NYC Housing Performance Framework

Introduction

North Yorkshire Council (NYC) has the ambition of being an exemplar landlord in its provision of social housing. It currently provides housing services to almost 8,350 tenants across three principal regions borne from the legacy districts and Boroughs (Harrogate, Selby and Richmond), with the aim of delivering housing services across the whole North Yorkshire county.

Social Housing is also highly regulated with external scrutiny provided through the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH), and oversight of complaints handled by an independent Housing Ombudsman Service. Consequently, ensuring services are delivered in accordance with statutory regulation and legislation is paramount to the service and fundamental in creating a stable basis for the delivery of excellent services and continuous improvement that ensures residents can lead safe and successful lives as tenants of the Council.

This performance framework sits alongside the services Improvement Strategy as a vehicle for delivering change both operationally and culturally; helping embed a performance focussed culture that is curious, accepting the need for continuous improvement and tenacious in its pursuit of excellence.

In 2024 the RSH rated the Council as ‘C3’ against its Consumer Standard and therefore ‘non-compliant’. This first version of the Performance Framework is designed to create the foundations for effective performance management and instil the appropriate culture associated with a high performing organisation; alongside developing effective reporting mechanisms through the layers of the business to ensure that performance management is foremost in the actions and behaviours of everyone working within, and supporting the service.

The framework forms part of a wider approach to performance oversight and continuous improvement. The Council operates a three yearly service planning cycle (with annual reviews), linked to the Council Plan and an annual Individual Performance Management (IPM) for the management of individual targets and aspirations. The framework will therefore be subject to periodic review to ensure it remains relevant to the changing environment both within and external to the Council.

This first iteration of the performance framework is designed to build assurance in the data that underpins the key performance indicators and support the business on its journey towards compliance. It is for use by services that deliver the Housing Revenue Account services (Housing Standards and Housing Management primarily); however, will also apply to those services providing support to these teams, namely Complaints, Strategy and Performance and Customer Services when dealing with housing related issues.

Performance Management

NYC housing management operates a three-tier approach to performance management.

Tier 1 Dashboard: Strategic and business critical data. This information is used by the Housing Improvement Board on a monthly basis to assess performance and provide effective challenge. This report will also inform the wider Council performance reporting mechanisms in particular informing the Quarterly Performance Report submitted to the authorities Executive Management Team and Elected Members and will support service planning exercises as part of continuous improvement and annual target setting exercises. This information includes compliance and health and safety measures, repairs and improvement work data, and information relating to complaints. It also includes some key benchmarking metrics linked to ongoing Housemark benchmarking, and tracking the data for submission in the annual Tenant Satisfaction Measures return. This is corporate level data and subject to change in accordance with the requirements of the regulatory framework and the Council’s strategic priorities. The Tier one dashboard can be found in appendix A.

Tier 2 Dashboards: Senior manager information, benchmarking data and KPIs of significant operational performance. The tier two dashboards are Head of Service level instruments to track service performance and assess areas of concern within the portfolio.  includes the items contained in tier one for monitoring purposes but also holds more operational measures linked to service plan delivery and wider benchmarking indicators. The tier two dashboards can be found in appendix B. In agreement with the relevant Tier 2 dashboard owner where performance is flagged as a concern and likely to require significant intervention or discussion there will be opportunities to escalate these more operational measures to the Tier 1 dashboard and therefore discussion within the Extended Housing Management Team and Housing Improvement Board meetings.

Tier 3 Indicators: These are held by teams to track operational and individual effectiveness by managers, ultimately providing an effective link with the IPM process. All indicators within tier three are used operationally and help demonstrate the effectiveness of services and processes. Again, all of the measures within tiers one and two should feature across the tier three indicators, ensuring there is a clear golden thread from the operational aspects of the business to the strategic levels. This means that each indicator that appears within the Tier one strategic dashboard is managed across all stages of the performance framework and operational leads would be expected to understand and articulate these indicators to senior managers as required.

Corporate Quarterly Performance Report: Alongside the internal performance reporting the Council operates a corporate quarterly performance framework for reporting linked to the delivery of the Council Plan. The Housing Service provides a supplement to this report focussed on the ongoing service performance in order to aid corporate understanding of the service and the challenges it faces. This report highlights the quarter end performance alongside relevant narrative as shared through the monthly reporting. The Tier 1 Dashboard is also provided as an appendix to aid understanding. This report is presented to both the Executive Management Team and to Elected Members, before being published for public scrutiny.

Roles and Responsibilities

Housing Improvement Board comprised of the following members:

· Executive Director of Community Development

· Assistant Director of Housing

· Assistant Director of Resources (Community Development)

· Assistant Director of Customer, Revenue and Benefits

· Director of Transformation

The group will be supported by subject matter experts covering the following services:

· Strategy & Performance

· Housing Policy and Business Improvement

· Housing Management

· Property Management

Other members will be invited as required for specific activities or tasks.

The role of the Housing Improvement Board will be to provide assurance on the delivery of strategic priorities including meeting and continuously improving the standard of homes and neighbourhoods and the quality of services to tenants.  This will demonstrate progress of the delivery of its improvement plan and progress towards compliance with the consumer standards (attaining a C2 minimum rating).

The board will also be responsible for challenging the Extended Housing Management Team on its performance and ensuring necessary operational steps are being taken to support its strategic aims.

Extended Housing Management Team

Comprised of the following members:

· Assistant Director of Housing

· Head of Housing Delivery and Partnerships

· Service Improvement Manager

· Head of Housing Management and Landlord Services

· Head of Homes and Place

· Tenant Involvement Manager

· Allocations Manager

· Housing Standards Manager (Construction)

· Housing Standards Manager (Improvement Programme)

· Housing Standards Manager (Repairs)

· Housing Standards Manager (Contracts)

· Housing Standards Manager (DD Contracts)

· Housing Standards Team Leader (Safety)

In addition, business partners from across the Council covering central service functions (Customer / Transformation / Strategy & Performance / Finance etc) will provide wider support as required.

The Extended Housing Management Team will act as a central location for managers across the service to provide updates, identify challenges to delivery and ensure performance is progressing as required. Any risks should be escalated to the Housing Improvement Board to review opportunities to unlock barriers and ensure actions are able to progress. Likewise, the Housing Improvement Board will be able to refer issues to the Housing Management Board as required to ensure that operational performance is delivering the services strategic aims. Ahead pf Extended Housing Management Team meetings a performance clinic will be scheduled to focus purely on the presentation of the performance information ensuring issues and challenges are adequately debated before the reports are signed off.

Key Roles and Responsibilities

The Assistant Director for Housing

The AD for Housing will sit across both boards, with chairing responsibilities for the Housing Management Board. The AD will also be responsible for communicating key messages to the Regulator and Council in relation to the progress of the improvement plan and ongoing performance related issues. The AD is also responsible for the identification and management of risks to the service and ensuring any identified performance related risks are appropriately flagged and managed.

Service Improvement Manager

The Service Improvement Manager will provide oversight of  the Improvement Plan, providing updates as required to Extended Housing Management Team and Housing Improvement Board. They will work with the Strategy and Performance Team and Project Management to ensure the KPI linked to actions the Improvement Plans are being tracked and reported; alongside supporting the development of new KPIs linked to improvement activity where required.

Programme and Project Management

The programme manager will provide support to the Assistant Director for Housing and wider service to ensure the delivery of the Housing Improvement Strategy, Improvement Plan and Performance Framework providing updates and unlock barriers corporately. The Programme Manager will be supported by project managers who will manage projects that support the improvement plan, ensure individual actions are completed and ensuring action owners are undertaking required work and flag risks and barriers. They will work with the Service Improvement Manager to provide assurance regarding the progress against improvement strategy, improvement plan and performance framework.

Strategy & Performance Team

The Strategy and Performance Team will be required to produce and present performance information to both the Housing Improvement Board and the Housing Management Board. Whilst there will be fixed KPIs that are presented at both the team will also report tier 2 indicators to Board by exception in order to highlight potential areas of concern and thereby helping to identify appropriate remedial work required and support continuous improvement. The Strategy and Performance Team will also provide performance deep-dives to increase clarity and understanding around a certain subject where this is felt beneficial by either the Housing Improvement Board or the Extended Housing Management Team.

As part of wider communications the team will also ensure that performance items feature in articles and newesletters circulate by the Communications Team; again highlighting immediate concerns alongside showcasing areas of good performance and appropriate success.

The team will also support effective data governance practices working alongside Data and Intelligence colleagues to ensure that data is accurate, replicable and transparent.

Tenant Involvement Manager

As part of the Council’s approach to resident involvement it is vital that customers are informed of performance and are in a position to hold the authority to account. The Tenant Involvement Manager will support the presentation of performance information every quarter, allowing for residents to challenge the authority and support the development of future performance aspirations and targets. Again, where requested by customers, deep dives into performance information will be facilitated and supported by the Strategy and Performance Team.

Heads of Service

Each Tier 2 Dashboard is allocated directly to a Head of Service. They will be required to complete the necessary information as required (either monthly or quarterly depending on the specific indicator). They will also be responsible for ensuring that tier 3 dashboards are completed and updated and where necessary by exception items not covered in tier 2 are reported to the Extended Housing Management Team in order to allow for oversight and appropriate support.

Reporting Requirements

Every KPI contained within the framework will establish key details linked to the following:

· The relevant Data Steward – who holds overall responsibility for the relevant data (reporting, extraction and accountability) – in practice the person who will be required to explain the data.

· Location/s of data

· Clear definitions detailing what is being measured and any calculation used to create the measure

· Information relating to where the measure is reported (ie tier 1 or 2 dashboards)

· Additional contacts for extracting the data if required

· Level of assurance the organisation has on the quality and accuracy of the data

Within the template Tier 1 dashboard (appendix A) are the specific reporting requirements attached to each field of the document.

 In completing the dashboards managers will be expected to meet the following standards in relation to the key data points:

· Target – targets should be set annually and not change throughout the year. In regard to Tier 1 KPIs these targets will be incorporated into the annual service planning exercise. Targets should also include a degree of tolerance where applicable based on an understanding of seasonal trends and variation. Some indicators will not have a tolerance attached such as compliance indicators where the expectation is that the target will always be 100% and failure to meet this target will lead to a red performance RAG rating.

· Notes – Managers will be expected to include the details of the caseload size, the numerator and denominator that help to create the indicator and specific information relating to time highlighting the most useful information in relation to cases outstanding and their age profile where appropriate; again there is an expectation that all compliance related items will include this level of detail as standard.

· Trend – this is the director of travel in comparison to the previous reporting period.

· Assurance RAG Rating – all indicators will be judged on the accuracy and reliability of the data used to calculate the performance.

· Data Quality Assurance and Next Steps – Managers will be required to state what data issues they are experiencing and how they are managing these challenges within this column. This includes any external validation that is undertaken. There is an expectation that all managers should be aware of the limitations of their data and be striving for improve quality and assurance.

· Mitigations – This sections should describe any additional work and activity that is being undertaken to help support the achievement of the aims of the service; in particular in helping keep tenants safe in their homes and in delivering the wider regulatory standards.

Reporting of the tier 1 and 2 dashboards is undertaken monthly in line with the Extended Housing Management Team and Housing Improvement Board meetings. Key dates to note are:

Date	Event / Action
10^th of every month	Completion of T1 and T2 dashboards
14^th of every month	Submission of Housemark benchmarking data
3^rd Thursday of every month	Extended Housing Management Team Meeting
4^th Thursday of every month	Housing Improvement Board
1^st Tuesday of every month	Meeting with the Regulator and presentation of performance information from previous month
July / October / January / April	Completion of Corporate Quarter-end Performance Reporting

No submission of data

Where data cannot be completed on time for either the tier 1 or tier 2 dashboard it is expected that the relevant owner / head of service provides a written statement explaining why the data / KPI is unavailable as part of the narrative section of the dashboard. This should also include the measures to be taken over the next month to address this issue. Explanations are also required where data assurance of the indicators has changed; specifically in the case of downgrades.

Data Assurance

As the Council navigates a challenging period of reorganisation and realignment of service delivery it is expected that issues around the quality of the data will emerge. All indicators within the performance framework will be assigned a RAG rating detailing the following:

RED	Significant concerns relating to the quality and accuracy of the data. Information drawn from very different data sources that cannot be confidently merged. Lack of a clear data owner.
AMBER	Minimal concerns around the quality and accuracy of the data due to period of stability and lack of variance over time. Data can be merged easily and with confidence. Data owner identified but may struggle with aspects of data management (i.e. split across different systems with limited access)
GREEN	High degree of confidence in the accuracy of the data, it can be easily extracted and replicated from systems when required. Knowledgeable data owner, who can identify anomalies and explain variance.

Risk Management

It is recognised that the Performance Framework will play a significant role in the identification and management of risk across the service. Risk is reported on a quarterly basis to the Council Executive.  Prior to this presentation risks will be reviewed by the Housing Improvement Board with amendments and updates to the risk profile agreed by the Assistant Director for Housing.

Appendices

Appendix A: Tier 1 Dashboard

Appendix B: Tier 2 Dashboard