February 2024

All the happenings this February

Across the Housing and Repairs Directorates so much work has been going on. A multi-disciplinary group of staff representing a range of teams and services completed a sprint to design improvements to the homelessness pathway for domestic violence & abuse (DVA) survivors.

We are working on a Good Neighbourhood Management policy to set out our approach to managing our neighbourhoods, putting residents at the heart of our work. 

A resident working group has been initiated to design and organise a tenant conference proposed for June. We are also running a series of workshops with residents and special interest groups to co-design a Tenant Participation Strategy for the next three years. We met with a group of colleagues from Housing and Repairs earlier this months who provided some valuable insights into engaging residents.

This issue features a story from Hugh Boatswain retiring after an amazing 15 years in Camden's Tenant Participation Team and will hear from Gerry Crowley, Head of Allocations, Lettings and Private Sector Housing about the work that his services have been delivering.

We also want to recognise some exemplary work of one of our Neighbourhood Housing Officer's, Mark Harrison. Multiple colleagues and external partners have given praise to Mark for the commitment and compassion that he has demonstrated when supporting a vulnerable domestic abuse survivor.

This month also celebrated National Apprenticeships week, Camden held an event at Samsung KX. Our very own Fabiana Ferreira from the Homeless Prevention team won Apprentice of the Year. Fabiana was recognised for her excellent contributions to the team and passion for the role. Taking opportunities to grow her knowledge by working with other teams and projects.

Camden's new working with perpetrators programme

Restart is an early intervention programme for perpetrators causing harm in families. Restart works with core professionals, such as Children’s Services and housing, to prevent continued abuse. There are two main strands of work: the Restart Programme, and the Safe & Together Model.

Restart Programme & Accommodation Pathway

The Restart programme is a 4+ week specialist early intervention programme, with an attached housing pathway, for lower-medium risk cases that are aged 17 or over. Restart accepts cases where perpetrators are separated from the adult survivor and/or living outside of the family home.

As part of the assessment and support process, if a temporary or longer-term accommodation need is identified and, it is in the best interests and safety of the family, Restart will work with the allocated children’s services practitioner, the family, and LA housing teams to help facilitate this. Cases must be open to an Early Help Practitioner/Social worker, though housing professionals can refer.

To make a referral, email: Ruby Purvis - ruby.purvis@respect.org.uk

You can find more information about Safe & Together

Team work makes the dreams work – dreams are our only geography…

Exciting times are ahead for our repairs teams that work within our in-house building repairs service. Tony Castle as the new Head of Service has had his ear to the ground since taking the lead for the service, and he’s been keen to listen and deliver on feedback from his frontline teams, most recently including our trade staff and repairs managers…

Since early 2024, the service has transitioned into Geographical working patterns. For our reactive day to day repairs service, this just makes practical sense to everyone at the frontline right up to the top.

The tradespeople, such as plumbers, electricians and carpenters, are now in full swing working in synergy with neighbourhood officers, caretakers, repairs neighbourhood liaison officer and repairs contact centre teams that also all work to geographical patterns.

There’s always been a brave and positive culture for change and trying new things in repairs; the service has a large volume of customer facing frontline staff, and our trades teams all pull in the same direction to do what’s best for the people of Camden, and as our environment changes, we change too, and try something new, always striving for what perfect looks like. These new changes look to allow the service to get more bang for it’s buck and focus on working quickly to make sure we don’t let good service slide.

The proof is always in the pudding; and although it’s still early doors, this big change has been positively received with our teams and residents alike, as we see our appointment wait times come down, our volumes of live repairs drop significantly, and each trades person able to get more work carried out in their day.

We are getting to more appointments each day, given the new ways of working offers better economy of scale due to travel time reduction, and trades working together using buddy systems to build relationships across their workstream and with local residents, and familiarise themselves with the specific needs of the blocks they serve to focus on getting jobs done right first time to reduce repeat visits and complaints.

Team work really does make the dream work after all…

Housing and Repairs story: Hugh's time in Tenant Participation

Hugh Boatswain reflects on his time at Camden and the work Tenant and Resident Associations perform. Hugh has been a great and valued part of Camden and will be missed when he retires in March.  I joined Camden in May 2016 after spending the past 15 years working as a regulator and inspection manager, initially at the then Housing Corporation and latterly at the Audit Commission until 2011. In the intervening period I undertook interim management in a number of organisations. In early 2016 I made the decision to return to my first love – working with tenants’ groups. I love the interaction with residents, albeit at times it can be challenging but altogether rewarding. Camden have some truly dynamic groups who do tremendous and often unheralded work in the borough. A lot of people see TRAs (Tenants' and Resident Associations) as agitators and/or advocates for the residents on their estates. They go well beyond this. A number of the TRAs that I have worked with do advocate for an improvement of life on their estates via: Representing their members’ interest in a variety of forums; Provide social activities on their estate; More recently providing warm spaces, food banks/co-ops, community cafes, after school clubs etc.; Some will go the extra mile, bearing in mind that this is all unpaid and voluntary, like Gamages TRA that secured funding (partly from the Holborn District Management Committee and other grants and donations) to convert a redundant rooftop space into a wellness fitness centre to be used by all ages on the estate. The conversion also provided a safe environment with seating and a sensory garden. Previously the space was a magnet for drug use and anti-social behaviour. I will be leaving Camden (sailing off into blissful retirement) in March but I would like to say I contributed to the development of a number of these TRAs in Kentish Town and Holborn districts (as well as occasionally in other parts of the borough).

Dear Housing and Repairs...

This months challenge is from one of our Strategic Leads - Beatrice Maguire, We are working on a Good Neighbourhood Management policy to set out our approach to managing our neighbourhoods, putting residents at the heart of our work. I'm interested in hearing from colleagues about what 'good' looks like when managing our neighbourhoods, I'll be asking residents the same thing.

"What does good neighbourhood management look like to you?"

In the style of magazine advice columnists, this is a space to pose a challenge, an idea, or question relating to Housing and Repairs.

To provide your response, please add a comment on the Essentials page.

Message from Gerry Crowley

It feels like Christmas and the New Year festivities are a distant memory as we’ve seen a busy start to 2024 with a flurry of activity involving all teams across the Allocations, Lettings and Private Housing Service and beyond! I wanted to use this opportunity to highlight just some of the great work taking place. When it comes to the private sector, Camden continues to lead its London counterparts when utilising its power to tackle criminal landlords and poor property standards.  Our Private Sector Housing colleagues have issued approximately 3500 HMO licences across the borough, which helps to deliver safer and compliant housing to residents.  The service also actively enforces standards and has issued almost £300K in fines against landlords where standards have been breached.   In line with the significant rise in homelessness on a national level, this year Camden has seen an increase of almost 40% in demand for housing assistance which has led to a large increase in the number of households in temporary accommodation and has placed considerable pressure on our general fund.  Colleagues working across our temporary accommodation provision are delivering some excellent work to meet the increased demand as we look at a variety of innovative solutions to meet our statutory demands whilst reducing the financial burden on the organisation.  As many of you will know, Camden leads the way amongst London boroughs when providing support and sanctuary to refugees who have had to flee conflict in their homeland.  I’m very proud of the work delivered by many of our colleagues and in particular the Property, Resident & Tenancy and Housing Placement Services who worked together to enable all 48 Afghan households to move from the Home Office contingency hotel at the Crowne Plaza.  This work will directly improve the lives of refugees as they settle into their new life in Camden. Finally, I have spoken to many colleagues across the service about the Housing & Repairs transformation programme.  Can I urge you to take this opportunity to share your views or comments on how you would like to see our services improve?  Please share your views or suggestions with your manager, head of service or if you wish to do so anonymously, the Newsletter provides the opportunity to do so.  This is your opportunity to contribute to the transformation and we want to hear from you! Thank you all for your continued hard work.

Get involved

Housing & Repairs bite-size briefing

Our next bite-size briefing will be Repairs focused and held on April 2. This is an online briefing to hear about transformation works and the latest projects across Housing and Repairs. Please get in touch for an invite.

The listening space

Listening spaces are an informal drop-in for housing and repairs colleagues to connect and share thoughts on the transformation programme. 

Dermott attended and said "I was really pleased that I attended the Listen Space. I thought it would be a meeting but it was an informal drop in.  I talked about my work and shared what a typical day looks like for me while being able to bounce some ideas off colleagues on how our teams work together.

I hope my contribution helps the shape of our service in the future."

The next session will be at Holmes Road on March 21

Become a member of Rainbow Camden

February is LGBT+ History month, so in recognition of this its worth reminding staff that Rainbow Camden is a place for our LGBTQ+ staff and allies to talk, discuss relevant issues and support each other. The group also regularly hold social events and celebrations.