Welcome from Chair of our Group Operations Committee and Chair of our Group Customer Scrutiny Panel
Sharon Hanbury, Chair of our Group Operations Committee
The role of the Operations Committee is to ensure Bolton at Home Group provides the best possible services for customers and the wider community. It has been another very busy and productive year.
We formally joined the Operations Committees of Bolton at Home and Arcon to become the Group Operations Committee, although we have been working together for some time. Additionally, there have been several changes to our membership, with some of our longer-standing members leaving at the end of their term and new members joining.
Our committee has come together, grown, and developed to be as strong and effective as possible. This has been crucial as the operating environment for us, our key stakeholders, our customers, and communities has become ever more challenging.
As a committee, we invested in our learning across many areas, including health and safety, damp and mould, and new regulatory requirements, equipping us to fully play our role in these and other important areas.
We also reviewed how we monitor and report performance across many aspects of operation, enabling us to more effectively understand and, where required, improve performance - especially from the perspective of customers as the committee’s overall focus area.
Our involvement has been key in developing and reviewing various policies. We have played an important role in strengthening our position in meeting the new regulatory requirements and preparing for our inspection.
We have been delighted to see a strengthening commitment to transparency and customer focus, with more to follow. The committee has continued to work closely with our Scrutiny Group and Resident Voices, further enabling our tenants and customers to be consulted and their views to be listened to.
Leah Walters, Chair of our Group Customer Scrutiny Panel
This year, our Customer Scrutiny Panel has been actively involved in making real changes within communities. We’ve updated our terms of reference to make the panel more efficient as we grow, adapt, and try to be the best we can be. Our service review of antisocial behaviour has been well received, and many of our suggestions have already been put into action. It’s great for customers to see the impact our contributions have had. We’ve had several site visits to various departments and met with many staff members.
I’m new to the role of Chair, as we recently restructured. Being on the panel is rewarding, as it’s often pointed out just how our lived experiences and our work as a group bring about real change and impact on the services and policies we review. Our current project is one close to our hearts, as it’s focused on making our communications more accessible.
We’re part of a diverse customer base and are keen to make sure that we as we move forward with the merger and rebranding, all communications are accessible to all.
I look forward to continuing our work as we aim to complete more service reviews and be a voice for positive change.