North Tyneside Living Panel - 10 February 2026

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

Attendees

Tenant members – Bob, Eldon Court (Chair); Eleanor, The Orchard; John, Rosebank Hall; Fred and Evelyn, Phoenix Rise; Joseph, Chapelville; Morag, Percy Lodge; Patricia, Moorcroft; Heather, Cedar Close; Alison, Southgate; Hilary, The Fold; Diane, Eccles Grange; Ray, Charlton Court

Linda Herman – Senior Service Manager; Angela Melvin, Housing Engagement Manager

Apologies 

Tenant members – Margaret, Feetham Court; Marilyn, Tamar Court

Odmond John, Morgan Sindall; Anthony Howe – NTL Manager; Mark Colvin – NTL Manager

Due to us having new members, we are now limiting it to one rep per scheme, per meeting, to accommodate everyone and ensure tenants have the opportunity to speak.  Meeting papers have been sent to those tenants not attending, for them to stay up to date.

1. Minutes of the last meeting and action log 

These were agreed.

2. Group Group Dwellings and Adjacent Properties Transformation – Consultation Result

 A briefing note on this had been sent to the panel in advance. 

 The NTL service has recently carried out consultation on a proposal to modernise the service for tenants in our group dwellings and adjacent properties.  The proposal would introduce a range of new technology via the council’s Care Call service.  This will provide better value for money, improved service and an increase in hours of cover to 24/7.  

 The consultation found that 78% of tenants in the group dwellings and adjacent properties are in favour of the change.  

 The start date is currently to be confirmed; a letter has been sent to tenants with an update and LH is also preparing a report to update elected members.  

 A panel member asked if it will impact on the PFI sites.  LH confirmed it would not, this is just for the adjacent properties on those sites which have them.  There will be no effect on service or rent in the PFIs. 

 Another question was raised with concern about a lack of personal contact, but LH reassured the panel that those tenants in the group dwellings will get the highest level of service available from Care Call.

 Care Call will be coming out to meet with tenants in the group dwellings to show them some of the assistive technology which will be available to tenants.  It is hoped that the reduction in service charge for those tenants will be in place from April.

 LH confirmed that those in receipt of benefits are not impacted, as they do not pay for the service as it stands.

 The panel agreed that the increased level of service was certainly of interest and looked forward to tenants benefiting from this.

3. Intergenerational gardening project   

The Learning Trust has previously arranged for local schoolchildren to work with our schemes on artwork projects; and now there are plans in place for a gardening project. 

Children from local schools will visit a scheme to plant and grow vegetables in the raised beds.  And then once they are ready, to cook with the vegetables in the communal kitchens with our tenants.  Many of our tenants have experience in gardening and we hope they will get involved in this project to share their skills and knowledge with the children. 

Sadly, we know there are children who do not eat vegetables, or know they are grown in the ground.  They do not see cooking with fresh ingredients at home.  It is hoped that children taking part in this project will take messages about healthy eating home and encourage their families to cook.   Any excess vegetables will be taken by the schools to a local foodbank.   

LH explained that the raised beds in the schemes were installed after tenants asked for them when the schemes were being designed.  Nothing currently in a raised bed will be removed.  Tenants were reminded that the garden areas are managed by Morgan Sindall.

Tenants will be informed when their scheme’s project is about to start and invited to take part.  The panel agreed this was an excellent project and will be interested to hear feedback.  

4. Performance update

The panel had received the regular complaints report and performance scorecard in advance. 

Scorecard

The scorecard shows that 100% compliance continues across:

• Health and Wellbeing Needs Assessments
• Person-centred Fire Risk Assessments
• New tenant welcome meetings

The health and wellbeing checks, and the fire risk assessments, are a requirement of the national Regulator of Social Housing. 

Some tenants are not keen to do these, but we encourage them to take part as it is our duty as landlord to keep our tenants safe.  

Every six months a Housing Officer will visit, in person, to ensure tenants’ homes are compliant with safety needs.  There have been issues with some people removing the intercom boxes from the wall, and cutting the safety pull-cords.  It costs the council to repair and replace these, and in future the repair costs will be passed on to tenants.  

All tenants are given a pendant for emergency use, eg if they fall.  Tenants are encouraged to wear the pendant at all times.  Care Call also issue wrist-worn devices to detect a fall or another emergency which would prevent a tenant from pressing the pendant.  In the new service for the group dwellings, that technology will be available as part of the service.

In terms of Morgan and Sindall performance, several indicators remain below target and below the same period in 2024-25:

• Emergency repairs completed on time
• Urgent repairs completed on time
• Routine repairs completed on time

LH explained that there were issues with staffing at Morgan Sindall over the autumn, which was having an impact.  These issues have improved now, and an improvement in performance is expected over the next few months. 

Complaints report

The complaints report shows that the NTL service continues to receive a relatively low number of formal complaints.  

This is partially down to the unique nature of the service where each scheme has a dedicated Housing Officer for day-to-day issues.  Most repairs and maintenance issues are also not all under North Tyneside Council responsibility and are dealt with directly via the relevant contractor. 

Most of the complaints are about neighbour disputes.  LH clarified that complaints to the complaints team should not be made about disputes with neighbours for personal reasons.  We do try and deal with disagreements between neighbours, however tenants should always try and resolve these between themselves – as they would do if they did not live in a home with access to a Housing Officer.  

5. Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSM) survey 2025 results 

The panel had been sent a briefing note outlining the results of the 2025 survey ahead of the meeting.

FR explained the TSM survey was brought in in 2023 as part of wider national legislation, for all social housing landlords.  A new inspection programme was introduced in 2024 and TSMs are considered as part of that.  There are 22 measures, 12 of which relate to tenant perception and are included on the survey, the remaining 10 cover mandatory safety checks.

• The survey was sent out during September-November
• It went to a random selection of 5,000 tenants in the post
• 992 surveys were returned, 119 of these from NTL tenants
• Of the returns, 563 were submitted by post, 262 were completed online and 160 by phone

As an incentive, a prize draw was offered to encourage returns, but this didn’t improve the response rate compared to the previous year.  

Overall, satisfaction has increased in 11 of the 12 areas.  Complaint handling was the only one to decreases (but results are still better than in 2023).                                       

The top three improved response areas are for:

• Communal areas being clean and well maintained
• Tenants feeling their home is well maintained
• Tenants feeling their landlord is making a positive contribution to the neighbourhood 

Generally, tenants aged 65+ are more satisfied; and NTL tenants are more satisfied than general needs tenants (83% compared to 72%).    

Key points from the NTL responses:

• The 83% satisfaction is an 11% increase from 2024
• 92% are satisfied with repairs
• 89% are satisfied with the maintenance of their home, up 11% 
• 86% are satisfied they feel their home is safe, up 8% 
• 90% are satisfied with communal area maintenance

There are also high scores for NTL tenants feeling they are kept informed, feeling they are treated with respect, and satisfaction with our approach to dealing with anti-social behaviour.

FR asked the group if they felt these results felt about right; and which measures do the panel feel we should focus on to improve?  

There was some discussion around ‘being kept informed’, these panel meetings are opportunities for the reps to share information with their neighbours.  Notes are always available afterwards on the noticeboards and there are building meetings too.  We appreciate not everyone reads the noticeboard, which is their choice, but perhaps we can do things differently to make information more accessible. 

We need to manage expectations too, be clear on what we can and can’t do; and helping tenants to understand the reasons for that.  

FR asked the panel if they thought NTL should have its own action plan to address some of the lower scoring measures or be part of the overall Housing and Property Service one.  The panel agreed it should be part of the overall one.  

FR also asked the panel if they agreed with the different methods used to gather responses – post, online and phone – and they did. 

Future panel meetings will follow up on how we can improve satisfaction with:

• Feeling informed
• Feeling listened to and that tenants’ views are acted on

6. Any Other Business

LH – We have identified areas where tenants aren’t sure of what Morgan Sindall can/can’t do and what tenant responsibilities are.  Recent meetings have highlighted some things that Housing Officers are doing which are not part of their role.  As a result, a ‘professional boundaries’ leaflet has been developed with the Housing Officers.  They will set up building meetings over the next few weeks to outline this in more detail and explain that tenants need to be responsible for minor maintenance, such as changing a lightbulb, themselves.  The leaflet will promote Morgan Sindall’s handyperson service, which tenants can use four times per year.   

AM – We will shortly start writing the 2025-26 Tenants’ Annual Report and would like to include more quotes from our involved tenants.  The panel were invited to send AM any thoughts or comments on the panel from their discussions over the past year.