We were proud to take part in the first meeting of the newly re-formed Residents’ Scrutiny Panel, hosted at one of the Lenches Housing Association’s welcoming properties in Quinton on 22nd April. We’re especially grateful to the Lenches Trust for their hospitality – and the excellent cakes!
BCOP has recently joined this exciting partnership, which brings together residents and staff from several local housing charities to improve services through resident-led scrutiny.
This first meeting of 2025 was full of energy, purpose and good conversation. Three residents from Whitley Court represented BCOP alongside our Housing Compliance Officer, Ally Burgess, who commented: “This was a great first meeting – so many tenant representatives from each member organisation came along, and it was fantastic to see the residents engaged in our mission to improve tenant voices in our social housing organisations.” Lynn Adams, a BCOP representative said the event was very informative and she was looking forward to being involved and learning more. Janice Andrews, another volunteer representatives added “We all enjoyed our day very much. It was great to look round the Lench’s Trust scheme and the ideas put forward by the scrutiny group facilitator were exciting and thought provoking. We’re looking forward to seeing the other schemes and going to other BCOP schemes in due course and hearing their views.”
The group discussed the role of a tenant scrutiny group, their code of conduct, reviewed their combined tenant satisfactions measures (TSM’s) and set some priorities to focus on in the year ahead.
The next meeting is due to take place on 21st May.
About the Resident Scrutiny Panel
The Residents’ Scrutiny Panel was originally launched in 2018 by four partner charities to bring residents together to review and challenge how housing services are delivered. That project led to meaningful improvements across the board – including a new Compliments, Concerns and Complaints process – and even won the Almshouse Association Award for Partnership & Excellence.
Following a pause during the pandemic, the project has been relaunched and expanded to include new partners like BCOP. The aim is simple but powerful: to ensure residents can act as independent, critical friends to their housing providers, holding staff and trustees to account and helping to shape services from the resident’s perspective.
The organisations involved are Sir Josiah Mason Trust, Lenches Trust, Solihull Care, Yardley Great Trust and Sherborne Parish Lands Charity.
