Over 80 Swan residents came to the West Ham United FC, for your annual Residents’ Conference, on Saturday 18th June.

We get together every year to talk about how we are performing, make important decisions together and of course have fun too. There were more raffle prizes than ever this year, including a Blu-ray DVD player, golf-day vouchers worth over £300 and a big bottle of Champagne.

There was a buffet lunch and unlimited tea and coffee. Healthy eating was encouraged this year, with hand-made, fresh-fruit smoothies and fruit handed out in goody bags replacing the desserts.

Speeches from residents who work with us to improve our services went down a storm. They told stories of how getting involved changed their lives and encouraged others to volunteer. These included Tyson Bunby, Chair of the London Regional Committee; John Elkins, Chair of the Essex Residents Consultative Committee and Jo Alphous, Essex Regional Committee Member, who had never spoken in public before. Natasha Greaves, another resident speaker, who couldn’t attend, made a video diary for us.

This year’s theme was ‘Making an Impact for Residents’. We held workshops around this year’s Residents’ Annual Report and how we can become more ‘green’.

The new Tenant Portal was launched, which is a way of paying and viewing your rent online as well as requesting and tracking your repairs. It has helpful images so you can tell Axis what your issue is. We also launched the Scrutiny Framework that sets out how residents will monitor our performance.
We reminded everyone that there are environmental grants available to improve your local community and that you can get low-cost home contents insurance with MyHome Insurance. You voted on a number of issues using hand-held key pads including whether or not to change our MyHome Insurance agreement to a Swan-specific one. Your view was to stay as we are.

The conference was a lot more lively than in previous years - it may have been all that fresh fruit!

Below are some the best images of the day