Agenda item

Mick Barber, Chair of Lincoln Tenants Panel, provided a written report on the panel’s continued work on a variety of projects with tenancy services, fire safety assurance, maintenance, business management and resident involvement teams. The briefing note was designed as a regular update to members of Housing Scrutiny Sub Committee.

LTP continued to work with tenancy services, fire safety assurance, maintenance, business management and resident involvement on a variety of projects.

He gave a brief overview of the projects being covered in these areas:

·         LTP recently attended a voids refresher training course delivered by tenancy services and resident involvement. All members of LTP had signed up to become a voids inspector.

·         He continued to hold quarterly meetings with the voids team leader reviewing void inspections and targets.

·         We had successfully inspected twelve voids December – April and all had surpassed our standards. We understood inspecting a targeted one property a week may be difficult due to property type and availability, we had agreed to inspect as many as possible and take direction from the voids team – our aim was to increase from 5% to 10%. A suggestion to conduct multiple void inspections was currently under review by the void team’s leader.

·         The complaints review group continued to hold quarterly meetings - We had requested recommendations shared with relevant officers together with a request for further feedback relating to some complaints.

·         The ASB working group had completed the second review cycle and had identified improvements - Three LTP members were also in the process of trying to obtain an ASB accreditation.

·         The schedule of repairs (SOR) working group had put forward recommendations to increase awareness of the SOR programme on Facebook together with link to main calendar.

·         LTP volunteered and assisted various officers from City of Lincoln Council (CoLC) at a fire safety exercise at Jarvis House, we found the events to be successful, in particular, tenants at Jarvis House actively engaged with officers and Lincolnshire Fire and Rescue.

·         LTP had reviewed CoLC Lincoln standards, fencing and communal area policies and submitted recommendations.

·         We continued to hold our monthly LTP meetings and had recruited a new LTP member, we now had eleven inducted LTP members.

·         LTP continued to represent COLC at Association of Retained Council Housing (ARCH) and Debbie Rousseau was now a fully opted committee member allowing the Chair of LTP to represent COLC as a panel member on the Social Housing Quality Register online community Panel attending online webinars.

·         LTP had joined TPAS – the leading tenant engagement experts. TPAS were a not-for-profit organisation and had been representing Registered Provider’s, Local Authorities, ALMO’s (arms-length management organisation) etc since 1988. It promoted, supported and championed tenant involvement and empowerment in social housing across England. We had recently completed an introductory online seminar and were in the process of joining online training sessions and webinars covering housing related subjects.

RESOLVED that the content of the written update from the Chair of LTP be noted with thanks, to be continued as a regular agenda item.