Behind Every Door project starts helping tenants

Housing officers from Swindon Borough Council knocking on the doors of its tenants are finding that doing so is allowing them to identify some significant problems and offer better help.

By law, the council, as a social housing landlord should carry out a tenant audit every year. That’s a check to make sure that the people they link are living in a flat or house are actually living there, and to check they’re complying with the terms of their tenancy agreement.

Late last year Swindon Borough Council decided to begin a new initiative, which it calls Behind Every Door – which they said aimed to be less like a landlord coming to check that its tenants are behaving, and more trying to ensure that they are happy and safe and secure at home.

Updating members of the council’s Build A Fairer  Swindon policy Committee Elaine House and Beth Wride told councillors that so far, 380 visits have been carried out since November 1.

Ms Wride said: “We’re knocking on doors and trying to get to know our tenants.

“It can sometimes be difficult to get inside the door – if a tenant hasn’t been in touch with us, if they haven’t felt the need or if they don’t trust us.

Ms House added: “We are trying to reach the ones who might need help but haven’t been in touch, who don’t get in touch.”

Issues found have included things like hoarding and one family was found to be sleeping downstairs because of missing bannisters on the stairs that hadn’t been reported.

Those have now been fixed and the family can use their bedrooms.

Ms House agreed when Councillor Lawrence Elliott pointed out that  carrying out 380 visits in five months meant it would take a very long time to visit all 10,000 council properties in the borough.

She said: “That’s down to resources.

“And the more we find that people need help and that we can offer better help, then that creates more work for us. But it’s work we want to be doing.”

She added that the initiative was being used to get other council employees to look out for tenants, giving the example of a tradesperson working in a tenant’s house and noticing that they might be unsteady on their feet, but no handrails had been installed.

She said: “If that gets reported to us, we can then provide the help that’s needed.”