CityWest Homes Meeting

CityWest's North Area Board met last Thursday evening, bringing together tenants, residents, independent members and councillors to discuss current issues and monitor housing performance for all of CityWest's estates north of Bayswater.

At the beginning of the meeting we questioned a representative of the Housing Benefits team from the Council, who reported that the team had made up lost ground after difficulties last year and that the average time taken for claims to be processed continues to decrease. He was subject to a number of fairly rigorous questions about future plans for improvement and about the difficulties of processing complex cases.

We also discussed the current performance of CityWest, which continues to hold steady in most target areas. The Board highlighted a number of areas where it hoped additional work would be done to improve performance in the next three months.

Finally, the board also received a presentation from the lift department at CityWest. In recent months, CityWest have made real attempts to address the lift problems within Maida Vale and have partially upgraded machinery in Atholl, Braemar and Dundee. This should improve performance in the next quarter. The refurbishment of Falkirk House's lift continues to be a top priority for CityWest.

Lee