Issue - meetings

Councillor Daryl Brown left the meeting prior to the consideration of this item.

Councillor Homan explained that when she had become Cabinet Member for Housing in 2014 she had attended a borough housing forum and the meeting had been dominated by people concerned about their housing partly because of the previous administration's approach to social housing and partly because they were not being involved in housing services. She felt that the council had made significant progress in the last two years to give residents the opportunity to get involved and shape how services were delivered.

Daniel Miller, Service Improvement & Resident Involvement Manager, explained that the emphasis of his team's work was now to put residents at the heart of decision making. The team had been expanded from 3 to 7 officers to allow them to do this; and his team now supported the Borough Housing Forum, Housing Representatives Forum, Sheltered Housing Forum, Leasehold Forums, Repairs Working Group, Communications Group, Investment Group, Inclusion Group, Reading Group, Caretaking Working Group and Residents’ Conference Planning Group. A new Resident Involvement Strategy had been developed with residents which aimed to:

1)    Place greater control and influence at the hands of our residents, making us more accountable for the housing services they receive.

2)    Deliver ‘More Involvement, Better Involvement’ by working with residents to identify and break down barriers to engagement.

3)    Promote social inclusion and support thriving and vibrant communities.

Councillor Connell asked how effective the service was at engaging new residents. Daniel Miller explained that over 150 people were directly involved in at least one of the groups previously mentioned or through their membership of a Tenants & Residents Association (TRA). At the residents conference a further 26 people had expressed an interest in getting involved in some way. These people would all be contacted by his team and officers would discuss with them how they might like to get involved; the process for contacting residents had been designed with the help of the active service improvement groups. Daniel Miller said that he was not complacent however, and explained that his team was trying to get lots more residents involved; one idea was to promote opportunities for giving instant feedback through ‘Rant and Rave’ which is being trialled by the Housing Department and repairs contract, Mitie.

John Ryan, Chair of the Investment Group agreed that more residents were needed to add to the range of experience and to reduce the workload of some of the more engaged residents. He felt that more training for those getting involved was important to retaining residents and to getting the most from them. Nilavra Mukerji explained that historically this training had been left to other volunteers, particularly Chairs, to organise, and agreed that this was not ideal. He said that officers planned to develop an induction programme for residents.

A resident said that some of the Tenants’ and Residents’ Associations (TRAs) in the borough were not as effective as they should be, with some not engaging well with  ...  view the full minutes text for item 11