Agenda item - Chairs Communications

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Agenda item

Chairs Communications

Minutes:

          New Homes

16.1   The Chair was pleased to inform Members that the council had officially opened 12 new homes across the city since the last committee meeting including family houses; flats and wheelchair accessible homes.

16.2   Aldwich Mews and Darwell Court were further additions to the council’s New homes for Neighbourhoods programme to build at least 500 new council homes on council-owned land, to provide much needed affordable rented housing in Brighton & Hove.

16.3   The new flats at St James were the first in a new project aiming to convert redundant spaces in council owned properties to provide extra homes – typically on the ground floor of high-rise blocks, such as former caretaker’s rooms or storage areas.

16.4   All three projects demonstrated that the council continued to be creative in providing more council homes, whether it is by converting part of an existing building, or building new homes on pockets of little-used council land.

          Improvements to the repairs reporting service

16.5   The Chair was pleased to advise Members that The Property & Investment team and Mears had been working together to introduce improvements to the council’s repairs reporting service.

16.6   Residents currently received a reminder text message ahead of their repairs appointment and this service was enhanced from 5 September with text messages confirming the appointment at point of booking and a text request for feedback when a repair is completed which can be directly replied to. This helped Mears to pass on good feedback to the team and also to respond quickly if anything has gone wrong.

          Temporary Accommodation, hostel and existing council/social tenants Event

16.7   On 9 September there was also a highly successful event for all Temporary accommodation, hostel and existing council/social tenants organised at the Friends Meeting House. 247 visitors attended – with 137 for TA/hostels and 110 for the council/housing association Swap Shop.

16.8     Special invitations were sent to under-occupiers who were able to find out more about the Council’s new build and adapted new homes, and visitors signed up for Homefinder as well as obtaining advice from Southern Water and Moneyworks.

16.9     To date 40 council tenants had moved since attending a Swap Shop event and the Chair and officers hoped for many more after 9 September.

Your Energy Sussex (YES) Partnership Plan

16.10    The Chair updated the committee on an opportunity for Brighton & Hove City Council to participate in the Your Energy Sussex (YES) partnership plan to establish a local energy tariff scheme to deliver a set of low cost, high value energy tariffs to residents and businesses across the Sussex area.

16.11    As over 70% of domestic customers who had never or rarely switched supplier could save up to £300 per year by switching onto a more competitive deal, the council were keen to promote this project to tackle fuel poverty in the city.

16.12    YES is aiming to procure a licensed energy supplier to deliver the scheme offering householders and businesses the opportunity to purchase their energy from a trusted source that will:

·       Offer residents and businesses access to lower cost energy

·       Provide excellent customer service

·       Ensure customers have easy to understand, more transparent energy bills

·       Develop Smarter metering and billing technology

16.13    The procurement process was planned to start in October with the aim of an energy supply partner to be in place in May 2017 with a potential launch of the scheme in Autumn 2017.

(YES is a local authority partnership open to 15 Sussex local authorities working with residents, businesses and other partners to promote energy saving and renewable energy).

          National Housing Day

16.14  The housing service took part in the national housing day on social media on Monday 19 September; tweeting over 1,000 followers about all the range of services available from B&HCC.

 

 

 


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