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Comments have been made on these pages in the past weeks about the "tenant burn out" that is being caused by all the meetings that groups are expected to attend in the consultation and/or participation process!
We think it is fair to say that all the "tenant activists" (horrible word, activist, but you know what we mean!) in Gloucester are united in the feeling that there are too many meetings.
What has been decided in the last month is that a stop is being made to all these meetings.
To some people, this might seem strange. But we can assure you that tenant participation and consultation is NOT taking a step backwards in Gloucester as the local authority housing sector is moving into the era of compacts, best value and choices.
What is trying to be done is to streamline the process that has evolved in Gloucester since the legendary "sell off" dramas of ten years ago when the tenants won the "civil war".
It has now been decided that Tenants Forum, which met the day prior to Housing and Regeneration Committee four times a year, will now meet "at least 10 times a year" - the idea is that Forum will meet monthly, except for during August, and that Forum will now encompass the work of the working parties.
There is one exception! Tenants in Gloucester are very posessive about the "estate improvement budget" within the Housing Revenue Account. The the greater amount of the £100,000 annually is effectively under the control of tenants as to how it is spent. The group that, with housing officers, looks after this spending and decides on the bids from each estates remains.
Much of today's meeting was taken up with discussing the draft constitution for the new-look Forum. Crossing the t's and dotting the i's might be boring, but it is vital.
And what made the task more difficult was that no one freally knows how Gloucester will be governed in the future. Will it be the so-called cabinet-style council, or something else?
The bottom line is that there will hopefully be fewer meetings that we are expected to attend!
We were not able to stay until the end of the meeting as we had to be back in the estate office for our Monday lunchtime "surgery". As it turned out, all the residents on the estate were content and there were no problems
So one one came to surgery!
The strange case of the "top secret" email addresses of Councillors continues!
Despite being promised a phone call from one of the "Directors" of the City Council, there has been a continuing silence.
The good people at TenZero have fixed the problem that has knocked out our guest book for the past few weeks.