Today I had the privilege of chairing the NHF Leaseholder and Tenant Service Charge Conference 2021.

The conference included a wide range of sessions delivered by great speakers and panellists along with a really engaged audience asking plenty of interesting questions.

My key takeaways were:

• Organisations have learnt a lot from the approaches that they had to quickly implement during the pandemic, many of which can be carried forward.
• Variety of communication is crucial to reflect a range of customer preferences: knowing your customers and your buildings and testing that data, allows you to make informed choices here.
• Moving forward, the building safety charge under the new Building Safety Bill will present new challenges for organisations with higher risk buildings, with hopefully greater clarity for landlords on some points as the Bill passes through Parliament. No doubt this will be on our agenda again next year when the Bill should have received royal assent.
• Organisations working together and sharing information and best practice is invaluable – whether that be according to geographical areas or wider, for example with the Health and Safety Executive to ensure the new residents' engagement panel is representative as possible.

Although these points were discussed in a service charge context today, on reflection these surely have wider application across a landlord organisation.