Wythenshawe Community Housing Group (WCHG) provides homes to more than 20,000 people across Wythenshawe, Manchester.
We were asked to act as a critical friend to support the development of a customer committee.
We spent time at the first meeting developing an understanding of what matters to tenants and board members, what they wanted to retain from existing customer involvement in governance and what needed to change.
We agreed a set of objectives for the project with the working group early on, which captured preferences from each member, the likely status of the committee and shared examples from across the sector to aid understanding of what options were available. We talked to them about the increased focus on the customer voice from a regulatory perspective and in terms of the Housing Ombudsman’s higher profile.
We presented a draft model to the committee, which captured what mattered to each member and acknowledged the need to represent the wider customer base.
We went on to support recruitment to the committee, including advising on the interview approach and questions, and taking part in the interviews as an independent adviser.
In three virtual meetings, we supported the working group to unanimously agree on a customer committee model which will become a sub-committee of the main group board with the same authority as the other committees.
We prepared the terms of reference, a sample forward plan and a sample agenda to enable the members to see easily what responsibilities becoming a customer committee member would involve and the amount of time they would need to dedicate.
The creation of a Customer Experience Committee was approved by the Group Board in July 2021. We then supported recruitment to the committee during autumn 2021, with appointments being confirmed in December.
We delivered this project in a completely virtual environment which meant we had to ensure all members of the working group were fully prepared ahead of each meeting.
This meant that all slides, agendas and papers were sent ahead of each of the meetings to ensure that those involved could digest the information, prepare questions and have the papers to hand during the meetings to avoid distraction from seeing faces on the screen.
Within the timetable we were able to co-create a model that met the needs of each member of the working group, who unanimously agreed that the objectives had all been met.
Sarah Klueter, Assistant Director, Customer Experience