Thousands of council tenants in Bristol will be given a greater say over how the city’s housing service is run. Bristol City Council is planning to make it easier for people who live in council flats and houses to raise complaints with their homes and influence new policies.
The council acts as landlord for more than 28,000 tenants and leaseholders in Bristol, responsible for taking care of issues like repairs, anti-social behaviour and fire safety. A huge review is underway looking at how the landlord service can be improved for these tenants.
But some residents have previously criticised the council for being slow to act or answer questions. Last month tower block residents raised questions about sprinklers and fire safety, while a tenant in Bedminster suffered months of polystyrene balls flying into her flat.
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City Hall chiefs are reviewing how tenants can “participate” with the council, raising problems like anti-social behaviour or damp, and how the housing department responds to complaints. They faced questions about the ongoing tenant participation review during a communities scrutiny meeting on Thursday, November 17, and on fire safety measures in tower blocks.
Sarah Spicer, business innovation manager, said: “We’re looking at a new platform which will allow access in different ways. There are a lot of people out there who would be able to contact us in different means, like through mobile phones, freeing up our time to be able to deal face-to-face with people with more complex cases and also to automate some of the processes.
“What we’re not trying to do is say people can’t contact us. But if somebody wants to contact us and report that their tap is leaking, they shouldn’t be on a phone line with 50 other people trying to do the same, while somebody at the bottom of the queue is trying to phone up and talk to us about domestic abuse.”
A major task facing the housing department is replacing flammable polystyrene cladding on 38 tower blocks across Bristol. Concerns about expanded polystyrene (EPS) cladding have been growing for years, but the council decided to take action after a fire at a tower block last month, which was spread via the EPS cladding found in many other council blocks.
Housing bosses have pledged to hold meetings with affected residents to hear concerns and answer questions, and write to them explaining the changes. The first meeting was held this week in Gilton House in Brislington.
Ms Spicer said: “Through the rest of November and December, we are going out and doing engagement events with residents. We held our first one this morning with Avon Fire and Rescue, and we wanted to offer reassurance to residents, give them an opportunity to ask any questions, but also make sure those changes had been heard and understood.
“We attended an event this morning at Gilton House in Brislington. There were about 20-odd residents in attendance. We work very closely with Avon Fire and Rescue, they’re in full support of our decision to issue interim measures. And I know Tom [Cllr Tom Renhard, cabinet member for housing] is planning to be at the majority of those events leading up to Christmas. A lot of our attention is on going out and making sure we’re available to talk to.”
The multi-million costs facing the council, for replacing cladding and introducing waking watch patrols, means there is less budget to spend on increasing resident engagement. Rents for council tenants will also likely increase, warned Cllr Tom Renhard, cabinet member for housing.
Cllr Renhard said: “We’ll sign off the housing revenue account budget next March, but I would just caution about the amount of additional spend we’re going to need to make on fire safety, and that creates some difficult choices around where investments are made and also the level of rent rise that may be needed as a result of that.”
Another issue with tenant participation is a lack of staff. Housing officers walked out on strike last month, saying their workloads were unsustainable. According to trade unions, problems include short-staffing and extra strain from dealing with an increasing number of vulnerable tenants. With huge budget cuts next year currently under consultation, questions were raised about how the housing department was able to carry out more engagement work.
Green Cllr Barry Parsons, chair of the commission, said: “We’ve heard a lot from unions recently about the sheer weight of caseloads among housing officers. The volume of work, the complexity of it, that officers are having to deal with generally without the kinds of support that other professionals in similar roles have. They don’t have supervisions, for example, like social workers do. It seems to me that given the sheer weight of these caseloads, there’s effectively no capacity for increased proactive resident engagement.”
Currently the council tries to hear the views of its tenants in several ways, including frequent surveys, resident meetings, social media apps, and through a housing scrutiny panel made up of 12 tenants and leaseholders. One problem though is few people are interested in taking part, with the housing scrutiny panel losing a quarter of its members over the past three years.
Tim, a resident on the panel who did not give his surname, said: “Unfortunately, we’re a bunch of senior citizens and we’re getting less and less as time goes on. I’ve been a member since 2019 and we’ve lost three members in that time. It’s difficult to try and find people who want to take part and play the game.
“I was employed by the council so I can go back a number of years. I haven’t seen anything change really in all that time, which is most unfortunate. You would think that we would learn from our mistakes and gradually make things better.”
