Agenda item - Deputations from members of the public.

A list of deputations received by the due date of 12noon on the 10^th July 2014 will be circulated separately as part of an addendum at the meeting.

16.1      The Mayor reported that one deputation had been received from members of the public and invited Ms. Hill as the spokesperson for the deputation to come forward and address the council.

16.2      Ms. Hill thanked the Mayor and stated that:

16.3      “There is a flat on Brentwood Road which has the Queen’s head on the living room wall. Maybe this doesn’t sound too unusual but in this case, the Queen’s head is a temporary feature caused by the shape of the mould, on a permanent damp patch which takes up around 4 square foot of the wall and there’s a photograph of the Queen’s head provided in the supporting information. It’s a game that the parents play with their two children, both of whom are asthmatic. They clean off the mould on a regular basis, but it always returns in a different shape. When it’s been raining heavily, there is also running water down the wall. When the issue was raised with Mears, the residents were offered a dehumidifier, but they are concerned what this will do to their electricity bill. It is also a short term fix which will not make the problem go away and needlessly increases energy use. These tenants pay rent for their council property and have the right to a proper solution to be found for the extreme damp in their home. 

In another flat in Brentwood Road, a Mears home visit recorded damp levels off the scale in the tenants’ bedroom, bathroom, living room and entrance hall. The proposed solution in this ground floor flat has been the removal of a brick above the damp course and new plaster board. But the underlying cause of the damp does not appear to be being addressed. This seems an expensive and short term measure, particularly if the problem is also affecting other flats in the block. This case has been queried with the repairs team of Mears for the last nine months and the resident is also asthmatic, with other health conditions affected by damp.

In spite of representations made by a ward councillor, the solutions offered to the related damp problems of both fail to resolve the problems for tenants and cost more money in the long term, both involving expenditure in the short term, while not fixing the underlying issue causing the damp. These cases also suggest there may be ongoing damp issues in these particular buildings, which would benefit from being investigated as a whole, rather than on a flat-by-flat basis in response to residents request. Will the Council acknowledge the failure in these cases to offer satisfactory solutions to these damp problems? Make inquiries with Mears as to why there has been such delays with these specific cases, requests that the possibility of a larger problem in these buildings which would be best be addressed as a whole, to be investigated and raise this issue in the next housing committee with a view to avoid a similar situations arising in the future. 

There is currently no active tenants association on the Hollingdean estate. Will the council also undertake to support the continuation of tenants’ associations when key residents move on in recognition that they serve an important purpose in highlighting maintenance issues and engaging tenants in the improvements of their homes and living environment.”

16.4      Councillor Randall replied,

            “I have a full answer which I’ll send to you, but in the mean time I will say that the number 1 was inspected 10 July and the work will begin 28 July. Mears has not got this right and I apologise to the tenant for that, we have talked to Mears about it. In the question of 3 Brentwood Road, an inspection has taken place and the work will start on the 4^th August.

            As to your other questions about the larger issue of maintenance in our flats and houses, there is a watching brief on this all the time, you might or might not know that we have a tenants scrutiny panel, which was set up when we came into power and the next issue they’re going to look at is the whole question of repairs, and you of course will be free to give evidence to that, like anybody else who has got an interest in housing. 

            There is a larger problem with some of our older blocks, many of them built at the same time, and they are all falling to pieces at the same time. We have an ongoing maintenance program in all of them. We have £23 million this year in the Capital Works Program of which about £18 million will be devoted to this sort of work.

            As to the tenants association, we support 55 tenants associations in the city and if they would like to talk to us about starting it again, we would be very happy to do that. I welcome your question because it gives me a chance to congratulate the labour party on renewing its interest in housing in this city. Its record in the past on this is not spectacular and indeed, when labour left power in 2007, only about 38% of housing in the city, council housing, met the decent home standard when the national average was about 65%. The conservative party, in their credit took this up with the will, and we finished it off. You are of course still committed to selling council houses and at that stage, you were not doing the repairs on the estates because you were committing then to handing the stock over to a housing association, which the tenants quite sensibly rejected.

            I’ve also got the performance indicators for this year on repairs and maintenance, on the routine repairs, we have achieved a raise in the last quarter of 99.81, average time to complete routine, 17 days, emergency repairs 99.89 and the percentage of appointments kept 97.79 and tenants’ satisfaction with repairs is 99.46. We do a huge amount of repairs, and I admit we don’t get it right every time but we are working very hard to make sure these things are done properly and I’ll welcome your interests and I hope you’ll support us in doing it.”

16.5      The Mayor thanked Ms. Hill for attending the meeting and speaking on behalf of the deputation. He explained that the points had been noted and the deputation would be referred to the Housing Committee for consideration. The persons forming the deputation would be invited to attend the meeting and would be informed subsequently of any action to be taken or proposed in relation to the matter set out in the deputation.  The Mayor noted that there were no other deputations and that concluded the item.