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Berwick BH - Youth Panel Established thanks to National Conversation
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| Wednesday 25th February 2009 |
A group of young pupils from a local Berwick school have come together to help Berwick Borough Housing (BBH) improve its services to tenants.
The pupils, aged between 12 & 16 were invited to work with housing officers for three days last week and participate in National Conversation.
National Conversation was launched in January by the Tenant Services Authority (TSA), a new organisation set up by Government to ensure that all homes owned by housing associations provide good quality services to their tenants.
The Association has organised a series of events to engage and consult with all tenants across the Borough. The pupils from Tweedmouth Middle School joined officers on a two-day field trip followed by a day at the organisations' head office to analyse the data and summarise the results into a report.
On their first day, the pupils visited rural Seahouses and Belford followed by a visit to the market place in Berwick the following day.
The results from the questionnaires revealed that 88% of participants living in Seahouses and Belford said they were either very or fairly satisfied with BBH. Meanwhile, 78% living in Berwick said they were very or fairly satisfied.
Results also showed that the most important service to residents living in both rural and urban areas of the Borough is getting repairs and maintenance carried out to their homes. More opportunities to have their say and dealing with repairs were second and third choices for residents living in more rural areas whilst help with housing benefit and providing community facilities mattered most to residents living in more build up areas.
The work that the pupils have undertaken has encouraged them to form a Youth Advisory Panel (YAP). This panel will meet four times per year with the first meEting scheduled next month working with the associations existing resident panel aiming to find out the views of young people within the Borough and the community work that the association can deliver.
One of the pupils, Rebekah, aged 12 said, "It's been great fun finding out what people think is important to them."
Whilst Leonie, also aged 12 said, "We don't get kept informed of what happens where we live and have a say in what happens on our estate."
Extended Services Co-ordinator, Lorna Chappell from the Berwick Schools Partnership said, "Through our partnership with Berwick Borough Housing, we are looking to work on many similar projects to help bring them closer to future customers and identify service gaps."
Head of Operations, Rohit Marwah at Berwick Borough Housing said, "I would like to thank all of our tenants, the Berwick Schools Partnership and all the pupils who participated in helping us to gather this information to help us to improve our services to tenants. We will be putting together a plan of action to ensure that we deliver what our tenants want and we look forward to working with the Berwick Borough Housing Youth Panel in future."
The association has posted a copy of the National Conversation questionnaire to all 1,900 homes and will be analysing the responses from tenants including the results from the youth panel to the TSA. National Conversation ends on March 16, 2009. |
| Posted by 0 for Berwick Borough Housing |
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