South Gloucestershire Council’s Strategic Housing Service commissioned HouseMark to undertake a Peer Review in June of this year.
HouseMark’s programme of peer reviews has been designed to support Housing Services in improving. The programme draws upon the IDeA’s Local Government Improvement Programme benchmark of the ‘ideal local authority’ and upon a range of authoritative good practice in housing.
The review team were asked to act as a ‘critical friend’, helping the Strategic Housing Service to
- focus better in its work;
- generally improve what it does;
- and ensure its plans for the future meet the needs of the community.
As the Strategic Housing Service is to be subject to a full inspection by the Audit Commission in October this year, the observations of a ‘critical friend’ will be of great value in the lead-up to the full inspection.
A wide range of people from across the Strategic Housing Service as well as external partners and stakeholders were interviewed as part of the Review.
The review gave a very positive picture about our service, particularly our innovative approach to homelessness prevention, enabling the development of affordable housing and our partnership working with housing associations and voluntary agencies, see the full report. Some areas for improvement were also highlighted and these have been drawn together into a summary action plan.
The full report and summary action plan can be viewed or downloaded from the 'read more' section on this page.
As part of the preparation for the Audit Commission Inspection in October we have written a Self Assessment of our Strategic Housing Service. See the 'read more' section on this page.