Agenda item

To inform Committee of the actions that are underway and scheduled in response to the white paper and the seven strands of the charter for social housing residents.

The Head of Housing Services introduced the report explaining the paper outlined Stroud District Council’s response to the charter for social housing residents shown in Appendix B and that part of the works for the installation of fire alarms and carbon monoxide detectors had already begun. As part of the renewal of the existing smoke detectors, they were being replaced by new combined smoke, heat and carbon monoxide detectors. The Head of Housing Services drew attention to the tenant feedback which ranged from mixed to generally positive. He explained the new task and finish groups covering resident involvement, voids and repairs and energy retrofit had now been set up. He also informed the committee of the newly appointed Change Agent.

The Head of Housing Services spoke of the newly proposed Tenant Representatives and Deputy Tenant Representatives which was a huge step to improve tenant engagement. He further explained there was no timetable for delivery of the Social Housing White Paper and some of the proposals within the report required more engagement, consultation and legislation. 

In a response to a question from Councillor Miles the Head of Housing Services advised that they would be looking at the wider district to find what global issues were affecting tenants and that resident engagement would be required.

Questions were taken from Councillor Fryer on the resources and capabilities to provide a services to tenants and deal with any communication issues between tenants and the Council. The Head of Housing Services acknowledged they needed to find a balance between sending officers out on site and having the resources available to answer the phones. He informed the committee that the fit for the future programme was working alongside services to improve call handling. The Head of Housing Services also explained that this was something the new task and finish groups were looking into and they would report back to the Committee with their findings.

In response to Councillor Green, the Head of Housing Services explained the reason the actions in the report hadn’t been completed already was due to a large reduction in posts particularly in resident engagement at the council approximately 4 years ago. A lot of extra work was given to the Neighbourhood Management Officers (NMOs) which needed to be re-addressed in order to get them back to being dedicated officers for tenants, which is what the fit for the future programme was doing.

The Head of Housing Services responded to Councillors Patricks’ concerns over the Out of Hours service (OOH), he acknowledged the issues that took place last year and advised that the Head of Contract Services had been working hard to ensure the issues had been addressed. The Chair advised that a full enquiry into the OOH service last year had been carried out actions would be taken to rectify the problems.

In response to Councillor Baker, the Head of Housing Services confirmed there were approximately 1000 properties per NMO, each NMO had a fixed patch and that tenants should know who their NMO is so that they contact them with any issues however further work could be done in this area.

Councillor Fryer proposed and Councillor Hynd seconded.

On being put to the vote, the Motion was carried unanimously.