Tenant newsletter January 2025

What do the Housing teams do?

There are three areas within Housing:

This team oversees the condition of our housing properties. This includes:

Day-to-day repairs and maintenance
Planned and major works, for example kitchen, bathroom, window, door and roofing replacements
Compliance (health and safety), including gas, electrical, water, fire, lift and asbestos safety
Decarbonising our housing stock – the council aims for all its properties to have an Energy Performance Certificate rating of C or higher by 2030 and for all properties to achieve net zero carbon ready by 2050.

These teams are responsible for tenancy and estate management, which includes:

Letting empty homes
Visiting new tenants to ensure they are settling in
Dealing with general tenancy matters
Dealing with mutual exchanges
Dealing with anti-social behaviour
Providing advice and support to tenants who are struggling to meet the conditions of their tenancy and are at risk of losing their home
Ensuring council estates and properties are kept clean, tidy and safe, including inspecting communal areas in blocks of flats and all parts of our estates
Completing weekly health and safety inspections of all Independent Living schemes
Completing an annual Wellbeing Plan with all Independent Living tenants
Tenant engagement, including working with our tenant groups (such as the Strategic Tenant Advisory Panel, Tenant Scrutiny Panel and Independent Living Forum), supporting tenants to get more involved in the housing service, organising consultations and running surveys.

This team deals with:

Housing advice
Homelessness and homelessness prevention (including working to tackle rough sleeping)
Housing allocations and waiting list applications (including existing council tenants wanting to transfer)
Private Sector Housing (i.e. non-council housing)
Strategic Housing including new build and acquisitions to the council stock