Minutes of ACF Meeting
Thursday, 18th February 2010
Southwick Green Communal Lounge, Southwick

Present: - Bruce Andrews, Ruth Andrews, Rose Boden, Bill Bone, Wendy Farmer, David Guy, William Guy, Paula Kinsella, Elsie Kitson, Sue Lane, Richard Letchford, Tony Morris, Bridget Orman, Sylvia Page and Tanya Page.

ADC: Barry Maxey (Tenant Participation Officer).

• Welcome and introductions

Wendy welcomed everyone to the meeting.

• Apologies

Apologies were received from Basil Canivet and Sue Holland. 

3.         Minutes of the last meeting 21st January 2010

The minutes were agreed. 

4.         Matters arising

• Some repairs have been carried out to the entrance road to the Whitelot Close garage compound and warning signs have been put up. 
• Following the criticism of Adur Homes Services for withdrawing the decorating scheme for elderly tenants, it was agreed to put an article in the next edition of the Forum about community organisations who may be able to provide a similar service at a reasonable cost.
• Regarding the request from SHARP for a representative on the ACF, Barry advised that there is already a provision within the ACF constitution for an individual to represent the area where they live.  He therefore recommended that rather than change the constitution for this specific purpose, SHARP simply elect one of their members to represent their group on the ACF.
• A replacement lock has now been fitted to the back entrance door of 19-35 Whitelot Close but there was criticism of the workmanship and the Maintenance Officer has been asked to inspect.
• Adjustments have been made to one of the entrance doors at Tollbridge House but the door is now slamming, while another entrance door is now not closing properly.

Action:           BM to report to the Maintenance Section.

5.         Bids for environmental improvement grants

            There were no bids.

6.         Treasurer’s report

Ruth has paid £37.46 for the annual subscription for the domain and hosting of the ACF website and reported that there is now £2,124.10 in the ACF bank account.

7.         ACF meetings

            The dates of ACF meetings are currently set to precede Cabinet meetings, to give members an opportunity to discuss items on the Cabinet agenda.  This worked well with the former Housing and Community Services Committee but there are now few housing related items on the Cabinet agenda and their meetings are held at irregular intervals.

            A proposal was made to change the dates of ACF meetings to the second Thursday of every second month from May 2010 and this was unanimously agreed.  The dates of meetings in 2010 will be: -

                                    Tuesday, 30th March                        Thursday, 13th May
Thursday, 8th July                            Thursday, 9th September
Thursday, 11th November.

            In addition to this, the ACF will hold their AGM in August and their Christmas social in December. 

Members were reminded that they may invite council officers to any of their meetings if they wish to discuss particular issues.      

8.         Tenancy audit

Last June, Alex Marsh (Tenancy Services Manager) gave a presentation to the ACF about the introduction of Tenancy Audits.  These are considered good practice by the Audit Commission and involve housing staff visiting properties, particularly those where no repairs have been requested over the past year, to establish that the tenants are living there.

The council have since decided to widen this audit to set up a rolling programme of visits to all tenants to seek a wide range of information about their needs.  Questions on diversity (e.g. disability and ethnicity) form part of the information being sought but these do not currently include questions about religion/beliefs or sexual orientation. 

The pros and cons of having this information were debated at length.  A vote was taken, resulting in 13 people being in favour of asking these questions and two people against.  This was on the understanding that the reasons for asking these questions are explained to tenants beforehand and that it is emphasized to tenants that they are under no obligation to give this information.        

9.         Reports of the Sub-Committees

i)          Compact Monitoring Group

The Compact Monitoring Group (consisting of tenants, leaseholder and council officers) will meet on Wednesday, 24th February and a report will be given at the next ACF meeting.   The ACF would like to invite councillor representatives to future meetings and will raise this at the meeting.  All ACF members were asked to consider what they want from this group and to identify any issues they think the group should examine. 

• The Forum

The Editorial Panel will meet on 9th March to set out the spring edition of the newsletter.  Articles and contributions from tenants and leaseholders were requested as soon as possible.  Suggestions were put forward for ways to make the newsletter more accessible to residents with visual impairments and these will be considered by the Editorial Panel.

• Adur Leaseholders’ Forum

The Adur Leaseholders’ Forum met on 10th February to put questions to the Executive Head of Adur Homes and his Service Managers.  Bill thought this had been a fruitful meeting and some of the issues raised were more involved than he first imagined.  The next meeting will be held at the ACF Office on 7th April 2010 at 2.15pm.    

• AiP

Ruth gave an update on Local Neighbourhood Improvement Area funding and of the work that the Community Planning team are doing with agencies before funding is released.         

10.       Any Other Business

• Tony gave an account of the discussions at the Overview and Scrutiny Committee on the proposed rent increases.  He said he expressed the ACF’s objections to the level of the increase but that Cabinet subsequently decided to approve the 3.1% increase.  At the meeting, he said he also asked the Executive Head of Adur Homes what savings had resulted so far from last year’s changes in sheltered housing but was told that those figures were not available at the time.
• Tony also expressed his concern about the difficulties for ACF members to discuss issues concerning Adur Council housing at Joint Overview and Scrutiny Committee.  There was unanimous support for the view that these issues should only be discussed in future by Adur Cabinet and committees.
• Sylvia said she had received a letter from the gas contractor Ford Construction Ltd/Maxitherm threaten legal action if she didn’t allow them access to her property, even though this was the first time she had heard from them.  She also said that when they did come to service her gas appliances, they didn’t put down dustsheets, didn’t carry out a smoke test on the chimney and didn’t put a new “date sticker” on the boiler.  Rose said she had received a similar letter and had not had any cards or letters previously left at her home.  Wendy said she had been without hot water for two weeks because of various delays by the gas contractor.

Action:           BM to raise this with the Maintenance Manager

• David said he has been waiting for repairs to be done to his roof since last November.

Action:           BM to report this to the Maintenance Section

• Bruce reminded everyone that entries for the ACF website should be passed first to the Management Committee for approval.
• On a positive note, Paula said she was pleased to see that Adur Council is one of the top performing councils (14th) for dry recycling in England.
• The evening raffle raised £16.00 for ACF funds.

12.       Date of next meeting

The next meeting will be held at 7.00pm on Tuesday, 30th March 2010 in the communal lounge at Southwick Green.