Southern Housing walk-arounds with residents
REVIEW
Walk-arounds enable us to speak directly with Southern Housing, giving them a clearer idea of the estates unaddressed and reoccurring problems and pointing out specific issues.
Over the past six months Southern Housing have conducted 5 walk-arounds with residents on the estate. We were prescribed a year of monthly walk-arounds so we hope the remainder will be fully made up over time.
We have been asked by residents who are unable to attend during work hours if there could be an evening walk-around. We did have something potentially in place but not many Southern Housing representatives would be present so it was cancelled. We are looking into trying again to make this happen.
DECEMBER 2023
In December a group of senior Southern Housing representatives, including the Director of Repairs and Estate Transformation conducted a walk-around on the estate. The Director communicated that the walk-around went well, with good engagement from residents.
The team involved has compiled a list of outstanding works and has met to review and agree next steps. We’re awaiting a copy to be published here on the website, along with timescales for completion.
MARCH 2024
Southern Housing representatives included the new maintenance contracts manager, our estate’s surveyor, estate management and landscaping management. 10 residents attended, who were able to ask challenging questions about problems within their homes and in our communal areas, and point out particular issues.
Concerns were also raised about financial details including service charges, breakdown of costs and Southern Housing profits relating to large projects. We will be asking that somebody who is able to answer specific queries around costs to attend our meetings or walk-arounds.
APRIL 2024
Thanks to everyone that attended the April walk-around. Residents were able to speak with George Downing estates surveyor in attendance, the estate manager, the leaseholders property and service manager (who deals with service charges) as well as the head of landscaping.
JULY 2024
Generally the walk-around went well. Both residents and Southern Housing representatives commented on the benefits of being able to communicate in person about problems, which can be directly looked at and better understood. The estate surveyor was able to raise some jobs to be actioned while on location.
We were glad to be seeing an increase in estate issues being actioned and resolved.
That said we would like to see more progress going forward. As we walk around it’s clear how many of the estates reported issues are still going unaddressed.
SEPT 2024
At this walk-around, only one of the invited Southern Housing representatives -the estate’s surveyor - was able to attend.
Although it was still useful and she was able to action a couple of our issues; it is disappointing not to have the level of representation that was initially recommended.
Again, we will be feeding back to Southern Housing to ask that we still get the full set of 12 walk-arounds promised, and that they can facilitate a significant improvement in representation.