The Customer Influence Panel is a customer-led, customer-appointed group that plays a vital role in shaping our organisation. It influences and scrutinises our business performance, strategies, and policies, ensuring that customer perspectives remain at the heart of decision-making.
The panel is made up of a small group of SNG customers, including a Chair and Vice Chair.
The Role of the Chair and Vice Chair
- The Chair serves as an observer at the SNG Board, ensuring customer voices are heard at the highest level.
- The Customer Board member also attends Customer Influence Panel meetings as an observer, strengthening the connection between customers and leadership.
Meet the Chairs
Get to know the leadership behind the Customer Influence Panel by watching the videos below.
Jackie Dunn - Chair
Jackie Dunn - Meet the Chair
0:00 Jackie Dunn - I'm from the New Forest in Hampshire and I'm the chair of the Customer Influence Panel.
0:06 I'm really excited. I'm looking forward to the challenges that lie ahead.
0:10 My past experience: I've chaired many roles, have been in the social housing sector.
0:15 I've also been sat on the Board of governance and I just thought this is really exciting challenge ahead.
0:22 I formed a new panel previously and took that forward when scrutiny was first introduced and I feel like I've got the skills to make it happen and make it work and improve services for residents.
0:37 I'm hoping to achieve a really strong, robust panel that challenges in a constructive way and that we see ultimately, at the end, all services improve to the benefit of residents and also to the organisation.
Lauren Mathurin – Vice-Chair
0:00 I'm Lauren Mathurin, I'm from London and I'm the Vice Chair of the Customer Influence Panel.
0:07 So I've never engaged with a Sovereign Network Group before, other than as a resident.
0:12 So I'm very excited to see how the how things are run on the other side. 0:17 My first impressions of the panel are that it's quite a diverse team, so there'll be a lot of diversity of thought.
0:23 There's a lot of different types of tenants: so some from shared ownership, some from social housing. 0:28 And so we'll get a good overview from everyone and hopefully influence in the right way.
0:33 So I applied for the panel because I want to be able to help make a change.
0:39 I have a vested interest as a resident myself, but also I wanted to increase my personal development as well in this type of area, and I think that I've got a lot of transferable skills that I can bring to the panel.
0:51 One thing I'd like to achieve at the end of my time on the panel is being able to see some tangible changes.
0:58 So this isn't a time for lip service or just sitting around talking.
1:03 This is a time to actually make some changes and it'd be good to be able to have those as measurable targets at the end of the time.
1:10 I'm feeling really excited.
1:11 I think there's so much to learn at the moment, but there's so much to do as well, which is really exciting
Panel meeting updates
The Customer Influence Panel held its first meeting in January 2025. Watch the video below for a brief update from Chair Jackie Dunn.
Hi, my name’s Ruth Picknett-Powell and I’m a member of the CIP.
I just wanted to give you some highlights of what we talked about on the 14th May when we went along to the Bristol office, for our latest meeting.
So we started off with some really good news, the Regulator of Social Housing had come back with its outcome for the inspection and they give three grades for that.
In relation to us as engaged residents, they give a consumer rating and we got C2, which is a really good place to be.
It shows that as engaged residents we are a part of what’s going on at Sovereign, but there’s always room for improvement. So the aim working forwards would be to support Sovereign Network Group actually achieving that C1 and ensuring that we are fully engaged as residents.
On that note I would invite anybody who’s interested to go along and read the report, it’s available on both the Regulator of Social Housing Website and it will be available on the SNG website.
We also had Mike Smart come along and talk to us about the repairs service. As engaged residents we monitor this – we look at the KPI’s and the data that the organisation gets, but also we look at that more qualitative feedback from complaints, feedback that’s come back from surveys on an annual basis and we try and work with the organisation to understand, are they thinking about us when they adjust their process?
So in the London and Herts area of SNG, we’ve got two new repairs maintenance services coming online.
So we have two residents that go along to the contract meetings to understand what’s happening, how they’re training their staff, what the feedback is and anywhere that we can input to make sure that for any of our residents that don’t have the time to engage, you’re still getting a better service, so it’s a really interesting piece.
Mike was telling us they’re keeping to the timelines that were agreed and they are meeting their repairs. So any feedback, please send it in.
The final bit that I wanted to highlight that was discussed in today’s meeting is relation to the customer contact centres.
So at the moment the organisation currently has two main call centres, one that somebody would call if they’re calling from former Network Homes and one that former Sovereign Homes would use.
The idea is that over the next two or three years there will be an integration of those call centres so eventually, you should be able to call one number and you’ll get through to your call centre and they’ll be able to support you whether you’re former Network or former Sovereign.
They are currently working on shared practices to ensure that employees have the same across the board and they are hoping that as they integrate this, when their software integration comes up, that should then finalise the call centres.
So during that time, as a resident you shouldn’t see any difference, unless it’s an improvement.
So yes, we are keeping an eye on that as engaged residents.
Previous panel meeting updates
March 2025 CIP meeting summary video transcript
Hi, my name is Ruth.
I'm a member of the CIP which is the Customer Influence panel and today we had our second meeting.
It was really exciting to come together again and we were talking about so many different things.
We had people come in and tell us about what was happening with the organisation in terms of the new repairs and maintenance service for the London and Hertfordshire areas and talking about their contract review meetings that they're having monthly where one of our members of the panel is attending.
To make sure that the mobilisation of the new service and the closing of other works in progress with the old service will enable customers to still enjoy what's happening and not to have a poor-quality service.
One really good positive is that Angie from the Scrutiny Panel, who's the chair of the Scrutiny Panel, came to talk to us about the next scrutiny they're about to undertake on equality, diversity and inclusivity within SNG and how they're going to start doing that with different groups of people to get the data and also going to the organisation to talk to the relevant sections for information.
So that will be quite an interesting scrutiny that I look forward to sharing the outcome of, or Jackie will at a later date.
And the next meeting for the Customer Influence Panel is the 14th of May 2025 and we're holding it at the Bristol offices.
CIP first meeting summary - 15 January 2025 - video transcript
0:00
We had our first panel meeting today.
0:02
It went really well, really good.
0:04
Questions were asked, we challenged on a few points, staff were upright and honest, and the outcomes from the meeting have been really good.
0:14
So we've identified a scrutiny already which we will pass over to the scrutiny panel - and that was around equality, diversity and inclusion report, where we want to just dig in a little bit deeper.
0:28
Members contributed very well.
0:30
I have to say Princess raised some really good questions.
0:35
We've had some really good outcomes on the ‘Voice of the Customer’.
0:39
We challenged on the ASB satisfaction rate and we have our next meeting scheduled now for the 12th of March and that will be with the regulator in attendance.
0:53
And so we are busily preparing ourselves for that meeting now.