Council tenants in Wandsworth would have to apply for a formal say in how their homes are run, under plans to replace the area panels their residents’ associations sit on.
The council wants to scrap its four area housing panels, where representatives of residents’ associations meet councillors and housing officers four times a year. In their place would come borough-wide groups organised by topic, with seats open to any tenant or resident leaseholder who applies and is selected.
Residents’ associations would move to what the council’s calls “informal activities”, listed alongside roadshows, pulse surveys and newsletters.
The plans go to the Borough Residents’ Forum tomorrow evening and to the council’s housing scrutiny committee on Thursday. The council says they are a draft for discussion, with a final strategy due at Cabinet early next year.
In Roehampton, the Western Area Housing Panel brings ten residents’ associations together at the Manresa Clubroom on Fontley Way. Each association can put up to three items on the agenda.
At a single meeting last year, the panel dealt with everything from litter from split bin bags that the council’s waste contractor would not sweep up, to Thames Water bills of £800 to £900 a year for flats with the same layout that cannot have individual meters, and buses being cut short.
Representatives removed
At the moment, most panel members are appointed from accredited residents’ associations. The panels in turn elect the residents who sit on the Borough Residents’ Forum, the body above them.
The council’s case for change is that the route is too narrow. Its paper says residents’ associations cover only a third of its estates, and that access should no longer depend on belonging to one. Selection criteria would be used to make the new groups representative of the borough as a whole, with training for those chosen.
The change follows the Regulator of Social Housing’s inspection of the council’s housing service, which gave it a C3 rating last year. In the council’s latest survey, 61% of tenants and 55% of leaseholders said the housing service listens to their views and acts on them.
Under the proposed structure, a new scrutiny body would sit at the top, fed by five groups: tenants, leaseholders, vulnerable residents and accessibility, repairs, and the borough’s housing co-ops. None of them is organised by place. Engagement on individual estates would “take place at the informal level”, through estate inspections, roadshows and residents’ associations.
The councillors who chair the area panels would keep a role, the paper says, with thought given to how they could chair and attend the new groups.
The council already runs a panel recruited this way, on the Alton estate. The Alton Community Panel was recruited by application in 2025 to help shape the estate’s renewal: 15 residents, meeting with an independent chair. When it was set up, the council said members would be paid the London Living Wage for around four hours a month.
Its members have questioned how much power it has. After an external evaluation this year, the panel’s published notes record members saying the work was not yet “resident-led”, that power over regeneration outcomes arguably still sits mostly with officers and professionals, and that there are still “many people above us who have the final say”.
What the paper does not say
The proposal for scrapping the current system does not say whether members of the new groups would be paid, as Alton’s panel members were told they would be.
It does not say whether any money would be saved. The only financial comment is that the cost of drawing up the strategy will come from existing housing budgets.
It does not say where issues tied to a place would be raised once the area panels have gone.
Decisions on the funding residents’ associations receive, on how they are recognised, and on the small improvement budget each panel shares out for estate projects are left for later Cabinet papers.
Nor does it say whether the Alton panel is the model, or whether the Housing Quality Network review that led to the plans will be published.
The Borough Residents’ Forum meets at the Town Hall tomorrow at 7.30pm. It is a public meeting, and members of the public can attend to observe. A survey of residents on housing estates is due to run this autumn before a draft strategy is written.
