Return of the Inspectors

For any public organisation being subjected to scrutiny is a fact of life and in July it’s the turn of the TMO, who manage and maintain the Royal Borough’s Council housing.

In August 2003 the Audit Commission rated the TMO as providing a good, “two star”, service with excellent prospects for improvement.  As a result, they were given extra Government funding to improve homes in line with the Government’s Decent Homes Standard.  However, a condition of the funding was that the Audit Commission would re-inspect the TMO within three years.  Now the three years are almost up and the inspectors are returning.

The re-inspection will take place over two weeks, during July.  The inspectors will look at all the services that the TMO delivers and they will consider whether the services are now excellent (three star), good (two star) fair (one star) or poor (no star).

A variety of methods will be used to assess the service, including the following:

Mystery shopping  - both on the telephone through visits to estate offices and receptions;
interviews with members of the TMO, Council staff, board members and councillors;
focus groups with tenants and leaseholders; and
a telephone or written questionnaire sent to a random selection of tenants and leaseholders

The result of the inspection should be known in September and it will be announced at the public meeting of the TMO Board and on the TMO’s website.

The inspection is very important to the future of the TMO as a successful inspection may provide the organisation with additional opportunities to fund the high cost of maintaining the Council’s homes.  So fingers crossed that all goes well!