we knew we needed to work on. It was hugely important. A few One of the key things that that really helped us with, as I said before, it helped us with our focus. Your teams will be very busy, but it will help you be very busy doing the right thing. It built confidence within the team as well, and that was hugely helpful because that external assurance, just that, Do you know what? You’re really good in these areas. Actually, these are the three or four key things that we should focus on in the next three to six months. It was very important for our managers, I as well as the senior leadership team. The third element for me is around just having a customer-first approach.

[00:20:37.960] – Chris Twomey

For me, this is about if all of your people at all levels within the organisation strive to be customer-focused in everything that they do on a daily basis, I don’t think we’ll go far wrong. We manage 6,000 homes as a council, so there’s an awful lot of customer engagement there, and we’re very clear we won’t get it right every single time. We will do best to. But some of the feedback that we had from the inspection team was that they felt quite strongly that when things didn’t go to plan, we really focused on putting them right as quickly as we could and doing that in a way that was listening to the customer as well. Secondly, that we had approaches in place that made sure we would learn from the times that we didn’t get it right. Really, we didn’t make the same mistake again. That was strongly embedded within our complaints management approach. That’s been hugely helpful across the whole council, actually, because the refreshed approach that we’ve taken to complaints management has actually, I would say, lifted the culture around customer first across the whole council, not just housing. The approach that we take around complaints management for housing is standard across the whole organisation now, and that’s been a real benefit for us.

[00:21:52.220] – Alan Leicester

I think, firstly, for me, added to a little bit what Chris has saying earlier, don’t underestimate the amount of work and potential resources What do you need to put into getting services right and achieving the consumer standards. Specifically, as I mentioned earlier, that the more you’re involving our tenants, as we showed, the more challenging and the more service review they’re expecting us to do and develop that. As we said, this is culmination was 18 months to 2 years worth of work for us and putting the resources in place to deliver that. I think that’s key in understanding, as Chris said. If you haven’t got a plan now, then it’s something to understand the amount of work that needs to be involved. Chris alluded to as well the critical friend. It wasn’t just the rehearsal inspection we did. We brought in other critical friends. We utilised somebody like Resolved to review our ASB service. Again, it’s that fresh coat of looking at it, completely independent view, bringing in the good practise that helps to drive your service and change. And as a consequence of all the external review critical friends we’ve utilised, we have changed service delivery, we have changed our approaches, we’ve updated policies, etc.

[00:23:04.080] – Alan Leicester

And we’re possible, we’ve involved tenants in those reviews. Two of the reviews we did with yourselves were the customer journey around repairs and complaints, which we found really useful. And on the back of that, we developed action plans. Now, that was a clear request from the regulator to see those action plans and the outcomes and the delivery were being made. And again, as Chris suggested, that shows the evidence that we learned from that. We picked those up from our TSMs. So the TSM results we utilised and identified those areas of improvement and utilised that to bring in critical reference or develop further reviews, again, to understand why those TSMs were the scoring that they created. I’ll just reiterate again, the culture. It’s been the right culture across the board, whether that’s the working with tenants or that challenge, having the right team, the right people who are passionate, I would say. I think you met a few people, Katherine, that most of the team are passionate and want to do the right thing and want to achieve for our tenants, but also a bit competitive as well to make sure that their service area is achieving what it needs to do.

[00:24:15.480] – Alan Leicester

I think that you can’t get away from a bit of competitiveness, can you? I do like that. I think they’re the main things for me. But finally, is also learn from others. We were out there all the time talking to whoever we could do to find out what they were doing, what was good practise, what was best practise? Developing some of our services on the back of that, specifically our tenant voice approach was on the back of Stockport’s best practise. We went to chat to them and we developed what we did compared to what they were doing. I think they’re the few things that I would recommend as an approach to do.

[00:24:50.100] – Catherine Little

Thank you both. Thank you for helping us to share good practise from your own experience. I think it’s been really helpful today to hear about the whole organisation approach and genuinely seeing this as an opportunity to keep improving things for tenants who, after all, are the reason we exist as social landlords and so on.

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