Agenda item - Chair's Communications

61       Chair's Communications

61.1    The Chair stated the sad news that two regular attendees of this Panel: Les Wakeling and Christina Hadleigh had passed away and led a 1 minute silence in their memory. He said of Christina Hadleigh that she was one of a kind and he would miss her spirited passion.

The Chair then gave the following communications:

·                     Although it was not a new organisation since the Chair had been involved setting it up 18 years ago, he confirmed it was now new for Brighton & Hove and enabled low cost training and gave the opportunity to taking advantage of training opportunites.

·                     Regarding the Agenda for programme, which was set by a tenant survey, there was a follow-up on the budge discussed at the Resident Only meeting.  He confirmed that the wi-fi shelter was going ahead and that they hoped to expand resources for the EDB but sadly this did not get passed by the PRG – as they were told that there was not enough demand for this.

·                      On a positive note, an extra £7 million investment was confirmed to acquire more council homes and buy buildings for use as emergency homeless accommodation.

·                     Regarding the question of buying back  housing stock, the home purchasing policy has now been doubled from 3.5 to 7 million in order to buy building to replace Windsor Court and Percival Terrace

·                     The Chair of Housing, Councillor Anne Meadows is no longer a member of Labour and has joined the conservative party.  The Chair stated that there was a lot of turmoil and that he guessed that the deputy Chair Tracey Hill may be appointed as Head of the Housing Committee

·                     It was announced that Martin Reid had taken on the new role of Assistant Head of Housing.