Landlord Panel - 9 September 2025

Location: North Tyneside Council offices, Quadrant, Cobalt Business Park

Attendees

Tenant members – Linda, Kim

Cllr John Harrison, Cabinet Member Responsible for Housing; Cllr Sandra Graham, Cabinet Member responsible for Community Safety and Climate Emergency

Peter Mennell, Director of Housing and Property Services; Dave Foster, Head of Property Services; Toby Brown, Head of Housing Management; Ian Rice, Service Manager, Financial Support; Angela Melvin, Housing Engagement Manager

Apologies

Tenant member – Kim

1. Notes of the last meeting and action log

Notes were agreed, with some comments:

Tenants presenting at Secure Committee: PM suggested they attend a meeting in the first instance and he will follow this up with Trish.
Buddy scheme: TB clarified that while we couldn’t run a specific scheme, there is work ongoing to develop our new approach to neighbourhoods and community working which will encourage ‘being a good neighbour’. TB will follow up.

JH raised the issue of social housing stigma, which Linda has spoken of previously and is on the agenda for discussion at tomorrow’s Estates and Communities Panel tomorrow. AM commented that we have looked at the national Stop Social Housing Stigma campaign materials and we are already incorporating many of its themes in our regular engagement and communication work; and we will continue to promote positive stories about the contribution of our tenants to their local communities and that we are proud to be a social housing provider. Linda raised the question of language and how it can affect tenants to hear their homes referred to as ‘units’ and ‘stock’. PM agreed and will take this point forward.

2. Regular Reports

The following reports had been shared with the panel in advance of the meeting.

a) Equality & Diversity six-monthly report

IR ran through the main points of the report and highlighted key points of interest, including:

We are working to address the imbalances caused by disadvantage and discrimination, so that we can make sure everyone has opportunities to access our services and be involved in what we do.
We cannot comply with any of our legal and regulatory requirements if we don’t hold information about our customers and their needs.
What we are doing to collect demographic details from new tenants, and update those we hold about current tenants as some of this is out of date.
We now have over 76% of the customer information that we need to hold about our customers. However, IR highlighted that some figures, eg around disability and sexual orientation, appear much lower than he would expect them to be.
We only hold information on communication preferences for less than 3% of tenants and this is an area we must improve on.

Teams across the service do collect data, however previously this couldn’t be transferred from one team to another due to GDPR regulations and what we stated the original purpose of collecting the data was. We are now routinely updating our data, using a variety of touchpoints.

Three objectives have been set for 2025-26:

Continue to improve our customer information with the aim of achieving 90%
Complete a data cleanse of the information held on our IT systems ahead of implementation of our new Unified system in early 2026-27 (tenants will be able to update their information themselves on Unified)
Develop and roll out training to support our staff to understand and respond appropriately to diversity issues, communications needs and cultural differences.

IR is also attending the Estates and Communities Panel and the Repairs and Investment Panel this month to share this work with them, and ask how we can improve our customer information and encourage tenants to provide details relating to protected characteristics. This can be a sensitive subject to talk about – from the perspectives of both our staff feeling comfortable asking the questions and our tenants feeling comfortable to respond.

The panel appreciated this is a long-term project and will receive a further update in six months.

b) Quality and Safety quarterly report

DF gave an overview of the report, for April-June, which updates on where we are in relation to Safety Standards. We are confident that we have processes and procedures in place to maintain homes to good standard, with 100% compliance in a number of areas. DF highlighted some key points:

There has been a significant improvement for electrical testing, following the move to complete this within a five-year period.
Progress in stock condition surveys continues, which are identifying issues and making good – the figure for Q1 was 49.9% and this has since increased to 62.8%.
There has been a significant reduction in complaints relating to condensation, mould and damp, which is evidence of the improvements we have made over the last year, including the video diagnostic tool and revised guidance for tenants.

Overall, we are in a positive position but there are areas to focus on to continue make progress. Awaab’s Law comes in during October, we are evaluating current cases to understand which reports would be covered by the Law and are trialling a triage process.

We are keen to ensure internal audits and external quality assurance are continuing. We have engaged an external organisation to do an audit of our quality and safety standards and can provide a copy of their report to the panel once available.

The panel welcomed the progress being made. There were some questions about terms and measurements used and PM suggested some key terms could be defined in future reports.

c) Engagement quarterly report, with draft Tenant Engagement Strategy 2025-29

AM gave a summary of the report for April-June, updating for activities which had since taken place:

56 tenants attended the three July drop-ins
Over 200 surveys had been returned for the kitchen choices consultations
The annual report had been published and promoted

Tenant engagement continues to be guided by our tenants and evidence of tenant views from sources such as the Tenant Satisfaction Measures survey results. Teams within the service are keen to work with tenants to improve our services.

The draft Tenant Engagement Strategy had also been circulated to the panel for consideration, ahead of it going to the Council’s Cabinet in October for formal approval. Tenants were asked to send any comments to AM by 15 September.

3. Performance update

The regular performance scorecard and quarterly report had been shared in advance of the meeting, along with the quarterly complaints report. DF and TB highlighted some of the indicators:

HB12 Average time taken to repair empty homes – performance has improved slightly, but remains off-target at 20.89 days. The Repairs and Investment Panel will be reviewing this target, among others, at their meeting on 17 September as targets need to be challenging, but achievable. Our teams are finding that more homes fall into higher categories of work required – perhaps because they have not been well looked after, or repairs needed have not been reported. Trish asked whether the scorecard could split this indicator to reflect that and DF replied that the Repairs Panel could offer a view. It was also noted that the Repairs and Investment Panel has asked for a task and finish group to review the whole empty homes process from keys coming in until the property is re-let to understand the customer journey around the process.

TR3 Average number of days to re-let an empty home: This has increased to 55.1 days and a separate piece of work is needed around the overall empty homes/re-let performance. DF stressed that we have an exceptionally low number of properties going through the vacant process, less than 1% of our stock are vacant at any one time. This can be looked at jointly between the Estates and Communities, and Repairs and Investment Panels. We have re-established an Empty Homes Board and are also monitoring the cost of B&B accommodation.

PM added that we are buying extra properties, are leasing from private landlords and have secured some grant funding to support this. Sometimes we need to understand why a tenant wants to end their tenancy, eg is it a support issue we could help with? PM asked that a specific report on work around empty homes be brought to a future panel.

The scorecard shows that CN3 Communal Inspections Completed for June was 100%, which shows a significant increase and reflects the work of the team to improve performance.

TR2 tenancy home visits continue to be below target. Whilst this is disappointing, we have seen for the month of July and August an increase in visits being carried out (65.38% and 67.79%). PM explained these are being carried out by a relatively new team, with new processes, and the recently-revised target of 20% per year is ambitious. We are targeting more vulnerable households, or households where we don’t have a lot of information, and as a result are picking up larger issues that require more time to address. Trish asked if there were any options for home visits outside of office hours, given that the highest age group for complaints is 35-44 and this age group is likely to be working during the day. TB replied this wasn’t currently possible but is likely to be reviewed.

TR2% New Tenant Contacts - As of the month of June 2025, 32.84% of new tenant contact was carried out within the 6-week target. This is not to say the visit / contact did not happen afterwards, just the target was missed due to various reasons (holidays, sickness staff absence, failed kept appointments by tenants or appointment re-arranged by tenants. For the months of July and August, there has been a month-by-month increase of visits carried out within time (40.30% and 44.95%).

In relation to complaints, DF highlighted a discrepancy between the scorecard and complaints report on TR8 % of complaints responded to on time – the correct figure is 98%. We have seen an increase in Stage Two complaints, however a tenant can take a complaint to Stage Two without having to give a reason – it could simply be due to the fact that they did not agree with our response when the complaint was at Stage One. Complaints for the Community Protection team are now within the figures, following their move to be part of the service last year. However, complaints per team has seen an improvement on the previous year.

Linda asked why 54 complaints had not been upheld during April-June, as this seemed a lot. DF replied that we see that figure as a positive, in that there was no action to take. The panel agreed it would be helpful to have more detail on the type of complaint not being upheld. This will be followed up ahead of the next round of tenant panels, as they all receive these updates.

Linda also asked about complaints relating to North Tyneside Living, whether they have the same process for the home visits and what a tenant in those homes could do if they wanted to raise an issue about their housing officer – who could be the person carrying out the home visit. TB replied that the NTL service does try and resolve any issues within the service, but if the tenant isn’t satisfied, they can use the same formal complaints route.

The panel noted all the reports that had been presented and agreed to receive updates at future meetings.

4. Plans for upcoming activities

The annual Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSM) survey is being sent to 5,000 households next week. This time, a prize draw is being offered to those who return the survey. The survey is open until mid-October, subject to the required number of responses being received.

The annual tenants’ event is on Friday 26 September and all the panels have been asked for volunteers to facilitate table discussions. It is hoped that some budget consultation will be able to be covered as part of the session, however it is still early in the financial planning cycle and, if it is not possible at the event, we will ensure opportunities to comment on that are widely available to tenants at a later date.

5. Any Other Business

The panel were reminded that they can ask for topics to be discussed at the panel. Please contact AM with any suggestions.