Dear Residents
I’m really not sure where the time goes – I’ve been with CHISEL for six months now, along with most of the team, and I have to say it really feels like home.
I’ve been working on a lot of the more behind the scenes work recently, our audit, renegotiating the lease on our home here in Brockley, insurance renewal and accounts.
I’m really pleased that I have been able to transfer all our financial work to our accountants, which has freed up significant resources for our front-line work in your homes – as well as providing new software, forecasting and reporting for us to use – a real step forward.
The stock condition survey is over half way through – and a massive thank you to all of you who made the surveyors feel so at home. With the results of the surveys, we will draw up our long term investment strategy and look at the different external funding streams to support this. One of these is the government’s retrofit funding which also aims to make your homes more efficient to run.
CHISEL Head of Property Services Dean Salter asked me to say that he is really grateful for all the positive feedback about our new contractors London and Kent Services. It was an early priority for us to find a competent and empathetic contractor who could excel on our timber framed homes, and it looks like they are the right contractors for the job.
We’re also over half way through our management agreement updating work with Three Boroughs and Dryads Co-ops which I hope will strengthen and reignite our relationships as we move forward. Co-op housing is in our DNA here at CHISEL and I’m pleased to be able to update these partnerships. Jordan our London Neighbourhood Manager also works closely with the Flamenco Co-op, which was one of the founding co-ops when CHISEL was created back in 1988.
CHISEL’s Head of Operations Pamela has asked me to remind you all that we have an out-of-hours reporting line for Anti Social Behaviour (ASB), which is called the Respect Line. There are details of this and also our ASB App which you can use, on our website here.
Our new supported housing in Brighton is going well, and Stonewall Housing are now looking at opening more homes like it by working with our housing partners on the south coast. Proud that ours was the first in the area though. Having a Neighbourhood Manager in Brighton was in hindsight a really good decision to support this work, and also to see so many of our residents there.
If you identify as Lesbian, Gay Bisexual or Transgender or are an ally, I hope that you had a marvellous Pride. We decked out the old CHISEL logo in rainbow finery and will be signing up to the HouseProud Pledge for social housing providers, which ensures LGBTQ+ residents are given a voice in our organisation. Pledge Project | houseproud-lgbt . We’d also like to set up a CHISEL LGBTQ+ Residents Group as well – this could be social, a committee or whatever you wanted – please drop me a line in confidence if you would be interested.
In my next newsletter we will have the results of our Website Working Group (there are still some places available if you are interested – and it is a paid-with-vouchers engagement opportunity – please send me an email), and we’ll have some more detail on our plans for the rest of the year. One of the things we’re building on the website is our new archive – we’re working on Fusions Jameen to start with, who were originally a co-operative for black self-builders based in Lewisham and Bromley. We’ve been scanning some of the original documents from the time, some which are here at the office, and some lent to us by the original self-builders.
I’ll also let you know some of the leads I got at this year’s Housing Conference in Manchester.
With the best regards
Miles
