Dear CHISEL Residents,
It’s been a while since I have written to all of you all at once, but a big hello to everybody I’ve met at your homes or who has popped into our office in Brockley.
It’s been a busy few months since the summer, and we’ve been working on the same priorities that we have been focussing on all year – health and safety in your homes, getting our data sorted out, and working through the backlog of repairs cases, and any emergencies that have come up.
The stock condition survey which will help plan the investment programme for the next few years has been delayed a little and is now due after Christmas. We’ve carried out the first CHISEL-wide electrical testing programme which is also nearly complete.
CHISEL is now up-to-date with our governance, and we have adopted the most recent set of National Housing Federation rules, which outline how CHISEL manages itself as a Community Benefit Society (and Housing Association).
I’m very excited to announce that we are setting up a Residents’ Buildings Forum. This will report directly to the Board, but be chaired and have its agenda led by residents with CHISEL supporting. We’ll be happy to share budgets for repairs and investments, and hope that the Forum can help decide spending priorities in our budgets and long term plans. We also plan to get our contractors to come along and present to the Forum and face constructive criticism for residents. I’m hoping that CHISEL will start building again soon, and this will be a great forum to discuss this, along with our plans to build a body of apprentices and start training on how to become self-builders.
If you’d like to join the forum please do drop me an email.
Secondly, I should like to wish you a happy Anti-Social Behaviour Awareness month. CHISEL takes ASB very seriously, and it is our job to investigate and act where it occurs between our residents, and advocate for our residents if a third party is perpetrating it. There are lots of details on our website, and we still have our out-of-hours ASB Respect line service and the Reporting App. The Team have just been trained on our new ASB software we are using in the office, which provides a level of standardisation, and useful for when we need to take court action.
I’ll be in touch again next month to update you on our Christmas opening hours. I swear it comes around more quickly every year! Until then, wrap up warm…
With kind regards
Miles
