Vale of Aylesbury Housing Trust

500 Days of Making Communities Count

At our third annual Residents Conference, held on Saturday 12th July, the Trust celebrated 500 working days of successfully supporting our residents by providing services and improvements to their homes.

Over 100 residents attended the conference, held again at Aylesbury College.
“It was a pleasure to spend the day sharing ideas and having some fun too”, said Ian Silver, Director of Housing and Customer Service. “This year our theme, Making Communities Count, was chosen by the residents. They formed a team with Trust employees to make sure we had a conference that would help us all get to know a little more - about what you want from us, with the opportunity for the Trust to show you what we have done on your behalf.

By working together for the last 500 working days, we have achieved an incredible amount. Not just on the raising the standard of homes above the governments’ Decent Homes level, to our own Trust standard. But just as importantly, the work we are setting in place to bring improvements to our communities. In addition to the £900,000 already invested into community based projects via the Community Chest, the Trust will be investing £300,000 a year for the next 28 years, for the benefit of our residents”. Ian added.

The Making Communities Count theme was central to the day, with Focus Groups working on the ways residents can become more involved in planning and decision making with the Trust and workshops on how the Trust can assist residents to improve or provide new services in their neighbourhoods.

The Focus Groups covered:

• The Community Chest
• Community Development
• Community Safety
• Alternative Therapies
• Money Matters
• Youth Involvement
• How to become Involved

Winners

There were over a dozen lucky winners of the prize draw, with residents winning flat screen TV’s, wine, a Wii, a hamper, an electric kettle, a junior electric guitar, a music centre and several vouchers for High Street retailers.
All the prizes were kindly donated the Trust’s contractors on the cyclical repairs and improvement programmes. Our thanks to them for their generosity.

We wanted to make sure we captured everyone’s views about what happened during the day. So, this year we introduced a novel way for all the audience to register their thoughts. During the afternoon session, residents first took part in a simple quiz using electronic voting pads. This was followed by votes being cast for the major findings of the Focus Groups.

“This was certainly a different and fun way to gather peoples opinions”, said resident Geoff Keyte. “ It also allowed us all to have a say on the ideas to come out of the morning sessions. By using the keypads, we could all register our votes on what we all felt were the best ideas”.