Private Sector Housing: Private rented sector,
owner occupier, empty properties, Houses in Multiple
Occupation.
Home visits will not be undertaken unless the case has been deemed
an emergency and that a visit is necessary (risk of death/ no hot
water / no heating / defective sanitary provision/fire safety). Any
new cases of housing disrepair that come in will be prioritised and
our working procedures will be flexible over this period. These
cases will be monitored on a daily basis and depending on demand
for service if some can be resolved via a phone call, then officers
will make any necessary calls or emails/all communication from
home.
Any planned (non-emergency) housing inspections over the next
couple of weeks are to be cancelled and will be re arranged when
the peak of the outbreak has passed and we begin to be more
operational.
If it is necessary for a home visit in the case of an emergency,
the officer will enquire with the occupier regarding their age and
any underlying health conditions and whether they are symptomatic,
have been in contact with anyone with symptoms or in contact with
anyone who has returned from a county with symptoms in the past 14
days. The occupier will also be asked to take photographs and/or
videos to that assessments can be made. That information will be
relayed to the manager and head of service and a risk assessment
carried out to ensure the safety of the occupier, staff members and
contractors of entering and carrying out any necessary emergency
remedial action.
Complaints relating to empty properties and nuisance: officers will
ask that photographs be provided by the complainant and officers
will make effort to contact owner via any details held on council
tax but no further action will be taken if we have no details on
council data base systems. These cases can be dealt with at a later
stage.
The reasons for these changes listed above is to avoid all un
necessary contact with members of the public for the health and
safety of our (often vulnerable) service users, staff members and
their families at home. The service will be operating at a reduced
reactive capacity in light of the current climate but the team will
be flexible and adapt as this process continues.
Adaptations Team: Staff provide feasibility inspections for
Disabled Adaptations, this service is cross tenure private sector
and Six Town Housing.
New works to properties to be postponed with immediate effect
unless the work is of an urgent nature / to enable a hospital
discharge and only if the client/ contractor agree to go ahead.
Applicants to be advised of this delay by Occupational
Therapists.
The reasons behind this are precautionary and in an attempt to
prevent unintentional spread of the virus to those that are least
able to fight it given the customers in this group have a medical
condition and/or disabled and/or children and elderly. Additionally
our only full-time Technical Officer is self-isolating due to
coronavirus symptoms and has an immediate family member with
chronic asthma. We are left with one Technical Officer who works 2
days a week.
If a home visit is required then the following questions are to be
asked:
1. Have you recently returned from an affected country?
2. Have you been in contact with anyone that has recently returned
from an affected country?
3. Do you have symptoms? High temperature, cough, difficulty
breathing?
4. Is the client ok with us coming into their home?
We have a spreadsheet of all active cases for technical officers to
update and for Unit Manager to review – this will help reduce
our current backlog.
Major Adaptation Panel (MAP) meeting has been postponed, therefore
Unit Manager is looking at the options for virtual meetings going
forward for existing cases to progress. In the meantime a
spreadsheet is being collated of all previously deferred cases and
the new cases to be discussed. This will be circulated for comments
from all Officers who attend MAP so that decisions can be made on
each case whether to approve or not in the interim.
Other approaches
Urban Renewal have responded to the Coronavirus by gathering
information from various bodies’ voluntary/public and private
to make sure we can signpost those in need for services/advice that
we can’t offer, such as rent arrears, mortgage arrears for
Landlords, food banks and homelessness to name a few . This is an
evolving situation and we will continue to support all customers as
far as possible.