Resident Questions for Housing Area Panel

Reference: W3.6 

Question Title	Working with residents
Date question raised	15/12/2022
Week of Area Panel	13/2/2023
Area in city	West
Star rating applied by residents	3 stars – city wide
Deadline for officer response	9am on 19^th January
Name of officer responding	Sam Warren / Justine Harris
Officer job title	Community Engagement Manager / Head of Tenancy Services

Resident Question

Issue:	West residents are concerned that what the Council calls consultation can in practice just be an exercise in informing residents about an issue and the solutions that the Council has already decided on, rather than engaging in a joint process of discussion and development with residents from the beginning.
Background:	The specific example given at the meeting was the proposals about changes to the laundry rooms. Philip Court, which has a laundry room, has not been asked for their opinion or involved in any previous discussion on this issue. More generally, this is about how the process of consultation and engagement with residents could be improved.
Action requested:	Can these concerns be fed into the Area Panel review and future discussions on resident involvement?

Officer Response

Officer	Sam Warren
Officer Response:	Thanks for the question. Firstly, it is really important to ensure all engagement and consultation is clear for the participants, so that people are aware if they are being given information, being asked to give their views and opinions or if they are being asked to make a decision on something.  The Community Engagement Team will be refreshing the Community engagement framework this year, and this will set up specific standards for consultation and engagement to improve practice across the council and within housing. However, the community engagement team are available to offer support and advice on consultation methods for all housing teams and if residents are not clear or happy with a consultation, please let us know and we will always offer to support the service to develop a genuine and inclusive approach.   The Community Engagement Manager will speak to Housing colleagues and residents to see what didn’t work well so that this can be understood and resolved for future consultations. In regard to laundries, Housing will bring a paper to the next Area Panel.  This will include future options for these facilities, their future use has not been decided.  The paper will consider their cost, value and management arrangements. We are very keen to have residents' feedback as part of this process.
Action:	Community Engagement Manager to speak to housing officers and residents to understand what happened with the Philip Court Laundry room consultation.
Start date:	Feb 2023
End date:	March 2023