Some of you may already be aware that pending Committee approval this morning Housing will be consulting on changes to the Temporary Accommodation Charging Policy.

This is a digital consultation and we are expecting just under 950 emails to be issued from housingpolicy@moray.gov.uk at some point today. The email is being issued to tenants housed through the homeless route since April 2018 who have a current tenancy, current homeless list applicants and those currently in temporary accommodation.

Any queries about the consultation can be directed to the housing policy queue if a call comes in via the contact centre. When the consultation goes live, the consultations and housing policy webpages will be updated with a link to the following webpage: http://www.moray.gov.uk/moray_standard/page_149122.html. Housing will also promote the consultation on social media.

Please see the below for clarification of processes re-Defect Repair Follow-up’s:

• All escalations should be raised via the follow up route on the script with escalations sent to all Email addresses listed on the scripts e.g. Springfield goes to Aftersales & Housing Strategy.

• Rechargeable repairs Customer Services DO NOT have authority to authorise these. If you’re asked to give authority, please follow the escalation route and advise that you will leave this in the hands of the CC’d mailbox.

• Scripts are there as a guide if you’re asked to do anything that goes against the advice on a script (unless advised otherwise by Support Team / Team Leaders) or you feel a conversation is starting to feel like a game of ping pong, please discuss next steps with Seniors (Seniors to Team Leader/s).

Housing Management have notified Customer Services of a substantial amount of changes to the above Housing Area which will take effect from this Monday (26/06/2023).

Unfortunately Housing only raised a log to the Support Team notifying of this work this week and as a result the Support Team are not able to commit resources to having the changes requested implemented in time for Monday.

Housing Management are aware of this and have been advised that they will be responsible for moving any cases raised to the appropriate teams/staff members (cases should not be passed back to Customer Services).

ALL Seniors/Advisors handling Housing cases are asked to follow the scripts and if you are asked to do anything differently by a member of the Housing Team you notify Senior’s immediately so that they can liaise with the Support Team.

As soon as the Support Team are able to confirm a change date this will be shared on this post so that you only have one place to look for updates.

Kindest regards
Donna
Customer Service Team Leader

Update 27/06/2023: We can confirm the changes in Lagan will not be in place until 1st August.

As scheduled, letters have been generated on Northgate today and the finished files passed to the CopyShop for printing and posting 2nd class, as soon as ready.

Template attached here for your info. Total letters 1567.

The housing benefit files have now been successfully applied to the relevant accounts and ICT have raised a case with CAPITA regarding the issue with the daily files, this has effected all services the Council uses Pay360 for.

This post will be updated once the issue has been resolved.

Update 21/06: Housing have advised that the failed income files for Monday and Tuesday have now been posted alongside todays file - all accounts should be up to date and reflected accordingly on the payment system. Any further issues, please pass via your Senior in the first instance.

Please note 67 of the re-registration letters will be sent to HOL applicants for their annual review.

There will be more over the coming weeks same letter.

Housing have advised that I-World will be migrated to a new server over the weekend. The system will not be available until mid morning on Monday 5th June. The team will let us know when the system is back up.

This may have an impact on housing scripts when trying on confirm dates of birth or access housing applications and rent accounts. If you experiance any issues please advising the customer they system is down and ask that they call back either in the afternoon or the next day.

As soon as the system is made available again we will let you know

Earlier this year the SG replaced the phrase “self-isolating” with the new phrase “stay at home advice” to be followed by anyone testing positive or suffering from symptoms related to Coronavirus. As a result, the questions asked of customers reporting a repair remain in place and should continue to be asked by Customer Services until advised otherwise.

If you have any questions, please pass via your Senior in the first instance.