This in turn delivers benefits to tenants, landlords and wider communities.

The Customer Scrutiny Group was formed in 2016 and works collaboratively with the council and the South Lanarkshire Tenant Development Support Project (SLTDSP) to undertake scrutiny activities to enhance and develop the delivery of housing services. Over the years, there have been a range of scrutiny activities undertaken by the group, including:

• the letting standard
• refusal of offers of housing
• access to homelessness services and advice
• Housing Services’ virtual call handling approach

During the last few months, the Customer Scrutiny Group has been busy taking forward the annual scrutiny programme for 2022/23, with the latest activity focussing on gas servicing and tenant safety.

Working in partnership with the SLTDSP, the Gas Servicing Team and Housing Services staff, the
Customer Scrutiny Group has been reviewing the council’s approach to gas servicing in tenants’ homes.
This has included a review of the legislative and regulatory context in relation to gas servicing, as well consideration of operational procedures/processes, benchmarking other local authority’s performance and a review of the correspondence which goes out to tenants at various stages of the gas servicing process.

A full report on findings from this scrutiny activity has been developed by the Customer Scrutiny Group. The findings and recommendations from the report will be discussed with the council and agreed actions/improvements will be progressed in the coming months. We will provide an update on the findings from the scrutiny report in the Autumn/Winter 2023 edition of Housing news.