About policies and procedures

The work of writing and reviewing policies and procedures is generally not seen, by housing staff, as a pressing priority. It can become so – if the Audit Commission’s inspector is about to call or there is an impending follow-up visit from the Housing Corporation’s Lead Regulator. Even in these circumstances, housing and support staff can struggle to find the time to deliver policy and procedure documentation when it is needed – and the time spent working on documentation projects can cause resentment if it diverts effort from the more pressing priority of delivering services.

But policies and procedures are not just for external scrutiny; they also have an important role in:

• Ensuring consistency of practice and service

• Training and induction of new staff

• Co-ordination with other parts of the service – others can see what you do, how you do it and therefore how their work adjoins

At times of reorganisation and/or restructuring, team working on the development of policies and procedures can be a very successful way of working out better ways of doing things.

At Somertext, we understand these issues and your priorities. We can work flexibly, according to your needs and the resources available to you.

Our approach

Our approach is always to work in an iterative process with clients to produce purpose-built policies and procedures – we do not use ‘off-the-shelf’ documentation. This is the tried and tested way of making sure that procedures are valued by users and are actually used, rather than left sitting on the shelf.

For projects that involve reviewing and writing policies and procedures, we initially meet with our clients to discuss their requirements, including the scope of the project, the anticipated time-scale, the organisation of the service and to identify lead officers. We can produce a detailed specification, if required, and a priced proposal. Our proposals identify the number of days required both of us, and of our clients, to carry out the work.