13 April meeting… communal areas project, equality, diversity, and inclusion, monitoring how Brighter Places is performing

Next engagement panel meeting: Wednesday 12 May 5pm-6.30pm

Communal areas project

Barbara Reid, Housing Transformation Manager gave an update on the communal areas project touching on the next steps to implement the zero-tolerance communal policy across all communal spaces.

The zero-tolerance policy is being implemented to ensure Brighter Places meet the Fire Risk Assessment, to keep residents and their households safe.

Barbara showed the panel a draft leaflet about the communal areas policy that explains the risks, resident responsibilities and why Brighter Places needs to do this. The leaflet is due to go to all residents in the coming months. Barbara asked the panel to feedback their thoughts and suggestions and asked how we could best communicate this to all residents. It was felt that the leaflet needed to be more visual, point people in the right direction for where is best for them to store items and suggestions were made to include hazardous illustrations.

Brighter Places don’t want to become the hallway police but do need to ensure hallways are kept safe for all residents.

Equality, diversity, and inclusion

Dan Seabrook, Interim Head of Brighter Places’ HR and organisational development, touched on where the organisation has got to with the equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) project which was formed to ensure the Brighter Places’ representation reflects the communities it serves. Dan led a discussion with the panel on what Brighter Places proposes to do next.

Aisha Thomas from Representation Matters gave an update on what work had been carried out so far with colleagues explaining in detail how each session was run and the key steps, which were.

• Scoping
• Steering group established
• Grounding sessions
• Head of department reviews
• Engagement panel session
• Colleague survey
• Interim report

Aisha gave an overview of the key findings from the report, touching on one point that was going particularly well (residents at heart). Aisha thanked social housing colleagues for their consistency to deliver services to residents during the pandemic.

Dan outlined the next steps to the panel including areas where residents will be invited to comment, as follows:

• Internal team action planning
• Improved recruitment process
• Awareness and knowledge focus
• Resident engagement and feedback focus

Focusing on resident engagement and feedback, Aisha asked the panel what equality, diversity and inclusion means to them, how residents feel about equality, diversity, and inclusion and how Brighter Places could best have these conversations with other residents to hear their views.

Please contact Brighter Places’ engagement team if you’d like to get involved with this project.

Monitoring Brighter Places’ performance

Danielle Jones, Resident Engagement Officer, finished the meeting with a discussion about how performance data and insight is made available to the panel so we can help to monitor and scrutinise how the organisation’s performing.

Danielle asked the panel to review Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) available and to decide on the frequency in which the panel would like to review these. There are three frequencies – bi-annually, quarterly, or monthly.

It was clear that panel members had a keen interest in the customer services, housing management and responsive repair KPIs. Our Co-chair, Angela, suggested this comes back for further discussion and decision at the next meeting.

Our next meeting is on Thursday 12 May, and we would welcome any observers. Contact engagement@brighterplaces.co.uk

Roselyn Ramgeet, Panel Member