Agenda item

Mr Porter introduced the item and made the following points:

• Since the transition, a number of liaison meetings with tenants and leaseholders had been held which the portfolio holder had attended;
• The new service was 15 weeks into the new in house arrangement and the team was settling in well;
• There were 58 posts in the new structure. Of that number only three were covered by agency staff and another one would be going out for recruitment;
• Twenty eight of the fifty eight posts came from East Kent Housing, with the remaining ones being new recruitments;
• New contact arrangements, including new email details for the service had been introduced and shared with every tenant and leaseholder;
• A newsletter with a fridge magnet that contained all details including telephone numbers was sent out in the first week of the service;
• New generic neighbourhood housing officers had been introduced to the service. This was something that tenants and leaseholders had always wanted;
• The service has had to deal a lot with legacy issues, but relatively few new complaints;

• This could be a reflection that the new contact arrangements set up were effective in addressing issues as they arose;
• The first report of the new services included a position statement, health and safety report and performance data for the first two months of the service;
• With regards to the health and safety update, the council had meetings regularly with the regulator for social housing. The regulator agreed the council’s voluntary undertaking and action plan (that covers the period up to April 2021), relating to tenant and leaseholder health and safety matters;
• The council hoped to have an East Kent Audit Partnership review conducted in May to assess the new position on health and safety. This would then be reported to the regulator in June, hoping to then get the regulatory notice on the council removed;
• Gas Safety – The current position was now very positive. There was one resident who was refusing to give engineers access to the property. The council was currently working with other agencies to resolve that issue;
• Electrical compliance – the performance figures were quite low at when the new service started. The team had since carried out a line by line review of the data of all of the certificates for domestic and communal areas and the work was due to be completed in December 2020. The work had since been completed. The level of compliance had increased;
• The service would be reporting quarterly to the OSP and Cabinet. The council would continue to report to the regulator monthly on health and safety matters;
• The capital programme – a significant amount of slippage was anticipated from this year to next year, as 13% of allocated amount had been spent as at 1 October 2020. The team was working on correcting some coding in a number of capital expenditure areas against revenue codes;
• The service has had some success with securing new procurement contracts for decorations and repairs. A contract had been let for refurbishment of 14 lifts in 6 tower blocks and other blocks;
• A contract had been let for structural and mechanical surveys for 6 tower blocks. These survey would including getting advice on what other works were needed including external cladding and assisting the council with the procurement that would come out this piece of work;
• Satisfaction with repairs – This was one area that most impacted tenants and leaseholders. The serviced had worked hard to improve the relationship with key contractors to implement new contract management arrangements;
• Void performance and rent collection – This area needed improvement over the coming months, particularly to support the business plan for the future;
• Communication – A number of bespoke newsletters to each of the tower blocks and a generic one to all tenants had been sent out. IN the last newsletter there was a survey about residents priorities for improvements over the next 12 to 18 months;
• The response was already looking good. The results of the survey would be used to guide some discussions at the Housing Cabinet Advisory Group. Any improvement updates resulting from these surveys would be shared with the Panel.

Members asked questions and made comments as follows:

• This was a comprehensive update given by Housing Services;
• How did the miscoding happen and had any measures been taken to ensure that the problem did not recur?

Mr Porter gave the following response:

• This was a legacy issue from the East Kent Housing;
• There was a lack of understanding amongst officers raising those jobs about how the coding structure worked;
• East Kent Housing had no identified lead officers and clear lines of responsibility for pieces of work for neighbourhoods or particular contracts;
• Now every contract had a named lead officer (contract administrator), whose responsibility was to ensure that invoices and orders were coded in the right way against the coding structure.

Members noted the report.