Spring residents meeting 2024

Summary

Spring residents meeting
Monday 20th May 2024

Attended by:

Residents:
Debbie, Nat, Brian, Isabelle, Sebastian, Fissal, John (Keats Estate), Margaret, Nell, Rich (chair)

Mark Lister - Interim CEO of the Boiler House Spaces charity

No Southern Housing representation

The meeting

This was our first meeting in six months as we have moved focus to the walk-arounds offered by Southern Housing. A large part of the meeting was taken up by feeding back and sharing thoughts on how the walk-arounds are going. Residents agreed the walk-arounds have been useful in terms of being able to make Southern Housing aware of unaddressed problems and gain understanding of various aspects of Southern Housings management of our estate. Residents do feel there has been some improvement in service, but that there is still a long way to go.

Residents have been glad to see the safety lighting across the estate and inside the tower blocks being fixed and continuing to function (nb: there are still unaddressed problems with lighting on Keats estate, our neighbouring estate also managed by Southern Housing who are also represented in our meetings) .

It' has been noted that the walk-arounds were supposed to be monthly but we’ve only had 3 of the 6 so far - residents still hope to have the full 12 as promised, although understandably over a longer period.

Residents discussed the fact that Southern Housing are moving over to a new contracts system next month, where United Living will no longer be our main contractor for repairs and maintenance and Southern Housing will now be able to accept bids for maintenance work from a range of contractors. United Living will also thankfully no longer be managing residents calls / issues. As we understand it Southern Housing will be bringing the reporting system in-house.

We also heard how the complaints system is being updated to better track residents various complaints. Southern Housing have recently been investigated by the Housing Ombudsman for complaints maladministration, who found many aspects of Southern Housings service to be severely lacking. You can read the report here.

We also heard from the Boiler House Spaces interim CEO who gave us an update on the current situation with the Boiler House and their proposed development. You can read their written update here which covers much of what was discussed.

Thanks to all that came along and contributed to this meeting