Resident Involvement at Paragon CHG took a major step forward this year when residents and the two subsidiary Trusts working together developed a Scrutiny Process which enables residents to be at the heart of improving services across the group.
In the spring we established a Residents Council which has brought together active residents from across the Group to help drive home service improvements and ensure that residents concerns were fully recognized by the board.
The Residents Council’s first priority was to establish a programme of Scrutiny Events which enable them to look at particular services in depth.
The priorities for this year have been –
1. Repairs Appointments procedures.
2. Cleaning, management of communal spaces etc.
3. Management of Anti- Social behaviour
In order to carry out this work the RI Teams helped the Council recruit a number of inspectors who spent a week in September looking at the Repairs appointments process in depth.
They did this by telephoning residents, running an interview session in reception, listening in to calls at the call centre and interviewing staff involved in the process both from Paragon and Morrison the repairs contractor.
The inspectors concentrated on the problems that resident found in getting follow up appointments and have made a number of recommendations. These have now gone to the Boards of EHT and RuTCHT who will be developing an action plan based on these findings.
To read the final report from the first inspection please click here (To link to report)
The second inspection of Cleaning and management of communal spaces has also taken place, and the report will be available once approved by the Resident Council and boards in February, and we are looking forward to starting the third inspection on the ASB Management service.
This will be reported in future editions of The Resident and on the website. Pam Batten speaking on behalf of all the Inspectors said “We found this a really worthwhile project to do and we look forward to helping improve other services across Paragon”.
By Dave Hobbs, Chair of Paragon Resident Council
If you would like to know more about the Paragon Resident Council or would like to get involved please contact:
Rachael Smart, Resident Involvement Manager (EHT)
01932 235 724
gbacon@elmbridgehousing.org.uk
Simon Martin, Resident Involvement Manager (RuTCHT)
020 8481 8944
smartin@rutcht.org.uk
