Agenda item

To receive and comment on the revised Resident Engagement Strategy which responds to engagement with residents, the recommendations of the Housing, Community Safety and Community Engagement Scrutiny Commission and an independent review of resident consultation.

Abi Oguntokun, Director of Landlord Services (Acting), introduced the revised Resident Engagement Strategy which responded to feedback provided by the Regulator, by residents and by recommendations from the Housing, Community Safety and Community Engagement Scrutiny Commission in the previous year.

Abi reported on the opportunities, formal structures and funding in place to support the Council’s engagement with residents whilst also noting the lack of evidence linking these to service outcomes.  Abi explained that from January, four new Boards aimed to change that by establishing clearer links between resident-supported structures and desired outcomes.

Further developments included increased publishing of performance data, developing a remuneration policy to pay residents for their time and travel, a Digital Engagement Strategy and a shift in approach to working with residents more collaboratively. It was hoped the revised Resident Engagement Strategy could come before Cabinet in December.

Councillor Situ stated that the new system allowed for residents to contribute to more specialist areas of the Council’s landlord services by sitting on one of the focused Boards. By increasing the use of digital engagement and through involving more residents, the strategy would also be more agile. In Councillor Situ’s view, the Strategy would provide a shift in role for residents, from one of providing feedback to one of taking part in decision-making.

Councillor Situ acknowledged that more discussion around the Strategy’s later development with the Homeowners’ Forum and the Tenants’ Forum would have been better. However, meetings with residents had been helpful and Appendix 4 of the engagement report provided improvements based on their suggestions.

The Strategic Director of Housing, Hakeem Osinaike, also noted that the Regulator of Social Housing and the tenant engagement organisation, Tpas, had provided positive feedback on the strategy.

Before opening to questions from Commission members, the Chair commented on feelings among some residents that there had not been enough time to view the revised strategy. Councillor Situ explained that drafting of the strategy had been late because of a late report from Social Life and that additional meetings he had since held with residents had registered some of their concerns. He was also willing to meet again before the finalised strategy going to Cabinet in December.

The Chair then invited questions from the Commission. These included:

• whether Social Life had provided a fuller report of which the published version was only a summary and, if so, whether the full version could be published
• why a Leaseholder Board was being reconstituted when the previous iteration had failed, as had been predicted by those residents involved
• how, as a longer-term aim, a shared sense of community might be rebuilt so that the differences which the Social Life report recorded between leaseholders and tenants in tenure type might become less significant relative to fact that they were neighbours
• how the Strategy might use the Boards to create a sense of place and, in its documentation, illustrate what the user journey would be like from a resident’s perspective around questions such as how someone could engage with the Council on housing issues, or how they could find the answer to a particular question
• how the report could more clearly outline a range of residents’ opportunities to engage with the Council such as through illustrating how the process might look in 5 or 6 different types of estate as well as in different areas and for different tenure types, with the aim of making the process of engaging more practical and more reflective of the different needs across the Borough

Officers, and Councillor Situ, responded to the questions noting that:

• there was no fuller report from Social Life, only the version published
• views of Leaseholder/Homeowners’ Boards and their efficacy were diverse, and additional feedback on their role could be provided to the Cabinet Member for consideration before the Strategy was finalised
• the points raised about a resident’s perspective on the information provided in the Strategy were helpful