To receive any declarations of
interest. Members are advised to consider the advice contained
within the Declaration of Interest advice attached to this Agenda.
If a Member declares an interest, they should complete theDeclaration of Interest
Form
Minutes:
There were no declarations of interest made at the
meeting.
Sally O’Sullivan, Head of Tenant and
Leaseholder Services introduced the report and made the following
comments:
This report was regarding the
proposed approach to the procurement of a partnering contractor for
day to day responsive repairs, voids, compliance and major
works;
This service was currently provided
by Mears and the contract was due to expire on 31 March 2025;
Due to the size and complexity of
this contract, the Council had to start the process now to ensure
that there was enough time to apply the right model and procure the
right partner to deliver this service;
Officers sought the assistance of a
consultant to help get this right. The consultant chosen had worked
extensively with local authorities across Kent to procure the same
kind of contract, meaning they had a wealth of experience to apply
to this process;
Officers had carried out a series of
workshops and discussed what was working well and what needed to be
improved with the current service and explored different options
for the approach to service delivery with the new contract.
Officers had a strong focus on local delivery and the employment of
local operatives;
As part of this we looked at the
option to bring the entire service in house. This was discarded due
to a number of operational issues that would hinder set up and
smooth service delivery; these included:
§
Not having a depot available to work out of, to store plant and
materials and this would take substantial investment and time to
set up;
§
Requirement for additional management for finance and ICT;
§
The ability to cope with peaks and troughs of work through seasonal
demand;
§
The Council would still have to procure contractors to carry out
specialist works for example, asbestos management and electrical
safety.
This was discussed more extensively
in section 3.12 to the committee report;
Officers decided that the best
proposal was to rework and improve the current model which is Price
Per Property (PPP) and Price Per Void (PPV). This would mean there
would be in place, a fixed price agreement per property through
which the service provider would carry out repairs and maintenance,
using the national schedule of rates for anything that fell
outside;
The main benefits of this model
included the following:
§
Less administration than if the Council were to approve individual
SOR for all jobs/voids;
§
Officers can focus on quality of works rather than value;
§
Officers would have faster repair completion as this model meant
the contractor would complete works without seeking authorisation
from TDC in a majority of orders;
§
Familiar way of working for TDC officers;
The main disadvantage was that
contractors may try to charge in appropriately for repairs they
deemed as falling outside the price per property model or carry out
works in a property so that the final value falls outside the price
cap;
Officer were going to write elements
into the contract to mitigate against these risks and this
includes:
Sally O’Sullivan, introduced the report
and advised Members that a new look Key Performance Indicators
(KPIs) reporting format was introduced by the Service and was used
for presenting the Quarter 1 and Quarter 2 performance. Ms
O’Sullivan made further comments as follows:
As part of the new look KPIs, the
Service also developed a dashboard style way of reporting that was
hope would be more accessible than our previous reports;
The compliance reports would remain
the same for now as their requirements were prescribed within
policy;
Officers had also introduced a new
dashboard to show progress on the Tower blocks retrofit and
refurbishment programme;
Most of our operational Performance
Indicators (PIs) were running as was envisaged;
In Q2 the team achieved voids target
for the first time since the service came back in-house. This had
been due to the hard work of the voids team and strong contract
management by the Senior Repairs Surveyor;
The Council was also continuing to
reduce tenant arrears, which had now fallen to under 3.9%. This was
a massive achievement as when the service came back in-house,
arrears were at around 7%;
Where the Council needed to do
better was with its capital spend. The Council had struggled to
procure contracts over the last six months and finally by the end
of Q2 were in a position to award some key contracts. This meant
that over the next six months, officers hoped to catch up on much
of the capital programme that had fallen behind;
For the compliance statistics, the
Council was again operating steadily for most workstreams. Worth
highlight was he progress made on the electrical safety programme,
which had increased to 97.67% and continued to increase to a level
where soon officer would feel comfortable to move this service area
to a business as usual workstream;
Worth pointing out also was that
there was one property that did not have a valid gas safety
certificate. This was because the resident was a hoarder and
officer had been unable to complete all the tests required to
obtain a valid certificate;
Officers had done everything
possible and there was evidence to show the efforts made should the
Council be approached by the regulator for social housing.
Unfortunately, officers were now having to apply for an injunction
to clear the property to allow these works to be completed.
Councillor Whitehead, Cabinet Member for
Housing made comments as follows:
As evidenced by the thoroughness of
these reports, a huge amount of work goes into both collecting and
analysing data within Housing, and the comprehensive nature of this
work was something that Officers involved deserve significant
credit for;
Councillor Whitehead made special
praise to the new dashboard style reporting, which made information
more accessible and very clear to understand, and also welcomed the
inclusion of in-depth reporting on the tower block retrofit and
refurbishment programme.
This was a huge piece of work that
had already included an inclusive and comprehensive resident
consultation. Inclusion of this as a separate ...
view the full minutes text for item 20.
Mike Humber, Director of Environment
introduced the item and made the following key points:
This report set out proposals for
Cabinet’s approval for improvements at Jackey Bakers
Recreation ground;
The report referred to a petition
that was received by the Council in June about the management of
Jackey Bakers and describes the actions taken since then;
The report also proposed the
adoption of a master plan (attached at Annex 1 to the report) for
the future development of the site. The master plan proposals were
not currently funded but the adoption of the plan would inform
direction and represent a first step towards securing the required
funding for the long-term future of Jackey Bakers;
The report further proposed that
authority be delegated to investigate the options for a future
development on the site based on the master plan, including car
parking, a new pavilion and other sporting/recreational facilities
that might enhance the offer at the site;
A further report would be presented
to the Overview and Scrutiny Panel and the Cabinet once these
options had been further explored;
The recommendation included the
demolition of the existing pavilion subject to planning prior
approval being granted at the meeting of Planning Committee on 13
December 2023;
Following demolition, it was
proposed that temporary facilities were provided with team changing
rooms, showers, officials changing, storage and toilets.
Councillor Joanne Bright spoke Council Procure
Rule 20.1.
Speaking under 20.1 the Member made the
following points:
They welcomed the much needed
investment in the Jackey Bakers recreation ground. They asked if
future park designers would specifically consider the needs of
girls and young women in these new plans;
Women and girls were much less
likely to use sports fields than men and boys and they frequently
did not feel comfortable visiting these spaces as they were not
being designed with their needs in mind;
Recent research from Leeds
University and the charity ‘Make Space for Girls’
identified issues such as a lack of social seating, well-lit paths,
a lack of toilets and a focus on facilities favoured by boys as
reasons why girls were less likely to use parks than boys;
The research showed, teenagers using
multi-use games areas (such as football fields and basketball
courts), were 92% boys and young men;
Facilities such as tennis courts,
play spaces and outdoor gyms were more likely to be used by girls;
but still these were only 34%;
The draft master plan for Jackey
Bakers imagined a facility used by the whole community but in
reality, these types of facilities did not properly cater for 50%
of the population. Teenage girls were less likely to exercise
outside than teenage boys and this was not going to change unless
gender mainstreaming was applied in the planning and design of
parks and recreational spaces;
The proposed investment in this
large recreation site seemed like the perfect opportunity for
Thanet District Council to lead by example and prove that teenage
girls had as much right to outdoor fun as teenage ...
view the full minutes text for item 21.
Mike Humber introduced the report and made
following comments:
This report proposed a schedule of
investment in public toilets around the district;
Budgets totalling £1.25m with
a mixture of revenue and capital funding had been identified. A
further sum of £250k was anticipated although not yet
approved via an external grant from Southern Water;
The report proposed maintenance
works at seven sites. This would focus on addressing existing
defects and was not a full refurbishment of the toilets. But it
would return them to a much higher standard of repair. Examples of
the work content could be found at Annex 1 with the estimated
cost;
The total spend on revenue repair
work was £279k and subject to approval at Cabinet it was
proposed to undertake these works in the new year so that they were
completed before the start of the 2024 season;
The report also proposed capital
works at three sites, Margate Clock Tower, Stone Bay and Botany
Bay;
These capital works would provide
significantly improved and accessible facilities at all three
sites;
There were currently 27 public
toilets in Thanet and this report proposes works in 10 of those 27
locations. This investment was proposed to be the start of an
anticipated wider and longer term programme of public toilet
improvements subject to further funding being identified;
The report also proposed that a
further report be taken to Cabinet before the end of October 2024
to provide an update on toilet refurbishment and improvement
works;
The report would update on the
capital works programme and would propose next steps to address
refurbishment or improvements at the public toilets not included in
this initial phase.
Speaking under public speaking, Ms Ruth Bailey
made the following comments:
Ms Bailey said that this was a
subject that she had raised quite often and she therefore wanted to
come along to the Panel to welcome this long awaited toilet
strategy;
Ms Bailey said that this issue was
of great importance to residents and visitors alike and was also
speaking from experience having been on the frontline listening to
complaints when manning the Visitor Information Kiosk;
Toilet provision was not a statutory
duty for the Council. However, clean and hygienic toilets,
particularly in a seaside destination, were essential. There was no
getting away from that;
Having this strategy in the public
arena was a real positive step forward. Therefore, well one to all
concerned;
The report was clear and honest in
its limitations, the detailed rationale, costings and schedule of
works was welcome, as was the re-assessment of disability and baby
changing provision;
It was pleasing to note that,
despite fears to the contrary, this refurbishment programme did not
seem to entail the closure or selling off of any of the toilet
facilities;
The first tranche of toilets would
be ready for next summer; which is great. However, the timespan of
the total programme was given as 10 years (at paragraph 3.4. of the
report) which did seem a rather prolonged period. It
...
view the full minutes text for item 22.
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