Council and democracy

Agenda item

Estate and Tenancy Management - Roles and Responsibilities

Minutes:

Peter Doherty presented the report and explained how the estate and management services were currently delivered and highlighted the future ambition for the roles and responsibilities relating to estate and tenancy management.

 

Councillor Redsell stated she did not agree to the new role as there were already estate officers who needed to be made more accountable. That council tenants should take more responsibility of where they lived and their outside space. Councillor Redsell praised the work of some estate managers but stated there was still a big learning curve to make this better and to work alongside the cleaner and greener teams to make the area look better. Peter Doherty stated that action plans had now been introduced in a number of areas and were working quite well but the biggest issue was around the lack of a digital platform. This would enable the council more transparency in reporting, collecting data and to be able to utilise that information. Focus going forward would be on neighbourhood officers and digitalisation which would drive forward improvements and to make council tenants take more responsibility for where they live.

 

Councillor Worrall strongly agreed that some of the estates were a disgrace, not across the board but everywhere should be nice place to live. That in cases, herself having to report rubbish as caretakers and housing officers had just ignored it, that estate managers need to take responsibility and show that they were doing their job, and this should be better. Councillor Worrall questioned why we were still using paper-based reporting and stated that somebody should be checking that estate managers dashboards to ensure they were not being manipulated.

 

Councillor Liddiard welcomed the report and strategy, suggested that meetings were undertaken with estate managers to prioritise what needed to be undertaken and asked when this was implemented that it be tested in Tilbury first.

 

Councillor Hebb agreed this was a sensible and practicable approach, referred to the “Report-It” function on the website and questioned why smart phones to report issues were not being used by officers and to look to other authorities, such as London, where these schemes were running successfully. Ryan Farmer stated there were different technical solutions being used and steps were taken to expand services and hopefully by the summer there would be something positive to share. For clarity, Councillor Hebb supported the report and urged officers to engage with the IT and Transformation on the customer services strategy, particularly on customer self-service.

 

Councillor Mayes proposed a new recommendation to state that technology should be used to enable reports to be provided to ward councillors to enable them to understand what was taking place in their ward.

 

Councillor Liddiard stated the report referred to efficiencies and questioned whether this was going to save money or cost the council more to which Peter Doherty stated savings would not be the key driver it was about providing better services.

 

Councillor Redsell reminded the committee that not all residents used technology and were not digitally minded.

 

RESOLVED

 

1.      The Housing Overview and Scrutiny Committee noted, commented and challenged the contents of this report which highlights the challenges in providing effective estate and tenancy management services and the ambition for addressing these through a person centred (tenancy management) and locality/place based (estates management) approach.

 

2.      The Housing Overview and Scrutiny Committee requested that technology be used to enable reports to be provided, particularly for ward members.

 

 

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