Landlord Panel meeting notes – 10 July 2024
Attendees:
Tenant members – Linda, Kimberley, Patricia, Sav
Cllr John Harrison, Cabinet Member responsible for Housing
Cllr Sandra Graham, Cabinet Member responsible for Climate Emergency
Peter Mennell, Director of Housing and Property Services
Dave Foster, Head of Property Services
Toby Hartigan-Brown, Head of Housing Management
Angela Melvin, Engagement Manager
1. Minutes of the last meeting and matters arising
The minutes were agreed, no matters arising.
2. Terms of Reference
The group agreed the terms of reference with one addition to be made. In the Quorum section, this is to be amended to read: ‘Over half of panel members must be present for a meeting to take place, including at least one councillor member.’
3. Tenant member questions to Peter Mennell
Tenant members had each submitted a question ahead of the meeting, which he answered. These covered his own family background and career, how he views the task of running the service, plans for affordable housing, estate walkabouts and getting to know our tenants better.
Tenant members went on to highlight the importance of knowing who your neighbourhood housing officer is, as many don’t. Similarly, we need to be better at promoting what we do – for example the estate walkabout programme – and this will be picked up by THB.
A communications and engagement plan will be brought to the next Panel meeting (AM).
4. Housing and Property Service Plan 2024-25
PM shared the service plan for the current financial year. This reflects the Authority’s values and the Mayoral priorities. While this is already set, we would like to involve this panel in developing the plan for the 2025-26 period.
The group would be keen to see something around the issue of sub-letting, something more detailed around the net-zero agenda relating to homes and a more specific reference to anti-social behaviour.
The panel is keen to understand what these priorities are being measured against and performance data will be brought to the next panel meeting.
The panel could task the Repairs and Investment Panel, or Estates and Communities Panel, with looking at some of these priorities in more detail.
5. Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs) and Performance
TSMs are national performance standards for the social housing sector, which were introduced last year.
The panel had been sent a scorecard showing these – with a result for 2023-24, a sector benchmark figure, and targets for the following three years.
Tenants highlighted the low satisfaction with handling complaints (TP09). PM responded that we are being realistic with targets and ideally this would be much higher; our score is similar to the national benchmark.
DF commented that this is the first year of TSMs and we need to get into the detail of why people are giving this feedback. Work is ongoing to understand this. We produce an annual complaints report and many are around repairs and investment. We receive thousands of calls regarding repairs each year and the figure is a very low percentage of these. Having said that, we would ideally have none.
Tenant members had experienced issues with the repairs system themselves, mentioning poor communication as a problem.
PM highlighted that the biggest stretch targets in the scorecard relate to engagement and listening, cleaning and anti-social behaviour. Our Neat Streets environmental programme will help improve the appearance of estates and we can do more to highlight our work to tackle anti-social behaviour.
We can invite the team which oversees that to a future meeting (AM to action).
Work is also underway to improve our communication with tenants in general (AM).
JH mentioned that there are industry standards with regard to repairs, and if we aren’t able to meet those then we need to keep the tenant informed. The overall tenant satisfaction score (TP01) is set for a target of 75% by 2026-27 (it is currently 69%). JH asked if this is high enough and DF replied that we can review future targets. A 75% result would put us among the top of comparable local authority housing services.
6. Annual Tenant Report 2023-24
A draft annual report had been shared with the panel. This includes a variety of information and performance figures. It has been developed taking into account feedback from tenants at the Tenant Welcome Event in March.
The panel made some suggestions, including more detail on affordable homes, examples of work to tackle anti-social behaviour, and future plans. They would like wording to be reviewed to make it plain English throughout.
A further draft, taking these points into consideration, will be shared with the panel before it is finalised (AM to action).
7. Annual Tenant Event
This is to be held on Monday 23 September, at the council offices.
The agenda for the day will include general updates on the service and progress towards priorities. There will be an opportunity for group discussion, to ensure tenants can share their views on specific challenges.
Panel members were asked to consider taking an active role on the day, reflective of their role with this group.
A more detailed event plan will be brought to the September panel meeting and panel members will be asked at that point to confirm how involved they would like to be on the day.
8. Any Other Business
Panel members were asked if they would be happy to move meeting times to later in the day, so as to be more accessible to those with work commitments. This was agreed.
The new engagement website, Our North Tyneside Voice, launched this week. It is a soft launch initially, with wider promotion of the site planned shortly. All members registered with the current Our North Tyneside Voice database will be contacted directly and invited to register on the new site. The site includes a dedicated hub for council tenant engagement.