by Jo Wood, BITMO Community Development Co-ordinator

This week is Volunteering Week, it is an opportunity to celebrate and say thank you to the individuals who give their time to a cause that means a great deal to them. Before I joined the Community Development Team I knew little more about volunteering at BITMO beyond my Friday breakfast and toastie. I thought I would share with you some of the ways volunteers support the work of the organisation and our community:

Community Kitchen: Preparing meals for the community, Volunteers prepare a hot meal on Tuesday for the children who attend the tutoring group and the community, toasties every Wednesday, sandwich packs through the school holidays and off course breakfast on a Friday.

School Uniform: This is a developing volunteering opportunity. Volunteers support the Community Development Team to offer free school uniform to the community. This is beneficial in so many ways: helping people to save money as well reusing uniform that is in good condition which otherwise would go to landfill.

Gardening: There is the West Grange Community Garden, Belle Isle Community Orchard, Fruit picking groups, tree watering. Getting out in the fresh air is a great way to improve your emotional and physical health and the joy of planting something, watching it grow and then being able to eat it is amazing.

Retirement Life: Volunteers support the groups that runs out of 26 and 58 Belle Isle Circus and Broom Nook. Bingo, providing breakfast sandwiches and meals, art groups. This can be a vital point of contact for some of our more isolated tenants.

Ancestry: The Ancestry Group continues and meets every Friday at 26 Belle Isle Circus. The group is going strong after many years.

Litter Picking: People give their time to keep their areas free of litter. People often call into the GATE to collect purple bags to use in the disposal of the rubbish they gather.

Repair Café: From sewing fixers to cobblers, from electrical to jewellery fixers. Our army of fixers is growing and diversifying. This is brilliant – it means we can save people money as well as throwing items aeay that are still useful.

Foodbank: The Volunteers at the Friday Foodbank are not BITMO Volunteers but without their vital support people would not have access to food.

There will also be many people who volunteer at other places across Belle Isle as well as across the City.

WE WOULD LIKE TO SAY A HUGE THANK YOU TO ALL VOLUNTEERS WHO GIVE THEIR TIME, ENERGY AND COMMITMENT TO BITMO AND BELLE ISLE. IT IS APPRECIATED.

We are pleased to be able to offer a version of the BITMO monthly email to Belle Isle tenants that you can listen to.

You can read the tenant email here.

Every month BITMO sends an email to tenants with updates about BITMO services and local events. April’s edition covers:

• Stronger, safer, greener Belle Isle
• Getting rid of waste and unwanted items
• Community Development News – repair café, GATE programme
• Who is responsible for fences?
• Help with CVs and job interviews

You can read the April email here.

Every month BITMO sends an email to tenants with updates about BITMO services and local events. March’s edition covers:

• Warmer Homes in Windmill Road 
• News about your rent 
• News from BITMO’s GATE 
• Belle Isle Gala 
• Tree planting – can you help?
• Belle Isle Makeovers

You can read March’s edition here.

Every month BITMO emails tenants with updates about BITMO’s services and news that may interest Belle Isle residents. You can read the email here.

by BITMO Chief Executive, Deborah Kelly

We are in a positive mood at BITMO at the start of 2024. Lots of hard work is coming together to launch our enhanced service offers. First off, we are improving how we approach kitchen repairs. Where we can’t match kitchen units and worktops, we will replace all of them, if that will extend the life of the kitchen significantly.  Belle Isle tenants have made it clear that they don’t want to have to put up with mismatched kitchen units. This will save us money in the long run as the frames are usually in perfectly fine condition.

We’ve worked through the list of landlord and tenant responsibilities on repairs and identified over 30 enhancements to the standard repairs offer. Examples are repairing or replacing outside doors and unblocking sinks.

Our Winter Warmth Campaign this year proved very successful. Having carried out thermal imaging surveys; we’ve approached the households whose homes are the least energy efficient and who are on benefits to offer a package of goods to help them stay cosy in the winter months. We have given warm goods like blankets, hot water bottles worth a total of £10,000 to 114 Belle Isle households.

We have a regular food offer three days a week, cooked by food safety trained volunteers from a new restaurant quality kitchen and a new food bank that runs every Friday.

As well as our Repairs Café, and Cinema Club, you may not have known that we provide free English and Maths tutoring and a hot meal once a week to primary school aged children. This is part of our effort to improve the life chances of people who live in Belle Isle. Our financial inclusion offer has generated £267k of extra income for our residents.

We have launched a tool library, that will help people in maintaining their homes and gardens. Tenants can borrow things like stepladders, hedge trimmers and push lawnmowers. On top of this we are delighted to report that in most areas customer service and performance are going from strength to strength. We have raised our game in terms of rent collection, from being near the bottom of the housing offices in Leeds a few years ago to being at or close to the top.

There are chances for Belle Isle tenants to work with BITMO to improve the area. You could become a BITMO shareholder, a Board Member, volunteer to help run community activities, take part in estate inspections or link up with your neighbours for things like walking groups, litter picking or a summer fun day. There’s the Belle Isle Gala coming up on Saturday 6 July at Windmill School from 12-3pm. You are welcome to just enjoy the day, but you could also volunteer to help or to run your own stall. To find out more call Tracey or Jo in our Community Development Team on 0113 378 2190 or 07891 270094.

Strong and improving customer service and performance is supported by strong and improving staff satisfaction. Completing an annual staff satisfaction survey is an important part of our two-way communication at BITMO. We have regular one-to-one meetings between staff and managers, team meetings and written briefings. An annual survey provides the chance to focus at a team level on the parts of work life that improve staff loyalty and commitment and those which take away from it. BITMO staff tell us that they are engaged (81%), empowered (75%), well managed (88%) and that BITMO really supports their wellbeing (85%).

This year we will be asking Belle Isle tenants to put their faith in us to continue to provide landlord services through a ballot in September. We hope that we are doing enough to earn that privilege.

BITMO Chief Executive Deborah Kelly went live on Facebook just before the 25 January 2024 Board Meeting to let people know the main points that were going to be discussed. You can watch the video here.

You can find out the dates of meetings and read the Board papers and minutes for all meetings here, including meetings back as far as September 2020.

You can ask a question which will be discussed at the next Board Meeting using the form below and attend the meeting to hear the discussion.

Across England and Wales tenants have set up tenant management organisations to run their own estates better than councils do and to strengthen their communities. You can find out more on the National Federation of TMOs’ website.

In Leeds, there is just one tenant management organisation. It is called Belle Isle Tenant Management Organisation (BITMO). At BITMO levels of tenant satisfaction and tenant influence are much higher than for Leeds Housing generally.

From surveys carried out by Housing Leeds themselves, overall satisfaction with BITMO is 71% compared to 64% for Housing Leeds, satisfaction with repairs is 10% higher, and the difference the landlord makes to the neighbourhood scores 19% more for BITMO than Housing Leeds. We score 14% higher on listening to tenants and acting on what you tell us, and 13% higher on keeping you informed. We score 12% higher on being easy to deal with. This could be because we are based in the heart of the community and have an office that is open five days and two evenings a week. In terms of having a good reputation we score 29% higher than Housing Leeds. This could be because we are run by a Board with a majority of elected tenants from Belle Isle.

All in all, that’s a good set of results. It’s worth knowing that any group of tenants can set up a tenant management organisation or join an existing one. If you’d like to find out more about tenant management, we’d be happy to talk to you.

Belle Isle tenants manage their own homes and services. Tenant management delivers better services and local accountability. #TenantManagementWorks

Every month BITMO sends all tenants an email with useful information about services and activities in Belle Isle. If you are a BITMO tenant and are not getting this email, please send us a message with your email address. You can read January’s email here.

Every month BITMO sends all tenants an email with useful information about services and activities in Belle Isle. If you are a BITMO tenant and are not getting this email, please send us a message with your email address. You can read December’s email here.