HOUSING REVIEW from...
LIAM GILLESPIE
Welcome to the first edition of @home, the new magazine for City of London tenants and leaseholders.
Head of Housing Management
We are constantly trying to improve the way we communicate with residents, and we decided to review how useful the old quarterly estate newsletters were. We sought feedback from residents and staff, and it was clear that we needed to change our approach.
This is a time of change for the City of London and the Housing Service is no different. Residents will have seen many major works projects going on around them to improve individual homes and the estates. Last year, we spent £6.67 million on major works projects, with many more still to happen in the year to come, including window replacements and important fire safety improvements such as new fire doors and sprinkler systems in tower blocks.
The result is this twice-yearly magazine, which will have a Summer and a Winter edition. We are moving away from the hyper-local approach to bring you one publication for all our estates, though there will still be articles about what is going on around our estates and local communities.
Other projects are going on quietly in the background to improve the services we provide to residents and make them more accessible. For instance, we are improving the ways in which residents can contact us, for example by making parking applications online or automated payments for
parking. This may take some time to complete but work is already underway. We are also introducing new standards for cleaning and grounds maintenance on your estates, which will be used to carry out regular inspections to check how we are performing. The results of these inspections will be published to residents and we will report on our performance regularly. We have an article on pages 10-11 updating you on the work done on the Estate Services project to date. I hope you enjoy the first edition of this magazine. If you have any comments on it, or have any suggestions for you’d like to see in future editions, please contact home@cityoflondon.gov.uk
CONTENTS An interview with Paul Murtagh
3
Word on the Estates
4
Meet the Managers
5
Resident Interview
6
Focus on our communities - events for older people
7
“Steve Says” - Advice on some of your most common repairs issues
8-9
Estate Services
10-11
Anti-Litter Campaign
12
Upcoming Events
13
Resident Recipes & Games Page
14-15
Meet the new Assistant Director for Housing & Barbican Find out what work our Projects Team have planned for your estate in 19/20 Do you know your estate managers? Find out a bit more about who they are We sit down with long term Isleden House resident Dolly Wren We look back at the events that took place for our older residents in 2019 How to keep your property in top condition in winter
Find out about this new project, set to improve cleaning and gardening on our estates What’s been happening on York Way & Holloway Estates to banish pesky litter Events taking place on our estates over the next six months, plus funding opportunities Celisa Gomes’ delicious coconut and lime cake
2
