North Yorkshire Council

 

Housing & Leisure Overview & Scrutiny Committee

 

Wednesday 3 March 2026

 

Tenant Scrutiny Panel

 

Report of the Corporate Director for Community Development

 

1.0       PURPOSE OF REPORT

 

1.1       The purpose of this report is to provide members with an outline the work that the tenant scrutiny panel have carried out so far, to inform discussions on how a successful working relationship can be formed with the Housing and Leisure Overview and Scrutiny Committee in future.

 

 

2.0       SUMMARY

 

2.1       Through the introduction of the Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard registered social landlords are required to provide tenants a wide range of meaningful opportunities to influence and scrutinise their landlord’s services.

 

2.2       The vision of the Tenant Involvement Strategy adopted in April 2025, is to engage and involve tenants and use their insight to influence and improve services, ensuring their voice is heard in decisions that affect their home, their safety and their communities.

 

2.3       A key aspect of the Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard is the need to support effective scrutiny by tenants of their landlord’s performance in delivery landlord services.

 

2.4       Our Tenant Scrutiny panel is a group of tenants who work in partnership with us to review and improve housing services. Following a period of training the newly established panel decided to review the complaints process for tenants with an objective of improving future tenant experiences and the level of satisfaction with the complaints process.

 

2.5       It was agreed that the findings and recommendations of the tenants’ work would be brought forward for the attention of this committee to assist this committee in their task seeking assurance that the complaints policy is working effectively.

 

3.0       TENANT SCRUTINY

 

3.1       North Yorkshire Council Tenant Scrutiny Panel Complaints Report 2025

 

3.2       The tenant scrutiny panel looked at the complaint’s procedure for their first project – this was informed by tenant satisfaction data and tenant and staff feedback. The 2024/2025 Tenant Satisfaction Measures showed that only 33% of tenants were satisfied with complaints handing and by Qtr 2 of 2025/2026 this remained the lowest scoring metric in the survey.

 

3.3       They carried out various tasks and the work resulted in 22 recommendations. These recommendations were taken to the Housing Improvement Board on 27th November 2025. The Housing Improvement Board acknowledged the recommendations and an action plan for implementation has been presented to the tenants. This plan is attached as Appendix A.

3.4       Progress against the action plan will be monitored by the tenant scrutiny group over the next months.

 

3.5       Following completion of the first project the group are now looking to put together a work plan for 2026/2027.

 

3.6       Introducing a workplan allows for the panel to consider any opportunities there may be to work closely with the Housing and Leisure Overview and Scrutiny panel on any future projects. The aim of this report is to highlight the work that our tenant scrutiny panel have done but also to start discussions about how the two groups can work together on future projects.

 

3.7       The tenant scrutiny group are aware that members have previously worked on the lettable standard and have plans to revisit this later this year. This is a topic that the tenant scrutiny is interested in for their next project. 

 

3.8       For the work on the lettable standard the tenant group plan to meet with relevant officers to initially gain more insight around the lettable standard but they also aim to visit a range of council homes to assess whether they meet the lettable standard. This could feed into work that the Housing and Leisure Overview and Scrutiny have planned.

 

3.9       The tenants would like to work closely with the committee, we would like to discuss how this could work best.

 

4.0       ALTERNATIVE OPTIONS CONSIDERED

 

4.1       This report introduces discussion points and at this stage, no alternative options have been considered.

 

5.0       CONTRIBUTION TO COUNCIL PRIORITIES

           

5.1       The Tenant Involvement Strategy and the work of the Tenant Scrutiny Panel directly supports North Yorkshire Council’s strategic ambition to deliver “good quality, affordable and sustainable housing that meets the needs of our communities. Tenant involvement supports North Yorkshire Council’s aim to become an exemplar landlord providing high quality tenant services.

 

6.0       IMPLICATIONS

 

There are no specific financial, legal, climate change, equalities or other implications associated with the recommendation in this report. The Council has demonstrated its commitment to achieving compliance with the Consumer Standards and made sufficient provision within existing budgets.

 

The Consumer Standards for registered providers of social housing came into effect on 1 April 2025 and as a registered provider, the Council must comply with the standard and be subject to inspection by the Regulator.

 

7.0

 

7.1

REPORT RECOMMENDATION      

 

The Committee are asked to note the report and consider opportunities for future joint working with the housing tenant scrutiny panel.

 

 

 

Nic Harne

Corporate Director – Community Development

County Hall

Northallerton

18th February 2026

 

Report Author – Sarah Thompson, Tenant Involvement Manager

Presenter of Report – Sarah Thompson, Tenant Involvement Manager

 

BACKGROUND DOCUMENTS:

Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard (Consumer Standards), Regulator of Social Housing 1 April 2024

 

APPENDICES:

Appendix A – Complaints Tenant Review – Recommendations & Action Plan

 

Note: Members are invited to contact the author in advance of the meeting with any detailed queries or questions.