Councillor Tim Young says tenants were consulted about the sale of Joyce Brooks House at the Sheltered Housing Tenants Forum (Letters, November 9).
As a former community housing officer with Colchester Borough Homes (CBH), I know its housing forums are attended by just a tiny minority of tenants, usually less than 1 per cent.
They are also often held in premises that are distant (especially for older tenants) from the housing areas themselves, maybe two bus rides away.
Perhaps the councillor would be open enough to tell us the number of attendees at that forum, and their home locations, to illustrate the quality of CBH’s “consultation”.
These figures should be available under the council’s freedom of information policy. It’s my bet that few (if any) were from Joyce Brooks House.
These forums, in my experience, are little more than an exercise to tick a box. This particular consultation should have been carried out at the sheltered scheme with the affected tenants. Anything less is a sham.
Rick Lewis
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