WHY is there no action plan yet to address problems identified in the Powys County Council’s (PCC) independent tenants’ satisfaction survey?

Head of housing, Nina Davies, was criticised by councillors at the Economy, Residents, Communities and Governance scrutiny committee on Tuesday, August 20, for coming to the meeting with no action plan.

Councillors wanted to know how the service will be improved as a consequence the satisfaction survey.

Mrs Davies told councillors she was going to take their comments on board before finalising the plan.

Scrutiny committee chair, Cllr Mathew Dorrance (Labour – Brecon St John), said: “We want to see the action plan not to be critical but to help you improve this service. You’ve had this report since May, what have you done for the action plan?”

Mrs Davies, said: “We have an action plan and we will work on it with the comments we have had and bring it back to you very shortly.

“It’s important to note that this survey is measuring our past performance not the current or future. You have a new team that’s in place since April.

“When we do do future surveys you should see a really changed results but it will take plan to embed. We’ve had some really useful suggestions today and we will take those away.”

Earlier Cllr Mark Barnes (non-aligned – Newtown Llanllwchaiarn West) said that the meeting had been a “complete waste of time”.

Cllr Barnes believed that they should have discussed the survey in a morning meeting and work in the afternoon on suggesting ways to improve it.

Cllr David Evans (Independent, Nantmel) said: “I don’t know when I’ve felt more depressed at a meeting? I really do think that we are incapable of running the service.

“The report by any standards is very poor. I was hoping we would be given genuine valid reasons why we have such a poor report.

“There’s no indication on what we hope to do, I really am very anxious about it, we have to get our acts together.”

Cllr Dorrance expects the action plan to be brought before the scrutiny committee at their next meeting on October 14.

Local authorities who have housing stock are required to survey their tenants every couple of years.

This year’s survey included seven questions from The Welsh Government that they expected all 22 councils in Wales to use.

PCC added three of its own questions to the survey which was done by  Beaufort Research from Cardiff .

In April they spoke to 713 PCC tenants in phone interviews spread across the county.

It was followed in May by an in-house telephone survey of 128 tenants as part of a call-back exercise of which there were 57 responses.

The survey showed:

  • 65 per cent overall satisfaction
  • 77 per cent satisfied with quality of the home
  • 84 per cent happy with neighbourhood as a place to live
  • 71 per cent felt rent provides value for money
  • 65 per cent felt service charge provides value for money
  • 54 per cent satisfied with repairs and maintenance
  • 47 per-cent fairly or very satisfied that PCC Housing Service Listens to their views and acts on them
  • 78 per-cent agree that housing has friendly and approachable staff
  • 62 per-cent agree the housing service has a good reputation in their area
  • 72 per-cent trust the housing service