Dundee Coldside - Jimmy Black

Changing duties ...

2011-06-20T17:53:00.000+01:00

The Council has now agreed to put parks, bins, property maintenance and trading standards into one, Environment Department, and that means a welcome change in my job description. With one department looking after the city, we can expect much greater efficiency and lower costs.

So from the end of the month I will simply be Convener of Housing, and Cllr Bob Duncan will be Convener of Environment. There's plenty to do in Housing, so I won't be twiddling my thumbs. But I'll miss the other departments which have been doing some great work. In the last few days we've announced a graffiti blitz to build on what we've already done all over the city. The vandals keep defacing our buildings, but we're not far behind them and we keep cleaning off their "tags".

We've opened the Riverside Nature Park, which is a brand new park for the city created out of the old Riverside Coup. It's a place to go and see wildlife and take in some spectacular views.

Today along with Shona Robison and Joe Fitzpatrick we launched Child Safety Week, urging people to "Take a Second Look" at their home to ensure unnecessary hazards are removed. And on Friday it's the Solar Cities Conference, which is all about keeping the planet cool and fighting fuel poverty.

I'll also miss the excellent officers in Environmental Services, Waste Management and Dundee Contract Services who have signed up to the doctrine of 'continuous improvement', and as a result are continuously improving the efficiency of their sections.

So I wish Cllr Duncan the best of luck in his new role and I'll concentrate on Housing. I'm confident the officers there will have good news to announce before very long.

Let's talk

2011-03-04T14:18:00.000Z

Would you ask your neighbour to turn the music down? Late night, someone you don't know very well, maybe some alcohol involved ... but you can't sleep for the racket and you're getting increasingly angry ...
What happens next? You go up and bang the door and get a mouthful of abuse and no result. You call the police and suddenly your neighbour is your worst enemy. Sometimes a polite request actually works and the neighbour turns down the noise. But however you do it, it's a potential confrontation and these things can get out of hand.
By the time the Council's anti social team gets involved, things have already gone just a wee bit too far. Threats of eviction or ASBOs may stop the noise, but resentment simmers. Instead of a community of neighbours who help each other, your close or your back lane becomes hostile territory. You may fear assault or a verbal tongue lashing. It spoils your life.
So the team is going to try a new tactic. Mediation is not new, but many people involved in noisy neighbour disputes do not understand what it is and do not imagine it could ever work. I think people also fear having to climb down from the entrenched positions they have adopted ... just like politicians. And there's the basic fear factor of confronting someone who may be violent or abusive. As things stand, if people won't go for mediation, the anti social behaviour team won't spend too much time trying to persuade them.
But for a pilot period, the ASB team will spend time with the people on both sides of a noise complaint, explain mediation to them and make it clear that they must at least try this sensible way of resolving a dispute before expecting the council to start swinging legal sledgehammers.
The service is free and the mediators are very skilled at finding common ground, then bringing people together to discuss the problem in a civilised way.
Will it work? I'm sure it will, in many cases, but not in every case. For example, where there is a real threat of violence the most sensible thing to do is bring in the police. But if we can get people talking, we're far more likely to solve problems successfully - and permanently - and probably save ourselves, the police and the courts endless hours of time on disputes which neighbours could resolve themselves, under the guidance of experienced mediators.

What Housing Benefit cuts mean for Dundee

2011-02-03T15:34:00.011Z

The Westminster Government has announced some big cuts in Housing Benefit, but the detail is complex and I don't think people realise what's about to hit them. So I've tried to show what the cuts actually mean for people in Dundee.

Council and housing association tenants

If you live in a house with an extra bedroom, your benefit will be cut as from April 2013. If you are over pension age, this doesn't apply. Disabled people will be allowed an extra bedroom for a carer, or equipment storage.

Private Tenants

Private tenants will take some of the biggest hits. The cuts mean you'll only get Housing Benefit (or Local Housing Allowance) for the cheapest rents. Until April the going weekly rate in Dundee of Housing Benefit for a three bedroomed flat is £150. After April this changes to £126. The change starts right away for new tenants, and existing tenants get nine months grace before their benefit is cut by £24 a week. How much you lose depends on how big your flat is.

People aged 25 - 35 who have their own private tenancies are in for a shock as from April 2012. They will only be paid enough Housing Benefit to cover the cost of a room in a shared flat. So someone claiming £80.77 now will be cut down to £54.23 a week. That's a benefit cut of more than £100 a month.

Changes that affect everyone

If you have adult relatives living in your house, they are expected to pay towards the rent. This means you get less Housing Benefit. Let's say you have a son who is over 18 and working 40 hours on the minimum wage. He's supposed to contribute £38.20 towards the rent as things stand. From April, he'll have to find another £10.25 a week.

If you're on Jobseekers Allowance, as from 2013 you'll lose 10% of your Housing benefit after twelve months. In Dundee, on average, that's £7.11 per week.

What does it all mean?
If you're on benefit it will be harder to find a private let you can afford. If you do, it is likely to be of poorer quality because landlords who charge lower rents have less money to invest. You may end up on the Council waiting list.

If you are under 35 and single, you won't get a private flat of your own. You can go for a council flat, but the waiting lists are long now. They'll be longer when the cuts come in.

If you're on your own in a two bedroom flat, you won't get the full rent paid and you'll have to dip into your Income Support or move house.

Some people will be unable to take the hit and will lose their homes ... and they'll end up in expensive Council temporary accommodation. Until the Tories and Lib Dems get round to cutting the benefit for that, of course.

Now is the time to lobby your MP about these cuts and try and get them stopped. Why should the poorest pay for the bankers' mistakes? This would not be happening in an independent Scotland ...

(Information from the Scottish Government report - Housing Benefit Changes: Scottish Impact Assessment - and from Dundee City council's HB telephone information line)

Empty houses?

2011-02-02T22:18:00.002Z

There's been some press speculation about empty houses in Dundee. Cllr MacPherson suggests there are around 4000 and half of them are council or housing association houses.

Not so. 1,165 of these houses are zoned for demolition. These include six multis in Hilltown and parts of Whitfield and Mill o Mains. They also include, strangely, 179 houses used as temporary accommodation for homeless people and another 1,750 privately owned homes which are either lying empty or used as second homes.

All landlords have empty houses which are waiting repairs and relet. At the end of January the Council had 441. Compared to a housing stock of 13,500 houses that's not so bad. However, it's still not good enough and we are putting in a big shift to bring those numbers down. Housing associations have a modest 141.

There are another 384 empties for various reasons; I believe they are mostly in the private sector. Some are empty because the previous occupant has died, gone to jail or gone into full time residential care and the homes may be on sale. Some are mortgage repossessions, and some are under reconstruction.

So in Dundee the main problem with empty homes is in the private sector. We want to see these homes brought back into use. We support the Scottish Government's empty homes initiative. The credit crunch and long waiting lists for rented housing mean we can't afford empty homes in our city.

Very happy to make these figures available to Cllr MacPherson on request ...

Night shelter

2011-01-28T13:59:00.002Z

Following the post below about homelessness, last night I visited a temporary night shelter being run by volunteers and a church organisation for rough sleepers in the city. The numbers they are dealing with confirm that very few people sleep rough in Dundee; but at the same time a small number of people do sleep rough, for a whole variety of reasons. I hope the project will show whether there are other things the Council should be doing to help this very small number of rough sleepers find their way to the various hostels and other accommodation which exists in the city. When the project reports back, I'll write more on this subject.

Homelessness

2011-01-27T21:39:00.002Z

A bit of a discussion has been going on in the Evening Tele. Someone called "Housing Observer" was wondering why the Council is demolishing houses when there are so many homeless people in Dundee. I wrote back with the figures.

The Council has around 900 households with homeless priority on its waiting list at any one time. In December of 2010 we had around 170 households in council provided temporary accommodation.

Some houses we have to demolish because they are in such poor condition. But since taking over the Council the SNP has decided to retain six multi storey blocks which would have been demolished under previous plans. We are now investing in them to improve security and, we hope, make them easier to heat.

At the foot of the Hilltown the Dallfield multis are being transformed. Good news is coming shortly about the much trailed recladding scheme, with a combined heat and power scheme to make them energy efficient and far more comfortable. Already there are very few vacancies in these multis, which used to be amongst the most sought after council houses in the city. They will be again!

Sadly it was too late to save the Derby Street multis. People have mixed feelings about their demolition. Some see it as a waste of 374 potentially attractive homes. Others are eagerly looking forward to more light, better views and new, more attractive houses being built in the area.

The credit crunch and Housing Benefit cuts will drive more and more people to the Council's door looking for decent huosing which they can afford. Our job is to provide that housing, keep standards up and balance the budget. There are some difficult times ahead, but we're making real progress.

2011 rent increase

2011-01-25T09:50:00.002Z

At last night's meeting of the Housing Committee I was forced to rule a motion by Cllr Fraser MacPherson out of order. I have no wish to stifle democratic debate, but Cllr MacPherson made a procedural mistake which left me with little choice.

The rent setting process has two stages ... firstly the Policy and Resources committee sets the budget, then the Housing Committee sets the rent. By law the rent increase must be enough to cover the budget - we are not allowed to subsidise council house rents.

This means that anyone who wants to propose a lower rent increase must first put a motion to the Policy & Resources Committee, cutting something out of the budget.

Cllr MacPherson prepared such a motion, but for reasons unknown failed to put that motion to P&R. As I understand it he had wanted to cut £500,000 off the budgets for preparing relets.

This meant that his proposal to reduce the rent increase would have led to what I would regard as an illegal budget. We would have been half a million short.

In these circumstances I had no option but to rule his motion as incompetent.

It was a long night with a three and a half hour discussion of the biomass plant coming before the housing budget, and it is unfortunate that Cllr MacPherson made this mistake.

In case anyone should imagine that my ruling was an attempt to stifle debate, the rent increase was the subject of a two month consultation; we sent every tenant information about the increase and invited views; and we held open events where tenants could put questions directly to officials.

We also set out the three options at a previous Housing Committee and debated a similar motion from Cllr MacPherson at that time. And last night we chose the lowest of the three options.

No-one wants to put rents up, but we have a legal obligation, imposed by the Scottish Government with all party support, to bring our council houses up to the very basic Scottish Housing Quality Standard. We need to spend around £30 million in this year alone to do that, most of it borrowed. We need to raise rents to cover the cost of that borrowing.

On the other hand, the work we are doing in thousands of homes involves installing new efficient gas central heating systems. They are cheaper to run than most electric systems and tenants will save money as a result.

Something to be proud of ...

2010-10-31T22:50:00.002Z

All politicians want to make a difference; I'm delighted to say that in Housing we have made one very tangible change. Before the SNP took over in Dundee, the Council let houses which were dirty and in poor condition. That's what the Scottish Housing Regulator said, and many of us knew this to be true.

Now we let houses which are clean, in good decorative order, safe and with everything working. The difference is tremendous. Where necessary, we redecorate with lining paper and magnolia paint. It means new tenants have a blank canvas which they can change to suit their own taste. To make this happen we have had to re-engineer the way we repair and relet houses; doing this simple thing proved more complex than many of us imagined.

The next goal is to reduce the time we take to relet houses. Currently this takes months when it should take weeks. We're working on it and I expect to report more progress soon.

Currently the Council is consulting tenants about the proposed rent increase for next year. The options are 4.5%, 4.75% or 5%. The difference between the options is the time we take to do external maintenance like painting front doors and closes and gutter repairs.

Why do we need to raise rents by this much? The answer is our legal obligation to bring our houses up to the very basic Scottish Housing Quality Standard by 2015. That means new kitchens, bathrooms, roofs, heating systems and other work for many of our properties. The whole thing will cost upwards of £90 million between now and then.

We have to borrow this money and pay it back out of the rents. At least the new heating systems will help tenants save some money, especially those who have old fashioned electric storage heaters.

The Housing Department is looking for efficiencies and has reduced staff costs by more than £400,000 per year. By improving the way we work we hope to find even more savings, all of which will help keep rent increases down.

No-one pretends the rent increase will be popular, but at least the quality of council housing in Dundee is increasing significantly and the new kitchens, bathrooms and heating systems are proving very welcome.

2009-08-23T23:08:00.002+01:00

In office at last

The last post on this very neglected blog was before the SNP took over the Administration of Dundee City Council. I'm now Convener of Housing, Dundee Contract Services and Environmental Services. Being this busy meant I had to stand down as Convener of the Dundee Sirolli Project, now known as Clocking Onto Business.

What do I want to do with my new Convenership? I want to offer people council houses in move in condition. I want to get relets done much faster. I want to find a way to ensure that we don't let houses to people who will make their neighbours' lives a misery. And I want to see our houses brought up to the Scottish Housing Quality Standard.

I'd also like to build new council houses, and that will be happening soon. But I am still not convinced that we have a "surplus" of public service housing (ie council and housing association houses) in Dundee, no matter what the experts tell us. I'm looking forward to receiving reports from the Housing Department on the costs and benefits of keeping houses in Derby Street which currently scheduled for demolition.

I have ambitions for the other Departments overseen by the Housing, DCS and Environmental Services Committee. More on those later ...

Rent increase

2009-01-27T13:11:00.002Z

Last night's Housing Committee meeting increased council house rents by 5.9%. This is a very big increase at a time when inflation is dropping towards 2%.

The Labour/Lib Dem Administration had originally proposed a much higher increase of 7%; I had an increase of 5% in mind; in the end 5.9% was an acceptable compromise.

There are a number of reasons why we need to increase our rents so much. The first is that previous Labour/Lib Dem administrations have saddled us with £125 million in housing debt. 34p of every pound paid in rent goes to pay interest on that debt. Yet we are demolishing schemes such as Maxwelltown where huge amounts of cash were spent just a few years ago.

The second is that we need to improve our houses to meet the Scottish Housing Quality Standard. This is pretty basic and it's not to the Council's credit that we have to spend so much to bring our council houses up to scratch.

The third is that we're clearing various multi storey developments. Many of the tenants are going to housing association properties, so we lose their rents. We are also losing houses through the Right to Buy ... although we get some money in from sales, the rent is lost for ever.

Finally, we could be more efficient. It takes us 68 days to relet one of our more popular houses, and 80 days for less popular houses. Why does it take so long? If we could improve our performance here by just one week, we'd bring in an extra £70,000 in rent.

We supported the 5.9% increase reluctantly. But if and when the SNP becomes Dundee's administration, reletting houses much more swiftlywill be one of our first priorities.

Housing Department under fire?

2008-11-24T15:48:00.002Z

I note that Radio Tay is carrying a story that housing bosses are under fire for not carrying out nearly 700 gas safety checks. I've brought this issue up with the Housing Department and the subject comes up at the Housing Committee tonight (24 November). According to the paper being presented to the meeting, 92% of checks have been done, but that means 8% haven't been done. And 8% adds up to nearly 700 homes. I'm glad to say the Housing Department is working hard to put things right, and fewer tenants are now waiting for their safety checks, but I'm still concerned.

2008-11-20T09:09:00.002Z

Dundee's burns - a source of power?

The Scottish Government wants 1000 mini hydro electric generators in Scotland, and I think two or three of them could be in Dundee. Here's a news release carried by the Evening Telegraph which says a bit more ...

Hydro power for Dundee? Coldside Councillor investigates ...

A Dundee councillor says power from Dundee's burns could help cut fuel bills, and reduce the city's carbon footprint at the same time. Cllr Jimmy Black says the possibility of hydro power on the Dighty and other burns is worth further study.

"Before the city spread out in Victorian times there were several important burns flowing through Dundee, some of which powered water wheels on mills. The Dighty looks the most promising - I'm told there were four water mills on that burn. There was also a mill at the foot of Commercial Street, powered partly by water which flowed through an aqueduct from Albert Square.

"In my own ward we have the Dens Burn, which now surges through a culvert underneath Dens Road; and an old map shows that the Wallace Burn flowed down under the Dens Brae to the Harbour. I think the Wallace Burn and Dens Burn are probably the same thing, but I'd be delighted if anyone could provide further information."

Councillor Black's researches follow a Scottish Government call for 1,000 micro hydro schemes across Scotland to cut carbon emissions and save fuel costs. New technology means that hydro schemes no longer need to be on a large scale.

"If we could provide enough electrical power from a burn for the street lights in a small housing scheme, or heating in a sheltered housing complex, that would make it worth the effort. Along with other small scale schemes such as the use of windpower, bringing Dundee's burns back into use could help make the city greener and save us all some money."

Councillor Black has written to the Director of Planning and Transportation, Mike Galloway, asking for more information about the city's watercourses. He has also been in touch with Dundee's Sun City project and staff at the University of Dundee.

"I'm hoping that someone with resources and expertise will take this suggestion forward," said Councillor Black. "There are grants available from various agencies for feasibility studies, and even more grants to assist with the cost of building small scale hydro schemes. I strongly believe this is worth further study and I will take every chance to push the idea wherever I can."