BRINGING back grass cutting and housing estate maintenance under Powys County Council’s (PCC) control could be the way to increase tenant satisfaction levels.

At a meeting of the Economy, Residents, Communities and Governance Scrutiny Committee, councillors were told of changes taking place.

Cllr David Selby (Liberal Democrat – Newtown Central) asked officers why couldn’t things be done differently around the county?

He believed that the maintenance of homes on housing estates he represents in Newtown could all be done locally.

Contractors from places such as Dudley in the West Midlands or Aberystwyth in Ceredigion brought in to do the work, should not be needed said Cllr Selby.

“I don’t believe that we cannot effectively manage work from Newtown, ” said Cllr Selby.

He was told that a number of surveyors have been appointed across Powys who will be able to manage the maintenance work. Estate managers have also been created and tenants can turn to them to deal with some issues.

It is part of a wider strategy called “Love where you live.”

Tenant services manager, Andy Thompson, said: “We’ll see improvements. The grass cutting was done by Greenfingers, it was awful.

“It’s now done by people employed directly by this local authority. Those people employed to cut the grass will not be laid off in winter, they will go around doing work like tidying paths and fixing hedges.

“These will be people committed to Powys.”

Mr Thompson believed that the appearance of areas in and around housing estates are extremely important to people living there.

Housing portfolio holder, Cllr James Evans (Conservative, Gwernyfed), said that the Estate Management teams were there to deal with complaints around cleaning and maintenance.

Cllr Evans said: “Local caretakers will be able to pop to builders merchants and pick things up, fix things and it’s sorted.

“Rather than having to go through the housing (phone) line asking for this and that to be repaired and having to wait. That’s why we’ve done this, it’s to get better results next year.”

In the tenant satisfaction survey, repair and maintenance had been identified as a weakness.

PCC held their own call back survey of people who had phoned the housing department with issues.

In a two week period last May, 128 calls received by PCC were chosen to be contacted. Of these 57 or 44 per-cent took the call. A further 87 were emailed of which only 11 replied.

This takes the total responding to the call back to 68 out of 215 or 32 per-cent.

Of those:

56 per cent found it difficult to speak to the right person

52 per cent were not satisfied with the outcome of their query

35 comments were made – 49 per cent on issues with maintenance and repairs

83 per cent were about communication including not being called back and waiting for something to be resolved.