Staff shortages and high turnover of patch managers within the Housing Executive locally has only served to “exacerbate” issues with anti-social behaviour from “problem tenants” in Portadown.
And the process of reporting problems through ‘incident diaries’ has also been branded “a waste of time”.
The Housing Executive, meanwhile, has apologised for negative experiences and pointed to “quite a number of long-term sicknesses” among its workforce.
The issue was raised by DUP Councillor Kyle Moutray after ABC Council had received a report from an NIHE delegation at its monthly meeting on completed schemes and future plans for the borough.
He told the senior Executive figures present and online that he represented an area that takes in Corcrain, dealing with residents within a “quiet cul-de-sac” of 19 bungalows.
Said Councillor Moutray: “They have had three years where they’ve endured an awful lot through one or two problem tenants. There have been all sorts of things that they’ve had to put up with, threatening behavioural issues, fly-tipping, suspected drug dealing, things like that.
“One of the problems I’ve identified throughout that time has been the turnover of patch managers. In this particular area, there’s been no fewer than five patch managers in about two years, maybe even less than that.
“So that has obviously exacerbated the problem at hand, because constantly these new patch managers are coming in and it doesn’t give enough time to build a rapport, build connections with residents and community groups.”
Describing the turnover in that area as a “real problem”, he said he could contrast it to other areas in Portadown and other towns where there were patch managers who had been there for “a long time” and “building relationships”.
Southern Area Manager Pauline Beattie apologised for the experience constituents had in “obtaining and getting a service from any of our local offices”.
But by way of explanation, she added: “We have had quite a year of staff go on for expressions of interest, because there’s lots of opportunities within the Housing Executive at the minute.”
There had also been “quite a number of long-term sickness absences” and issues with recruitment and keeping staff in situ.
“We’ve struggled to retain people in the positions because they felt that the job just wasn’t for them or they get a more permanent job outside of our organisation,” she said.
But, bringing some “good news” to proceedings and expressing hopes things would “improve” moving forward, Ms Beattie added: “We’re up to our full capacity of patch managers back in our offices, and I would expect that that service that you would be getting from any of my team, that it would be there. We have generic email inboxes, and I will get one of my clerks to provide you all with a list of the patch managers and the areas that they cover.”
Sinn Fein Councillor Paul Duffy had his own concerns surrounding anti-social behaviour and problem tenants.
He asked if the Housing Executive had any plans for putting in place “something more streamlined” in terms of reporting incidents, as he said many who were asked to fill in “green book diaries” as a means of logging issues believed it to be “a waste of time”.
Ms Beattie said: “The incident diaries issued to our tenants who are experiencing anti-social behaviour are the Housing Executive’s only mechanism to try and gather evidence, enough evidence that we can bring to our community safety team to see if we have enough evidence to pursue through courts. They can be very mundane but it’s our only tool that we use.
“In terms of our tenants, if they are struggling in completing those incident diaries, our patch managers can complete those if they ring in with the information, but it has to be very factual in terms of the times that the ASB is happening, who it has been reported to and the impact on the family at the time to help us build a case.
“Our difficulties are in trying to substantiate the claims of anti-social behaviour and having enough evidence to pursue through the courts to get a conviction.”
The Southern Area Manager said she was “not sure” whether the use of incident diaries was “going to be looked at”, but gave an assurance she would follow it up and report back.
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