Active tenants reveal all

Friday 4 June Some good news today. Last week Gloucester city council environmental services department of the city council brought round 50 surplus tulip bulbs they thought might be useful. Today they visited again and asked did we want some more? They know we are trying to improve the visual appeal of the estate, trying to hide the "concrete jungle" as much as we can.

Saturday, 5 June All is relatively quiet, except for residents of one block on Columbia Close. Someone living in the block has forgotten where the volume control is on their hifi. Understandably the neighbours are not too happy. We went and "witnessed" the noise and on Monday will fill in the noise logs for the housing department, who must be knee deep in these logs.

Monday June 7 Tenants forum this evening - the official city council group of tenants representatives who meet the evening before housing and regeneration committee, to debate committee papers and send recommendations to the committee. It is an exceptionally rare event when housing committee votes against the collective wishes of the forum. Tonight's deliberations covered just about every aspect of housing management. Our question to the contracts officer for grounds maintenance about the control of weeds that grew inbetween the paving slabs on housing department land somehow progressed to the possible extension of the current grounds maintenance contract and whether or not tenants groups wanted a variation in the parts affecting housing land.

Friday, 11 June The past few days have been meetings, meetings and more meetings. There are times when we think that there is so much tenant participation that those involved get "meeting burn-out". Tenant participation compacts will, no doubt, mean more involvement, more meetings and more time. It appears that civil servants in Whitehall have very little concept of the amount of work that involved tenants actually do.

We took some photos of the accumulated rubbish in the area of the recycling bins - to be presented to the environment and ecology forum on Monday.

Tuesday 15 June Good news. Today they came and not only emptied the recycling bins but cleaned up the site as well. We suspect the forum yesterday had a part to play. A meeting today of Midlands tenants to chew over the "choices" debate. Should the housing stock remain in the ownership of the council; be "sold off" to a social landlord or leased to a company who would bankroll the modernisations that are desperately needed ... or even managed by a tenant management organisation - a choice our councillors have already expressed an opinion on. There are pros and cons for any of the choices. The feeling is that we have got to sift through them and come up with two alternatives to put to all tenants. Gloucester had "sell-off" plans at the end of the 1980s, which were scuppered by a campaign mounted by some tenants. We sense another "no prisoners to be taken" battle for the simple reason that politicians, especially at local level, seem to quickly forget.

Wednesday 16 June Matson tenants association has been in contact and we are thinking of hosting a get together to pool ideas, fears and aspirations for the future of our homes - and who should be the landlord. Some suspect that the debate is almost finished in the "smoke filled" room of the controlling political group, who can outvote the combined opposition.

Monday 28 June At the special tenants forum and housing committee meeting this evening, we raised a question about last week's announcement by the housing minister that local authorities would get the full refund on the rent rebate given out to tenants who were entitled to housing benefit.

This will end "negative subsidy". We were told that yes, the housing revenue account would technically have more cash available with the ending of this "negative subsidy" but that the saving would somehow not be available because of something to do with the general fund. We will have to get to the bottom of this later.

Monday 19 July The last ever working group. We think it is fair to say that all tenant activists in Gloucester are united in feeling that there are too many meetings, so we decided to make a stop to them. To some this might seem strange. But tenant participation and consultation is not taking a step backwards here as local authority housing moves into an era of compacts, Best Value and choices. What we are trying to do is streamline the process. So the tenants forum will now meet ten times a year and encompass the work of the working parties. There is one exception. The group that looks after the estate improvement budget within the housing revenue account and decides on the bids from each estate, remains.

Wednesday, 4 August One of those dull days today. The housing department staff who run their surgery in our office on a Wednesday afternoon were even having a good-natured moan that no one was popping in. We suggested that if no one visits, everyone must be happy.