Bedford homelessness group raises concerns over treatment of vulnerable people

Speaking during the Housing Committee on Wednesday, June 11, John Allen, from the charity Just Us, said his organisation had “consistently” witnessed officers “behaving badly with bad attitudes” during housing interviews.

He reminded the committee that he asked how these interviews were monitored and assessed during November’s meeting.

“The head of housing homelessness and customer service [said] supervisors were positioned behind the main interview desks in order to observe live interviews,” he said.

“[We were told] all housing officers received regular one-to-one case work management meetings, which were tailored to their personal ongoing development needs and performance.

“How do supervisors observe live interviews?” he asked.

“And if housing officers’ performances do not improve, despite the supervisory measures taken… what further measures are put in place to ensure homeless people will receive the best customer service possible?”

Anna Robbani, the council’s head of housing, homelessness and customer services, said: “Whilst team leaders provide a supervisory presence in the main area of the contact centre, they are available on request by either the customer or the officer.

“But just to be clear, the supervisors are not sitting in on interviews directly in a kind of micro-managing way.

“We do trust that the training provided enables an officer to provide consistency and quality of an interview.

“If there are capability or disciplinary performance matters with a member of staff, there are very clear policies that we have to follow set out by HR,” she said.

Mr Allen added that JustUs will always complain about poor service when it witnesses it.

“JustUs is consistently seeing officers behaving badly with bad attitudes,” he said.

“But we’re wondering how often it happens when we’re not present, and how often it goes unnoticed.

“I think with any other public-facing service it wouldn’t be tolerated in the way that we think it is within the housing team.”

Mr Allen’s remarks prompted the committee chair, councillor Phillippa Martin-Moran-Bryant (Conservative, Great Barford) to thank him for raising the issue.