Page 1489 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 6 June 2007

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do apologise to the house because I had clearly forgotten that, due to the changes to the eligibility criteria last year, many, many people were indeed culled from the waiting lists. I am not sure where they are now, but they were culled.

Supplementary answers to questions without notice

Planning—EpiCentre development

MR BARR: I have a couple of additional dates in relation to Mr Seselja’s series of questions. I can advise the Assembly that the DA for the DFO development was referred to the National Capital Authority for comment on 25 May 2006 and that a written submission from the National Capital Authority was received by ACTPLA on 16 June 2006. Supporting documents arrived from the NCA 10 days later, on 26 June, and I can confirm that ACTPLA’s decision to approve the DA with conditions was made on 21 September 2006.

ACT Housing—shopfront closures

MR HARGREAVES: Mr Speaker, yesterday in response to a question from Dr Foskey, who is not here—

Mr Mulcahy: That is not unusual.

MR HARGREAVES: No, it is not unusual, Mr Mulcahy, through you, Mr Speaker. If you are listening Dr Foskey, I am about to answer your question for you.

MR SPEAKER: Order! Come to the issue.

MR HARGREAVES: I undertook to get hold of a copy of a letter sent to community housing providers and to make myself so aware and I now really am so aware, and I would like to respond to Dr Foskey’s point. The answer is that Housing ACT is committed to providing a high level of customer service. In line with this, Housing ACT established an outreach program following the closure of the Housing ACT shopfronts in September 2006. Outreach services have provided a number of SAP service locations, including the Early Morning Centre, Toora women’s service, Salvation Army youth services, YWCA, Inanna, Samaritan House, the St Vincent de Paul Society and regional community services. Outreach services are now being established at the Tuggeranong and Gungahlin child and family centres.

As part of good customer service, the Director of Housing ACT sent a letter to the community organisations asking them to identify and quantify the impact of the changes to housing operations on these services so that Housing ACT could identify any improvements needed to its services. Information received as a result of the letter will be used to enhance the delivery of these outreach services to continue to improve service delivery to Housing ACT customers.

Finally, this initiative is part of a series of initiatives which came out of the ministerial housing forums in 2005 and we are responsive to pleas from the community housing sector.


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