Bank Holiday Washout and Tenancy Agreement

Hello again,

Well, that was a typical Bank Holiday weekend – my BBQ, probably like many others, stayed in the shed, but at least I did not need to water the garden.

Coming back in after a long weekend means we have even more incidents to review when we get in. Overall it was not too bad for Northam and St Marys, in keeping with the recent trend. There was a bit of youth nuisance reported in Northam. A family that used to live in the area have been re-housed back here again and the same youths have started congregating around. We are working with the housing provider to try to sort out the problems. The housing providers are often key to sorting out anti social behaviour within our area. It is generally part of the tenancy agreement that the householder is responsible for the behaviour of those who live at the address and visitors. Quite often when we get complaints of anti-social behaviour other residents are fearful of putting pen to paper for fear of retribution. However, the housing providers can use anonymous statements. As you can imagine, this makes things much easier, and working with the housing providers we can provide information to top up theirs, often to go for repossession, or at least to serve a notice to the householder that we are looking at seeking possession - this is called a NOSP – Notice of Seeking Possession. We regularly have joint visits with the housing providers to try to sort out problems, and have had considerable success with this route.

On Tuesday we had another first. We have a new police volunteer. He is a young lad who has volunteered to help us run the Junior PCSO Scheme. He is hoping to gather experience to help him join the police and is going to help PCSO Mark Reynolds with the Lumpy Lane juniors. If this works out it will be great. It will add some more continuity to the leaders who run the juniors – and enables us to supply just one PCSO for the scheme rather that two. This is particularly useful on a Tuesday (when we have the Lumpy lane group) as we also run tag rugby on a Tuesday afternoon at St Marys School and that takes another two officers.

It was also the Northam Community Priority Setting Meeting on Tuesday. PC Mark Shepherd, who will be joining us in August as PC Phil Warwicks replacement (he left in September last year) was on duty, so he asked to pop along. It gives him an idea of what we do and also the opportunity to meet some of the people of Northam. Quite a good little introduction. At the meeting it was decided to close the priority regarding vehicles illegally turning right from Hilda Place into Northam Rd and was replaced by anti social being caused from a flat in Princes Court, and another flat - but not quite so bad, in Princes House. Funnily enough,considering I have already mentioned the tenancy agreements, this is another case where we can put pressure on the tenant via the tenancy agreement. It is of course the coucil that will take the lead as this is a council flat. We have already done several joint visits to the tenant so he is well aware of the concerns, and this now looks like the next step. That is one of the positive things about the Community Priority Setting Meetings - it is the community that gets to say what they want us to work on, the residents have their say. Anyway, in this case we are already aware and are working on it and although tenancy action can be a slow process we can now say we have the backing of other residents to take action. The next Northam meeting will be Tuesday 1 June as there is a Bank Holiday on the Monday. The next St Marys Community Priority Setting Meeting is next Tuesday.

Well, thats about it for another week, please let me have your thoughts and comments on the blog and anything you would like me to cover in the future

Cheers

Dick