In this section

Welcome to our fourth blog update about our work in Somerton.

We held our last resident steering group meeting online on 2 February, due to the ongoing situation with Covid-19. 11 Somerton residents attended the session, alongside Cllr John Guy.

You can read the minutes from the February meeting here.

This month, we talked to the SG about our current project plan and our communications activity.

What happened at the February SG meeting
We let the group know that we’ve slightly changed one boundary on the area maps we presented during the last meeting. This was based on feedback we received, as we want to make sure the information we share in our future updates is as clear as possible.

We also gave a quick update on what we’ve been working on since the last meeting.

  • We’re still working our way through the survey findings from our recent activity
  • We’re still looking for a financial advisor
  • We’ve started looking at how we can make sure any work we carry out in Somerton in the future is sustainable for future generations

Upcoming communications to be aware of

  • We have written to all residents who had a survey carried out through our contractor, Michael Dyson. We’re not able to share individual results with the community, so we’re combining the general results into ‘areas’ within Somerton, and we’ll be talking about this in our first project newsletter
  • Our first newsletter will be sent to the community in March. We talked to the RSG about what should be included, including the survey findings and a clear update of exactly where we are in our plans

 

Community event
We know that the community are keen for us to be more visible and present in Somerton. This is something we haven’t been able to do as much as we would have liked because of COVID-19.

Depending on current COVID-19 guidance, we hope to be able to hold a face-to-face event in Somerton around the end of March.

More information on this will be shared on social media and our upcoming newsletter.

We talked to the RSG about an event, and they told us that this event should be at a time that allows people who work during the day to attend too and suggested the Hope Centre as a venue. We’ll likely have a longer event that runs from the afternoon into the evening, but we’ll share more in the coming weeks. If you have any thoughts about how and when we can best talk to you and the community about our work in Somerton, please do let us know.

Talking to residents who have been through relocation with NCH before

We have spoken to residents about the likelihood that in either option of regeneration or refurbishment we may need to re locate people because of the level of works we are expecting to need to carry out. We understand that members of the community are worried about this and we have asked some of our residents who relocated as part of our work in Ringland to share their experiences.  We asked 3 residents and a homeowner about their experiences and what NCH could improve on in the future. You can see this video below.

 

Financial Advisor and FAQ document

We have now advertised twice for potential companies to carry out the financial and valuations work we plan to do with home owners, which includes the voluntary purchase scheme and unfortunately not had any suitable responses. We are continuing to look at how we can appoint appropriate companies to carry out the work. Unfortunately it may mean a further delay on when we can start the voluntary purchase scheme however we are progressing this as a priority. We’ll continue to update the group on our progress with this.

We have also now shared the Homeowners FAQ document, and if anyone still has further questions, they are more than welcome to get in touch.

We’ll also be introducing the SG to Phillip Lott soon, who will be the main contact for homeowners who are considering selling their property.

 

Refurbishment

It’s important to us that you know we’re taking forward the work required to look in more detail at the potential further refurbishment works, as well as the regeneration option.

Based on the survey results, we’re going to be carrying out some intrusive surveys in a number of homes to check our understanding of the condition of the properties and how we would address key issues such as rising damp. We expect this will led onto a pilot scheme, where we would carry out required works to a small number of homes to make sure they would address the problems we have identified.

We’re working with our internal Maintenance and Design teams on this

One challenge that we need to consider is to make sure that any refurbishments also contribute towards the need for our homes to be ‘zero carbon’, as well as fixing the ongoing issues.

 

Survey letters

Compiling the individual results for each home who took part in our recent surveys took longer than we thought, and we’re sorry that we weren’t able to get the survey results letters out to residents by the end of January as we planned.

The letters have now been sent to all individual homes. Please note that only homes (residents and homeowners) who took part in a survey will receive a results letter.

Survey

We’ve added in the 50 original surveys we completed in the first phase of the project to the 189 we did at the end of 2021, so now we have data on 231 homes, out of a possible 353 in the area.

These results increased the overall percentage of damp in three areas on the map.

Design

At the RSG meeting our architects, Oxford Architects, explained how they’re starting to move forward with the design process.

Since the last meeting, they have been looking at the local area, looking at what’s there now and where the best opportunities for future development may be.

We’ve also asked them to consider things like access for pedestrians, to schools and the allotments.

One of the main issues we want to look at is areas of what we call ‘visibility’ and how current ‘poor visibility’ areas are affected by anti-social behaviour (ASB). We want any public spaces to be open and visible to discourage ASB.

We’re working to lots of standards and best practices when we look at the design, :

The RSG have also asked us to consider:

  • Improved links to the school
  • Links to the Hope Community Centre
  • Car parking

We have already been taking into account the comments that we had from residents in the Spring/ Summer 2021 when we shared the initial ideas we had for the estate and we shared the key comments that we received.

By the next meeting, we hope to share some designs for some key areas we expect to focus on. We’ll share this with the SG and the wider community.

To make sure we look at the right areas, we’ll be looking at things like:

  • Findings of the damp surveys
  • The conditions of the homes
  • The number of homeowners
  • The views of residents
  • Void properties that are already uneconomic to be brought back into use
  • Opportunities to make significant improvements to the area

Questions we have received this month

What are your plans for unoccupied homes in the area?
When a home in Somerton becomes empty, we carry out checks to understand how much investment the home would need to be brought back into use for the future. This is part of the reason that we are considering Somerton for our future work because a lot of these homes need significant investment. Wherever possible homes are re-let, and this has happened recently.

What’s happening with valuations for homeowner properties?
We’re working hard to identify and appoint a valuer to support valuation work with homeowners who want to sell their homes to NCH. We’ll include homeowners in the selection process and let everyone know as soon as we’re able to progress this work.

When will the community know which areas are being redeveloped and which will be renovated?
We hope we’ll have this information ready by September.

Will NCH do an estate clear-up? Abandoned homes are being used as rubbish dumps.
We understand the concerns of the community about the condition of some areas in Somerton, and you may see our Estates team out and about in the community as part of our work.

They visit all empty NCH properties every two weeks. Following every visit, we create any outstanding jobs for the team to carry out and report any issues back to our Tenancy Management team. We also report any issues with street cleaning back to Newport City Council.

Where we come across fly tipping, the team return to remove this within the next few days. We know of two properties where there are extreme issues and we’re working to be able to remove this safely as the weather improves.

All empty NCH properties will receive a grass cut when our work begins in the Spring.

 

Our next steering group meeting will take place on Wednesday 2 March 2022.

We hope that this blog has been useful – if you have any questions, or if there’s anything you’d like us to cover in future blogs, please get in touch with us at community@newportcityhomes.com.

 

Thanks,

The Somerton team