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, covering the following areas:

·         Within tenancy services LTP was working with the Voids Team and had agreed to change the format of inspecting voids – All LTP members were to attend a refresher voids inspection training programme and attend a quarterly working group to review voids process to enhance the process and to put forward recommendations. LTP understood inspecting a targeted one property a week may be difficult due to property type and availability, and had agreed to inspect as many as possible taking direction from the voids team – our aim was to increase from 5% to 10%.

·         LTP continued to review the complaints process and we were due to hold our third meeting in Feb/March. We had requested recommendations to be shared with relevant officers together with a request for further feedback relating to some complaints.

·         LTP were working closely with the Interim Maintenance Manager on the schedule of performance focusing on creating a marketing programme to deliver a consistent message and information to tenants on the benefits of the schedule of repairs project. We had posted eight schedule repairs posts on our Face Book Page to promote and encourage tenants to make an appointment.

·         We continued to hold our monthly LTP meetings.

·         We held our AGM and formally adopted our Constitution on Monday 7^th November 2022. Two members of the public attended expressing interest, resulting in a new member of LTP.

·         The Resident Involvement Manager hosted a celebration event on Wednesday 15^th November 2022 to acknowledge all the challenging work over the last couple of years in creating the LTP Constitution and the Tenant Involvement Strategy. The Mayor, Director of Housing and Portfolio Holder for Housing attended and kindly presented LTP with a Thank You speech.

·         LTP volunteered and assisted the Resident Involvement Manager at the Jarvis and Shuttleworth House fire safety exercise and engagement event. We found both events successful, in particular, tenants at Jarvis House actively engaged with officers and Lincolnshire Fire and Rescue.

·         He had stood down from ARCH and was pleased to confirm Debbie Rousseau as his replacement. She attended a meeting in January 2023.

·         In November 2022, five LTP members attended a free ARCH Conference. The conference delivered two workshops on decarbonisation and fuel poverty/cost of living and in addition to this, three guest speakers; Kate Dodsworth – Director of Consumer Regulation and Fleur Priest-Stephens - Tenant Engagement Manager for the Regulator of Social Housing, presented information on the proposed tenant satisfaction measures and regulatory changes. Caritas Charles – Policy and Insight Manager addressed the conference on resident engagement in building safety.

·         Three LTP members were working with Keeley Johnson and Area Housing Managers to create an Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB) working group looking at ASB cases on a quarterly cycle and had recently completed their first review The working group were also in the process of trying to obtain an ASB accreditation.

·         In November 2022, he attended the Social Housing Quality Register Panel (SHQR) launch event which highlighted how the Resident Panel would run over the next 12 months, providing the panel with opportunities to discuss topics. The SHQR panel would focus on one of the chosen topics, “how complaints are managed by landlords and the Housing Ombudsman” via the online community, a platform used to share experiences of social housing and thoughts about related government policies, ensuring and enabling us to have direct communication with The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) and help drive change for the future. The online community would involve a mixture of activities, questions and discussions on an aspect of the social housing quality programme.

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.