Agenda item - Residents Question Time

Responses to items raised at the Tenant Only Meeting held on 8 January 2019 (copy attached as ‘blue pages’).

60.1    Estate Inspections

60.2    A resident asked for clarification on the new process for inspections and Hilary Edgar replied that it was currently a work in progress with more information being provided in the near future. The resident also asked about the “Don’t Walk By” initiative outlined on page 12 and  Hilary confirmed that she had further information on this initiative which encouraged residents to report on problems and she confirmed that she would leave the written information out for residents to take away from this meeting. The resident queried whether this had been put back a year from Spring 2019 and Hilary replied that although it had been delayed, it had not been put back by a year.

            A Resident wanted to report an overflowing drain with cement poured into it,          which was still blocked at 62 Godwin Road. Martin Reid replied that he would look into this.

60.2    Drain clearance

60.3    A resident asked about drain clearance at Conway Court, as mentioned on page 13, since they stated that there was a huge difference between the 24 hours and 20 days specified.  They stated that that residents have talked about a big lake and when a 20    day repair period was put in place, this may have seeped away and therefore the        main drains issues were not being properly addressed. The Mears spokesperson said that it had been noted in the call centre log that the drain was overflowing and they   confirmed that the response time was categorised as 24 hours for emergencies and     up to   20 days for routine call outs.  They confirmed that over Christmas this       particular case had been reported on 20 December and was then attended on 24^th December – four days later.  The resident stated that there had been many drains issues and the current system was not working or dealing effectively with these issues.  It was noted that the person reporting the drain issue had to give extensive information and that the way it was reported affected how fast the issue was dealt with.  A resident then spoke about a gap of a period of 5 months between reporting a drains issue and a vehicle being sent to deal with this and they were not sure whether this was on the part of an estate covered by the Highways team.  Martin Reid confirmed that there was a difference between the way that the Highways and Housing teams handled repairs and he stated that it was something that he would talk about with Mears. He also stated that if patterns were emerging then they would look into the particular issue that Councillor Barnett had raised.

60.3    A resident asked the Mears spokesperson if there was a set of questions that staff asked in an emergency and the Mears Spokesperson replied that there was a special set of diagnostic question.  Another resident asked if there was progress in looking into the issues of drains across the City, since this was an ongoing problem and whether there were preventative measures such as stopping leaves falling into drains and Alistair Red replied that there was no programme of investment currently but that it was something that the Council could look into .

60.4    3. Community Payback

60.5    Hilary Edgar stated that she had still not received any response back regarding the Community payback as stated on page 15.  She stated that she would ask the Estates team on this issue.

60.5    4.  Clarendon & Ellen

60.6    A resident stated that they were not happy with response and that they had not seen them since they had walk off over a dispute over an invoice.  The resident confirmed that there was lot of half completed work and that the property looks the same as it had in 2010 and she felt that everything now should go through the Resident Involvement Team. Hilary Edgar stated that everything had now gone to the Payback team and there had been a lot of sickness within the Team. Hilary confirmed that regarding the EDB work they would have to look at alternative ways of carrying this out and that they would also arrange for another team to do shed and garden work. Hilary confirmed that they wanted to work with us that there was, but there was a current staffing issue.

60.7    There were no questions around the East & Central areas.

60.8    RESOLVED: That the panel agreed to note the reports.