Agenda item - Residents Question Time

Responses to items raised at the Tenant Only Meetings held on the following dates:

(copy attached).

69.1      1)        Estate Development Budget 2020/21

2)         Estate Development Budget 2019/20

·      Residents asked what projects the Woodingdean area, which was predominantly independent houses which lacked communal areas, was eligible to bid for in the EDB because they could not apply for fencing.

·      Martin Reid responded that Housing could meet residents to discuss this matter and to walk the estate to explore what bids could be processed. Housing had offered to do this before July, at residents’ convenience, and other estates had already benefitted from this offer.

·      Ododo Dafe stated that Hilary Edgar’s written response to the question had mentioned a potential budget to be set up for individual fencing for tenants’ homes to equitably execute projects.

·      Sam Warren, Community Engagement Manager, stated that there was a group reviewing the EDB budget which would welcome resident feedback and that if the criteria was not clear enough, resulting in residents not understanding why their bids had been rejected, that they wanted to clarify this.

·      In response to residents asking why fencing was not offered to tenants in arrears, Ododo Dafe responded that the Council would be happy to engage with tenants in arrears and that residents should contact Housing Customer Service or Management Team to arrange a payment plan which the residents would have to adhere to for three months to become eligible, however if the fencing was a health and safety matter then it would not be necessary.

·      In response to Councillor Simson asking how the Council assessed eligibility, officers stated that it was a new process and the criteria was being designed using residents’ comments and feedback.

·      The Chair stated that the process should be on a case-by-case basis and that if an incident happened in future that it should be addressed, investigated and brought back to the Panel.

·      In response to Ododo Dafe explaining that if a resident felt their bid had been treated unfairly that there was an appeal system and if necessary a problem would be rectified, Councillor Bell said that there had been incidences where residents were forced to wait until the following year to re-bid.

·      Councillor Simson stated that fences were important to estates because they improved the environment in social areas.

69.2      3)         Weeds and debris in guttering

·      Residents stated that there were no recent estate visits and asked if MEARS were monitoring the estate or whether maintenance was purely based on reported incidences.

·      Councillor Williams said that following an estate walk with Councillor Platts that the problems spotted had been quickly rectified and proposed that this exercise should be a regular occurrence.

·      In response to leaseholders asking why operatives could not be trained with an armed hose device to gutter flat roofs to avoid using scaffolding, Theresa Youngman, Contract Compliance Manager, stated that this device could not be used if the building was above two stories because operatives would not have sight of the gutter and that there was health and safety legislation protecting the current scaffolding procedure.