February 2025

February Summary:

•Meet Executive Director of Governance & Regulation - Nicola Ebdon

• Mutual Exchange, Assignment and Subletting Policy

Customer Forum has reviewed Mutual Exchange, Assignment and Subletting Policy at the meeting on 5th February and then were given time to send any additional comments in by 10th February.

Danielle Toyne - Neighbourhoods and Allocations Manager has explained the process at the meeting and clarifications made to the policy such as Key Steps, examples for reasons for refusals, 42 day decision deadline meaning and appendix with legal grounds for refusals. She has also answered questions about Renters Reform bill affecting the process as well as LHP’s tenant alteration process, recharges and conditional consent resulted from this.

Panel has discussed the risk of people exchanging properties without seeing property in person or inspecting it properly. Danielle has reinforced the point of tenant responsibility to mitigate this risk as well as Officers doing all they can to support and provide reasonable adjustments.

Panel has asked for this point to be highlighted more in the policy, so that tenants are aware that they are responsible for adaptions & alterations they would like to add ‘ Please see Conditions of the Home section below for more info on alterations’ under Section 5 ‘What is conditional consent?’ - alterations carried out to the property with consent.

Panel has commented that they would also like to see explanation of RTB and RTA and how discount is affects by Mutual Exchange.

•Safeguarding Policy

Andy Tyler - Empty Homes Manager, has given overview of the policy and internal processes of reporting concerns and working with external organisations to give context and help Panel understand what it means in practice. Panel has asked what are we doing about cases where we have difficulty gaining access to the property. Andy explained that any staff member can report concern and staff & contractors had training on how to recognise and report concerns. Reports from neighbours will also be investigated. Andy has also discussed examples of consent and capacity in Adult cases and ability to raise concerns without consent in Children cases. Panel was impressed with the way policy was written. It was easy to read and it covered all the information that they would want to know. The only thing they have requested was to put full name of EIA (Equality Impact Assessment ) before using abbreviation in the guidelines and include section for carers, especially young carers. Additional comment Panel made was to replace the use of word 'disabled' with 'person with disability'. Panel also suggested doing campaign about safeguarding, reporting concerns and sign posting.

•Equality, Diversity & Inclusion statistics

EDI Working Group | YourVoice

• ARK consultation - Customer Survey

Customer Workshops | YourVoice