Minutes

Attendance: Cllr Brian Oldham (BO, Chair), Tony Mallard (TM, Co-chair), Jamie Wells (JW, NBC), Norman Sharp (NS, Individual), Christiana Owusu-Akuffo (COA, Individual), Brian Nichols (BN, Individual), Ann Timson (AT, Individual), Nicky Mckenzie (NM, NPH), Kerry Carroll (KC, NPH), Ann Wisheart (AW, Individual), Cllr Stephen Hibbert (SH, Cllr), Deborah Furniss (DF, Alzheimer’s society)

Apologies: Roger Rumsey

JW-Unfortunately due to a system error, the previous meetings minutes have been lost. If they are located in the future they will be added to the website, should anyone wish to revisit them.

DF delivered a slide show presentation to the forum explaining her role for the Alzheimer’s society and the project “side by side”. The project aims to encourage more people to volunteer in their local area and provide support for people living with Alzheimer’s. More information can be found in the presentation attached.

NS: I live in sheltered housing with quite a lot of elderly people and there are a few people who would benefit from this scheme. Luckily, we all seem to look out for each other.

DF: That’s great to hear, this is the sort of thing we are looking for. 

AT: Do you have a dementia centre?

DF: We do have centres all over the country but the closest one to here is in Islip.

AT: Do you match people locally?

DF: Yes we do.

TM- I’m part of a local veterans club and we have a lot of elderly members that attend. I think it would be good to have you come along to talk at. Would you be interested?

DF: Yes of course, I will get Jamie to share my info.

TM- I assume it’s difficult to find people with dementia who are living alone?

DF-Not really. We get a lot of people through referrals and varies other support systems.

BO- One thing I would like to know, I thought alzheimer’s is a bigger danger than dementia?

DF-No, dementia is worse. There are so many different type of dementia and alzheimer’s is just another one of these. There are many different type on different scales. People do get frighten that they may have it as they can forget everyday things such as keys or wallet. There’s a lot of things we can rule out first when we look to test people.

AT-Do referrals come from there GP or family?

DF-Both.

AT-How long is the process for pairing someone?

DF-Depends on where someone is or how close they are to a volunteer. Initial contact is made in the first few weeks then once visited, we look to pair people up as quickly as we can.

KC introduced herself and went on to talk about hate crime awareness week. On Monday NPH will have a stall at Weston Favell and on Friday we will have the NPH bus on the Market Square. On Tuesday we will be heading to the travellers encampment at in Northampton to discuss hate crime issues with them.

AT-KIs there any chance that this could be shared on the Chronical and Echo

KC- I don’t know about the Chronical but our communications team will share this information via social media and through a press release. As were in such prominent areas, we are hoping for high footfall to gain engagement interest. The shopping centre in western favell and town centre are always busy. Our aim to provide knowledge of what a hate crime is, where to report it and where to find more information.

BO-Which traveller’s site are you visiting?

KC-Ecton traveller’s site.

ST-What would you like to get from visiting the travellers site.

KC- To provide the same information to them as the rest of the town. They have been victims of a hate crime in the past so we want them to be aware of what is a hate crime and all the ways they can report this. We aim to build relations with them as they normally are a hard to reach community.

When we get complaints about ASB or hate crime, each complaint gets rated on a scale of 1 to 5 (5 being the most serious). Each one is categories depended on the circumstance. By doing this it changes the response time of each case. We do look to resolve issues through mediation by either face to face or just one to one where we go in-between.

BM- I imagine your responsibility doesn’t extend to schools, due to the issues with mobile phones etc.

KC- If it was one of our tenant we could get involved but the schools are normally good at dealing with this as they have their own system.

BM-Do you know how hate crimes are dealt with in schools?

KC I imagine it depends on the school, they all have their own system. Luckily most schools in Northampton works with the police in town which can help them overall.

BM- I’m worried that the police spend too much time with their limited resources on hate crime.

KC- I disagree, there is only one hate crime officer in the whole county.

BO- if there’s no more questions? Thank you for coming along and good luck with your week.

NM-I’m here today to answer any questions you may have for NPH.

AT-When will NBC and NPH get together to solve problems in our estate? We have a problem with the poo bins in our area and no one will empty it as no one will take responsibility. They are always overflowing.

NM-I apologies, the bins were meant to be passed onto Veolia. At first they weren’t aware of a few bins on the route but they were meant to the updated. I will get in touch to find out if why this is getting misses and to also make sure there route is up to date. Leave this with me. Are they bad right now Ann?

AT-Yes, they have been over flowing for weeks.

NM- ok, I can only apologies about that. I will get someone out.

TM-in my area there are new builds being built but it has caused some chaos as there is no or limited parking on the new estates.

NM- is there one particular site that bad? As I can get a site visit sorted with yourself.

TM-around grange road is bad.

TM-Another problem-We are having problems contacting NPH-when we call through we rarely seem to get through to someone and have to leave a message. We then rarely get a call back. It’s hard to get information and a response. I wanted to get an update about the tenants/residents forum but got nowhere.

NM-I’m disappointed you couldn’t get through, there is a number of people that should be available so I can only apologies.

TM-Moving onto repairs. We do get good response with this normally but I recently reported a loose man hole about 4 to 5 weeks ago. I haven’t heard anything and it hasn’t been done.

NM – we don’t take them calls as NPH so it has to go to the call centre. Ill look into that though to see if I can get it sorted.

AW-what happens to the people who suddenly are made homeless?

NM- NPH and the council will, by law, assist with finding them somewhere to live. We do have a homeless prevention group that could contact the mortgage provide etc. The service is there.

Chairs thanks NPH representatives for coming.

BM-No news from my area but wanted to say that I am happy to hear that they have put up cameras down the drapery to catch the cards going up there that shouldn’t.

NS- can we have people to talk about the bus stations

BO-we will see if we can get either Derrick Simpson, someone from stage coaches and someone from NCC to attend.

JW-to get representatives from NBC, NBC and stage coach for the next meeting.

Bus station, TV licences (free licencing), Ask police from the town centre to come in and update the stats from the extra policing staff. Representative from NHS. Would like to know about compensation has been paid out in Northampton from things going wrong. Also about equipment for being sent out, how does it get returned?

28^th November 2019