As Joe is away on annual leave, he asked if I could write the introduction for our monthly newsletter. So here we go... On Thursday 10 August Linzi Roberts-Egan, our new Chief Executive, held her first All Staff Briefing. Her message was very clear, she values building relationships with everyone – staff and residents alike, she is passionate about reducing inequality and making society more equitable, and kindness and compassion are free.
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Reflecting on this, it’s vitally important we remember these three incredibly important messages when we are working with and on behalf of our residents. We all know there are real prevalent issues in society, plus a multitude of challenges our residents face – the cost-of-living crisis, threat of homelessness, stresses of anti-social behaviour issues just to name a few. But if we keep these values at the heart of what we do, we can’t go far wrong.
I’m looking forward to working with Linzi and hope you all got to meet her when she visited Cedar Wood House earlier this month, further details below. Linzi along with Cllr Khan and Cllr Waldron also met our new Housing Sustainment Team in the Leyton Family Hub to find out more about this new important service, see details below.
I understand that working in Housing can be challenging at times, but when I read all the brilliant news stories each month, including those below, I'm incredibly proud of the work you all do.
Finally, I’d like to end with a date for your diary, Wednesday 20 September from 9:15am - we’ll be hosting our next Housing Staff Briefing. A diary invite will be sent shortly, but if by the end of the week you don’t have it – please email Rachael Bowey, Leadership Support Officer looking after Joe Garrod, who'll forward it onto you. Also please ensure you are up to date with Oracle Cloud information as it goes live on Monday 4 September.
Best wishes, I hope you that you have a great month and lovely summer.
Jane
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Oracle Cloud will go-live in September have you completed all the important actions. Use the Oracle Cloud - how to prepare PDF for information on how to download your P60s / payslips etc.
For more information visit the SharePoint site.
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 This month we were delighted to welcome Linzi Roberts-Egan, our new Chief Executive, to Cedar Wood House.
We were one of the first council services and teams she has visited since starting. As part of her visit, Linzi met staff from across all our services and enjoyed learning more about what we all do in Housing. Linzi would like to extend her thanks to staff for accommodating her visit and making her feel so welcome.
 L-R: Janice Roach, Linzi Roberts-Egan, David Padfield, Cllr Sharon Waldron, Aysha Rahman, Marcia Higgins and Cllr Ahsan Khan
This month the new Housing Sustainment Team welcomed Cllr Ahsan Khan, Cllr Sharon Waldron and Linzi Roberts-Egan to the Leyton Family Hub. During their visit they had a tour of the Hub, met members of the team and learnt how this important new service is supporting borough residents.
Our Family Hubs provide a wide range of information, activities and services including health, learning and play activities, childcare, family support, employment support, housing advice, money and benefits advice plus much more. The team’s objective is to work with households from the private rented sector (PRS) who may be at risk of homelessness before they reach crisis point. |
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During the team’s first week they provided advice and assistance across a wide range of issues including benefits, employment, and health to help sustain resident’s tenancies. The service runs on an appointment only basis.
Since the pandemic all housing options assessments have taken place online. However, later this month pods will be installed at Leyton library so the team can reintroduce their face-to-face services to help our most vulnerable residents.
Our face-to-face assessments will be for customers in immediate crisis only, there will be no walk-ins or referrals from other service teams. Initially the service will have the capacity to offer appointments to four households each day, with additional capacity required for emergencies.
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To support our residents in our newly built homes and those on estates undergoing regeneration and major works programmes the Tenancy Management service has welcomed some new additional team members. This has meant reviewing the current Tenancy Officer patches. From Monday 2 October the new patches will take effect, and NEC Housing will be updated to reflect these changes.
Officers are in the process of handing over any cases that will be moving to another patch. If you have any questions or need to check who is assigned to a case, please email the Tenancy Management Team on tenancy.management@walthamforest.gov.uk.
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It’s important we know who is living in our homes, so we can help support their needs for them to thrive in their community. To achieve this, the Tenancy Officers will be re-introducing home visits, and we are aiming to call upon 20% of households each year.
To ensure we get the most out of these visits Officers will be using a digital form to complete the paperwork while they are with the resident. This will allow us to expand the scope of these visits to not just capture the latest household details, but also pick up on other resident concerns like damp and mould issues or any anti-social behaviour issues.
The Tenancy Management Team recently received training on the new process and will be carrying out pilot visits in September with full ‘go-live’ starting in October. |
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Tenancy Management will be the first team to go live using the electronic document management system
The Housing Digital Programme, part of the Housing Transformation Programme, works on improving our digital services for our residents.
One of the areas of focus has been implementing the NEC electronic document management system allowing us to store documents online and in a central location for staff to access. The new system will be launched in several phases, the team are currently testing the site in preparation for a go-live for the Tenancy Management team at the end of September. The focus will then be on implementing the new system for the Asset Management service.
The aim is for this new system to make it quicker, easier and more efficient for staff to access tenancy agreements, applications, correspondence and compliance files, such as gas certificates.
Housing Assets have been working closely with Morgan Sindall Property Service (MSPS), our repair and maintenance contractor, to deal with the historic repairs backlog that arose during the pandemic.
Since March 2023, they have reduced the number of repairs, that have been outstanding for a long period of time, by 46%.
The aim is to fully clear the backlog by the end of the year, but they are trying to complete before this date. We are also working with Morgan Sindall Property Service on a programme to improve our customer experience and satisfaction scores. If you have any improvement suggestions / ideas please email Mark Rogers, Programme Manager. |
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Following the Grenfell tragedy and forthcoming safety standards there was an understandable rise in concerns about high-rise building safety. As a result, we implemented waking watches in our high-rise tower blocks while we completed our improvement works ensuring they met building and fire safety regulations. A waking watch is a system where specially trained people continually patrol all floors and the outside of the building. Their purpose is to detect a fire, raise the alarm, and work with the London Fire Brigade to manage any evacuation.
We have now completed the building safety works at three of our blocks, they are Gean Court and Blackthorn Court on the Avenue Road Estate and Northwood Tower in Walthamstow. So, we have asked the waking watch to step down.
Looking after our estate communal spaces are really important, but recent resident feedback told us it’s an area we need to improve on. So, over the past few months, our Caretaking and Grounds Maintenance Teams have been working on an improvement programme. |
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We have:
- Consulted residents about their priorities.
- Updated and improved our service standards for Caretaking and Grounds Maintenance.
- Recruited more staff into our Grounds Maintenance teams.
- Created new Supervisor roles to help support and manage our teams.
From September until March 2024, we will also be piloting a minor repairs service to our caretaking offer. This new service will be offered on two of our estates, The Drive/Prospect Hill and Stockfields Road Estate. We’ll be working alongside Morgan Sindall Property Service (MSPS), to provide a more responsive service and complete smaller jobs in our communal areas, such as paving, fencing and gully/gutter clearances. This will leave MSPS time to focus on the bigger and more complex jobs.
Our Engagement team have been working hard with the service teams to help host several events across the borough:
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31 July - 4 August - Summer activities week at The Hive
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9 August - Informal TRA meeting with Steering group at Aldriche Way
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16 August - Meet your neighbour event at Hylands
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22 August – Attlee Terrace Positive Places mural workshop
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23 August – Pelly Court Positive Places gardening opening ceremony
Summer activities week at The Hive
Over the next few months, they'll be working on:
- Delivering the new resident training programme – Next Steps
- Launch of the Aldriche Way Residents’ Association
- Visits and action planning sessions with all TRAs
- STAR visit to Morgan Sindall Property Service
- Special STAR meeting
- Tour of new builds for STAR Panel members
- The team will be taking the opportunity in September to update all resident involvement documents to reflect the requirements of the new Consumer Standards and best practice.
This summer the council will be hosting a range of free and low-cost activities for residents. Enjoy the summer starts here programme at Fellowship Square brings together events and activities throughout the summer for everyone to enjoy! |
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