Issue - meetings

Michelle Jackson, Resident Involvement Manager introduced the report and made the following points:

• The service had managed a full compliance regarding lifts, fire assessments and gas;
• There were 140 outstanding actions and there were 134 overdue actions down from 200 in Q4;
• The more fire risk assessments that were done by the Service the more actions that the service needed to carry out;
• The Service was not pleased with the performance of the domestic electrical safety and officers were keeping up the pressure on MEARS to improve the performance in this area;
• A contractor would be brought in in Q2 to work on the domestic electrical safety area;
• MEARS would get more sub contractors to drive up performance;
• Council officers would continue to hold regular meetings with MEARS management;
• Some work was also needed to improve the VOIDS performance as there were some backlogs;
• It was pleasing to note that the Incomes Team now had a full complement of officers that would drive up performance for the team;
• The team was now able to reach out to residents much faster;
• Tenant and Leaseholder Services managers were meeting regularly to consider cases where residents were struggling with payments.

Councillor Jill Bayford, Cabinet Member for Housing also added that there were huge successes since the service was brought back in-house. Cllr Bayford also said that there were challenges being faced by the service. And thanked officers for the detailed report.

Members asked questions and made comments as follows:

• The number of void properties in Thanet was not as many as one would find in other districts. This was testimony to the good work being done by the Housing team;
• The figures for Gas Call and lack of customer satisfaction were reported as being 20%. What was causing this dissatisfaction?
• What was the team doing about this level of dissatisfaction? Could officers drill down in order to understand the reasons behind this?
• There were less complaint s now which was evidence of the good work being put in by the Service;
• It was also good to note that the team had also reported on the areas that were not performing to expectation;
• Members thanked officers for the hard work.

Ms Jackson said that the team was working on getting more feedback from residents which would create a better understanding of why there were levels of dissatisfaction in the reported areas.

Members noted the report.