Brighton and Hove tenants share ideas

Tenants from all over Brighton and Hove spent the day yesterday sharing ideas for improving their homes and estates.

One idea that may be taken up is to speed up the replacement of ageing lifts in blocks of flats as more and more break down.

One of the lifts in St James’s House was out of action yesterday (Saturday 19 November).

The tenants were taking part in the City Assembly, which is held twice a year.

About 180 people attended the event at Hove Town Hall yesterday where there were 21 stalls.

This compared with about 100 people at the previous City Assembly in May.

There was a crèche for the first time and a live webcast as well as a “Twitter stream” with @CityAssembly trending locally for a while.

The webcast was screened in the community café in St James’s House for those who were unable to make it along to the town hall.

The event was chaired by Chris Kift. He was re-elected chairman for the coming year too, with Stewart Gover being re-elected vice-chairman.

Nick Hibberd, head of housing and social inclusion at Brighton and Hove City Council, thanked residents who raised 50 issues at the last city assembly in May.

He pointed to a display along one wall of the main meeting room where all 50 issues were listed in the shape of an action plan.

He also thanked those who had since helped to make sure that the relevant actions were carried out.

Council housing officer Tom Gillham talked about the estate development budget (EDB), which is £500,000 for the coming year.

He said that the EDB gave tenants a chance to suggest ideas for improving their neighbourhoods, their estates and their buildings.

Many ideas had been turned into reality, he said, but he and colleagues wanted more tenants to get more involved.

Some felt that too few people were aware of the opportunities and the successes in relation to the EDB.

One sheltered housing resident said that many were not interested on knowing what was happening and wouldn’t come to meetings.

Mr Hibberd suggested a number of other ways to keep those people informed and to encourage them to be able to take part in decision-making. Some were as simple as neighbours talking to each other.

There were six workshops including one to explain changes to benefits rules and another to encourage people to cook healthy meals from scratch.

One of the other workshops was on tenant scrutiny.

Mr Hibberd said that council tenants and leaseholders would be playing a bigger and more responsible role in looking at how the housing service performs.

As part of tenant scrutiny, members of the proposed Tenant Scrutiny Panel would be able to carry out research and request information.

The EDB was the subject of another workshop with guidance on bidding and project delivery.

Warm tributes were paid to Vera Stoner, 92, from the Bristol Estate, and Maggie King, a long-time tenant activist from St James’s House. Both died recently.

Tomorrow (Monday 21 November) more tenants will get together when a meeting of the Estate Services Monitoring Group is held.