Agenda item

Sally O’Sullivan, Head of Tenant and Leaseholder Services introduced the report and made the following comments:

·  A brief summary of the KPI showed that the Council’s partnering contractors were performing well and this was also supported by the customer satisfaction surveys. This result was expected for Q1 & Q2 as these were the warmer dryer months, when less repairs were reported;

·  Reports of Damp mould and condensation also declined during Q2. This was a seasonal trend that would be expected. Reports of damp and mould to were expected to increase during Q3 and there was therefore a need to ensure officers were ready with extra resources should they be required;

·  The capital spend did not reflect the progress by the end of Q2. This was because even though a lot of cyclical work had been completed, this did not get invoiced until Q3;

·  Three capital projects had been delayed for the lift refurbishment at Invicta House due the requirement for an application to the building safety regulator. These were as follows:

§  Royal Crescent - officers were working toward contract award;

§  Churchfields - this project was booked to start in the new financial year.

·  At the end of Q2 the tower block project was where officers expected it to be. With two big milestones being progressed, which were the award of the D&B contract and submission of the BSR applications;

·   The BSR application presented the biggest risk to the project timeline as this was a completely new process;

·  Void performance saw a dip in Q2, with an average of 43 days to turn re-lets. This was mainly due to complex voids being completed during this period;

·  Arrears performance continued to show a positive trend at 3.05% at the end of Q2. This was a 0.19% improvement from the previous quarter;

·  This was the second time the ASB dashboard had been presented. As the data set grew officers would be able to start to observe trends which could inform the way that the team could approach ASB;

·  This was the first time that officers had presented the compliance KPIs as a dashboard. This had been made possible because the reviewed policies reduced the burden on reporting. The report covering the previous period to 31 March 2024 was considered by the Housing Cabinet Advisory Group. In future, all of the new dashboards would also be brought to the Overview & Scrutiny Panel and Cabinet for review;

·  The team was also currently part way through an internal audit of the compliance arrangements which would be reported to the Governance and Audit Committee in due course, and any recommendations that impact on the service’s performance or compliance position would be reported in the next cycle.

·  There was one property not compliant for gas in Q2. This was resolved in Q3. The current report  was now100% compliant for gas;

·  Fire risk assessments was the only Compliance workstream that was allocated its own dashboard and this was because there still were a lot of outstanding actions;

·  There were 538 actions in total with 338 of those being overdue. Of the overdue actions 111 were being addressed through capital programmes which were the towerblock retrofit and refurbishment project, with the award of the low rise flatted blocks door replacement contract and with the contract award for passive fire works;

·  There were a lot of new actions being added each quarter. This was due to FRAs being carried out. Focus was put on FRA actions with all teams, many of which were hard to manage because they involved changing the tenants’ behaviour by not leaving rubbish or belongings in the communal areas.

Members asked questions and made comments as follows:

·  This was an impressive report by the Tenant and Leaseholder Services team;

·  How serious were the overdue fire actions?

·  PSW was on the decline. MMC was also being dealt with in time and rent arrears were coming down slowly;

·  Would third party compliance be checked by the Council?

·  Could there be a named contact for both the private sector housing team and the TLS?

Sally O’Sullivan, Ashley Jackson and Bob Porter responded to Member questions and comments as follows:

·  Tenants were not put in arrears. They pay a week in advance and there are provided with support to managing rents tpo0 that they do not go into arrears;

·  Tenants were given damp, mould and condensation on taking up tenancy;

·  Officer would monitor the BSW that was going into decline with customer satisfaction;

·  Some of the overdue actions at the tower blocks dated back to 2021. Some of those actions had short completion times;

·  Once the contracts were in place, the Council would self-refer to the tribunal and the Council would demonstrate the costs;

·  Third party landlords were regulated as Social Landlords. They report to the regulator in the same way TDC did. The Council did not have an oversight over third party landlords;

·  The Comms team were working on a new communications structure chart to share with members. Officer would advise Members once the chart was ready for circulating;

·  Members could in the meantime send any queries to the Head of Housing and Planning for onward submission to Orbit, where appropriate.

The Panel noted the report.