Agenda item

Report to follow

Ashley Jackson, Head of Housing and Planning introduced the report and made the following comments:

·  Councils across England were required by the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996 to offer Disabled Facilities Grants (DFGs) to people who qualify;

·  These grants were mandatory and were restricted to helping people with disabilities to adapt their homes to make them accessible and more suitable for their needs;

·  The funding for these grants came from central Government via the Better Care Fund;

·  If a Council wished to offer financial assistance towards anything other than DFGs they had to adopt and publish a Housing Assistance Policy which gave full details of the assistance, they would offer to householders in their area for property adaptation, improvement or repair. The things the BCF money was spent on included the following:

§  Individual DFGs;

§  Health and Housing Co-ordinator co-funded with Dover;

§  Town & Country Housing (T&CH) Home Straight scheme (hoarding);

§  Handyperson Enablement Service co-funded with Dover;

§  Contribution towards salaries for staff facilitating the expenditure of the budget.

§  It is imperative that the Council has in place a fair policy that takes into account changes since the last policy was agreed in 2019. Proposals that we are consulting on included the following:

§  Increasing the maximum grant allowance from £30,000 to £50,000;

§  Extend discretionary grants to tenants rather than just to Landlords;

§  We are also proposing to limit the number of grant applications that can be submitted to prevent fraud.

The recommendations to Cabinet are:

1.  The consultation draft of the Housing Assistance Policy is approved;

2.  The council conducts a public consultation on the draft policy;

3.  The results of the consultation be published on the Council’s website;

4.  Authority be delegated to the Head of Housing and Planning in consultation with the Cabinet Member for Housing to determine any minor amendments to the policy;

5.  Authority be delegated to the Head of Housing and Planning in consultation with the relevant Portfolio Holder to consider and determine requests to waive the requirement to repay grants in exceptional circumstances.

Members asked questions and made comments as follows:

·  Why was it necessary to provide for delegated power to two individuals for this decision;

·  Such decisions should go to formal meetings that include the Scrutiny Panel;

·  It was balance between risk and harm to residents;

·  Some Members said that they did not view the approach to delegate authority as being problematic;

·  The pejorative wording at page 26 of Annex 1 should be removed from the document.

Ashley Jackson, Chris Blundell and Bob Porter responded to Member questions and comments as follows:

·  Grants only become payable when such cases arise;

·  These would usually be cases of extreme personal difficulties for the individuals;

·  Council had carried out a few such cases and it was worth noting that these cases were also confidential;

·  It was also worth noting that S151 Officer had delegated authority to write-off debts to a certain agreed level.

Councillor Austin proposed, Councillor Britcher seconded and Members agreed to forward to Cabinet the officer recommendations in the report.