Seeing how others do it – Scrutiny Panel visit to beautiful York
Posted on August 8, 2013
Seeing how others do it – Scrutiny Panel visit to beautiful York
Blog article by Scrutiny Panel members Arthur Barnes and Tina Peters:-
As members of the Scrutiny Panel we really like to see how other organisations do things.
Joseph Rowntree is a Housing Trust in York and we were invited there to exchange ideas on how Scrutiny Panels work, how to keep Scrutiny Panel members interested and we were also hoping to learn about how they inform their residents about Service Charges, the subject of our current review.
We attended Joseph Rowntree’s Scrutiny Panel meeting where the residents were discussing their current review on the housing allocation process and exploring why potential residents are allowed to refuse multiple offers of properties. We also looked at previous meeting’s minute and it was very clear they do things quite differently. It really did highlight that there are many different ways to do Scrutiny.
After the meeting we were given a short tour of their “Garden Village of New Earswick”. The village includes a Swimming Pool, Tennis Courts, Rugby, Football and Cricket Pitches, also shops, Hairdressers and even a Pet Shop. They have their own newly built Secondary School too.
What they wanted to create is a “civil spirit” within the village, which we certainly felt they had achieved.
The whole trip was really interesting, and whilst we didn’t learn as much as we had hoped to about how they inform residents about Service Charges, its always good to see how others do things and we came away thinking we are doing really well!!
