Agenda item

The Director of Housing gave a presentation on the Moving Forward Together draft model which sought to become a world class housing service. Key to the model was that its findings were derived residents and staff and not from senior managers within the housing management team. Co-design was seen as a fundamental and integral part of developing the Model.

The draft model comprised of six key priorities –

1. Design services from the resident’s point of view;

2.     Provide services that are visible and local;

3. Rebuild trust and relationships;

4. Be a diverse and inclusive service that fully represents the city of Bristol;

5. Engage residents and employees in a creative and meaningful way;

6. Give back accountability and decision making to residents and employees.

Comments made were:

a)     Long term sickness absence had been a problem in the past so having named officers might be challenging;

b)     It was very important that support to housing officers was available for this to work. The Director of Housing clarified that more housing officers would be needed for the model to work effectively. This would be done by reviewing the number of specialist teams and services provided. This would not cost the service more;

c)      Regarding staff absences, staff would be put in local teams with agile management for most effective deployment of the staff resource, to mitigate shortages workforce planning would become central to the management of housing officer availability;

d)     Access to housing officers was crucial with examples of tenants and other service users unable to communicate with housing officers. The Director of Housing confirmed that this was not acceptable and all efforts were being made to improve this;

e)     It was important to also meet the needs of those outside of the service e.g. applicants applying for housing services;

f)      Need better contact systems to connect with housing officers;

g)     Housing officer skills needed to be more generic to cover wide range of issues e.g., evictions, rent arrears, noise complaints, a smaller patch based role was the best way to achieve this;

h)     Part time housing officers not always practical due to limited availability, local residents need a local dedicated housing area officer;

i)       The costs relating to the new model would not be known for some time however it was anticipated that this was not likely to be a major concern, as savings could be made from addressing demand failure;

j)       Specific buildings for locating housing staff was not necessary as experience has shown that an agile and effective service can work without this as it’s more about customer care and having robust systems in place to ensure services are maintained e.g., daily check-ins, close team working, utilising a combination of council/community buildings and high a quality management structure;

The Board welcomed the draft MFT Model and were advised that further feedback outside of the meeting would be very welcome. It was also suggested that input to it be sought from the BAME community, the Councils youth parliament members and youth mayors. This was fully supported.