Housing Overview and Scrutiny Committee - Wednesday 18 June 2025, 7:30pm - Wandsworth Council Webcasting

Housing Overview and Scrutiny Committee
Wednesday, 18th June 2025 at 7:30pm 

Agenda

Slides

Transcript

Map

Resources

Forums

Speakers

Votes

 
Share this agenda point
Share this agenda point
Share this agenda point
Share this agenda point
Share this agenda point
Share this agenda point
Share this agenda point
Share this agenda point
  1. Webcast Finished

Good evening councillors and those watching online.
Welcome to this evening's meeting of tonight's housing committee.
It's both my first time joining this committee and my first time sharing this committee.
So the more observant of you will realize I am not Councillor Sarah Davies.
Unfortunately she's had some travel difficulties today which means that she has not been able
to make it back in time and so has sent her apologies but we have been in touch
today so for those of you who've not met me before I see before my name is
Councillor Claire Fraser now will be your chair for this evening's meeting
this evening I think Sarah was going to say a few words to introduce herself as
a new chair so I'll save that for her at the next meeting but I think she
should both agree to just to pay pay thanks to you Councillor Paul White the
the previous chair of the committee for leading you all ably over the last couple of years
and congratulations to him on his new cabinet role as well. So Councillor, starting on my
left, I'm just going to ask you.
Thank you very much, Councillor Fraser. Just before we start formally, can I echo your
grateful thanks to Councillor White for his chairing of this committee and then of course
elevation elsewhere. I was prepared to say welcome council Davis but I will wait till the next time.
But thank you very much for this evening. Thank you councilor Gavincia for welcoming me this
evening. So yeah just starting on my left with councilor Stock if you can just all
move around and introduce yourselves please. Hi councilor Stock, Frog and Brock Ward.
Good evening, I am Phoebe Ayers for East Putney Ward.
Angela Graham, Wandsworth Common.
Ravi Govindia, East Putney Ward.
Tom Glauckner, BRF.
Thank you very much. Joining us this evening's meeting online, we also have Councillor Corner
Good evening everyone, Councillor Corner here from Nine Elms and I look forward to participating
fully. I'm only sorry I cannot be there in person either.
I'm Councillor Dickard, I represent the Cabinet of Housing and I represent the Shaftesbury
Council.
Thank you Councillor Dickard, we also have a number of officers joining us this evening
who'll introduce themselves as and when their papers come to the committee.
Councillor Graham.
Thanks, Chair.
I'd love for clarification, if I may.
We do have a definite cabinet member for housing and I would very much like to actually understand
because that really is a responsibility for housing and if you could be kind enough just
to explain so that where I'm coming from and it'll help.
Thank you.
So the only reason Matthew isn't here tonight
is because it's his selection meeting.
So it's a clash we can't get out of.
It's set by the national party.
So he will be sitting in on all meetings.
He can't sit on the committee as, because of the democracy
review, it would be, he won't be able to sit
as a member of the committee, but he
will sit in on these meetings and contribute when necessary.
yeah yeah but it's he's only not here tonight because of that clash I'm only
sorry that you do not have any Matthews with you tonight in person thank you
councillors and also just noting for for anyone watching online and that
councilor gosh ain't he was previously a member of the committee has also
recently resigned from the committee so he's not here this evening so thank you
all Councillors for that. Moving on to the items on tonight's agenda, it's a
warm evening I will endeavor to get you through tonight's agenda as quickly as

1 Minutes - 22nd January 2025 and 8th April 2025

possible. As we all know the town hall is not necessarily made for warm
summer's day so yeah I will get you through as quickly as possible. So moving
on to item one the minutes of the meeting on the 22nd of January and the
8th of April. Members are there any objections to confirming the minutes of
the 22nd of January. Councilor Covington. Towards the end of last meeting we discussed
the Burke Close and the fire at Burke Close. Is it possible to get an update on the fire
at Burke Close and also the concern locally that asbestos apparently has been found and
and is being removed and the residents don't know about
who's responsible and when the person is the right person
and qualified to remove asbestos and all that.
Mr. Stewart, I think we'll update you, Councilor Guindere.
I believe all the residents are now TA
and back in their property and the remedial works
are to freehold houses, so there isn't a direct involvement
the Council in those works. The contracts will have to take the usual precautions regarding
asbestos removal, but we're not directly involved.
It's just that the issue of asbestos always gets people worked up more than perhaps they
need to. So reassurance is probably the more important thing, and so it would be helpful
if the residents were reassured that the contractor is qualified and appropriate
and we've taken all the right precautions although it's not our direct
responsibility but we are generally the landlord of the place and therefore we
ought to have a kind of safeguarding responsibility.
Understood, thank you very much Councillor Gavigny.
So just to confirm the previous question, a Councillor's happy with the minutes of the 22nd of January.
Those minutes as agreed and are there any objections to confirming the minutes
of the 8th of April as a correct record? Councils are in agreement with that.

2 Declarations of Interests

Thank you very much. Moving on to item two, are there any declarations of either
pecuniary or other registrable or non -registrable interests? No items to
declare. Thank you. Oh, Councillor McLeod. Yeah, I'm a council tenant. Thank you very much.
No other interests have been declared. Thank you councillors.

3 Borough Residents' Forum - Report of meeting held on 11th June 2025 (Paper No. 25-201)

Item 3, the Borough Residence Forum, the meeting held on the 11th of June.
This paper is for information.
Are there any?
Councillor Covington and then Councillor Graham will come to you.
I'll defer to Councillor Gannon.
Noted and thanks.
Thank you, Chair.
It's actually requesting a clarification on everything, Para 2 and the regulator.
But the paper, I don't know, the next page.
Sorry, Councillor. Can you just speak into your microphone a little more?
Just really to hear you, thank you.
Yes, the next page, emergency evacuation.
I don't think Councillor Dickerton understood what I was saying.
As I look at thinkers Sudbury House and how fantastic the council was in covering it after
the dreadful Grenfell situation, there is a great fear of residents as regards to safety
in an emergency evacuation.
And naturally the fire brigade and is very, very important.
and of course there is another question which I'd like to follow on from that.
The important thing is if there was a fire, has the council got a policy in
place which includes the medical profession, fire brigade and other
services, that one. And then on the second one, and I wasn't aware of this, he then
added that the council was still waiting on what the government's update would be on stay
staying in your property and I think those are two very important I do have another one but
I'd love those two questions questions. I didn't catch the first question.
With emergency evacuation at the meeting at the borough housing forum the other day,
Mrs. the resident, the RA from Scholey was asking you questions about peeps.
And actually I then wanted further clarification.
So if you think of Grenfell and the dreadful experiences of everybody trying to get out,
people still have that memory.
And so there are two questions here.
One, if there was, God help us, a fire in one of our very high buildings, our estates,
have you got a policy in place where you've met with the medical profession, the fire
brigade, and so you actually have a policy in place if that happened?
And then the second one is, as regards to the reassurance that residents will need to
and how long is it going to be before the government gives the okay as regards to stay put or not if there was a fire?
Each block has got an evacuation strategy or a fire strategy that applies in that case and that's displayed on a notice board.
That policy in nearly every single block is to stay put in your property and
only to evacuate if you're directly affected by smoke or flames and you call the fire brigade.
So that state strategy applies to all blocks apart from Elliott and Wentworth in court.
There is no strategy around medical assistance.
That would be not for the council to, it would be more the emergency services who would liaise with that.
So the council has no role there as far as I can see.
The second point is the government is reopening the discussion around what they call PEPs, personal emergency evacuation plans.
The previous administration looked at it and decided it couldn't deliver.
But as I said at the boroughs forum, I think what we'll be doing is asking residents to self identify if they can't evacuate themselves out of the block in the event of a fire.
And then I think what we'll be doing is doing fire risk assessments within their property to make the property safer.
But it's still early days, so I've got no idea.
The government's only just announced this, so it will be some months away.
Thanks chair and thank you very much.
Okay, thank you very much.
Mr. Scott, Liddy, yeah.
Just from a resident's perspective, we went over the social regulator report and the inspection aspect of it.
And to be quite frank, it was a leaseholder bias meeting just by population.
But there were some questions about with the stock condition reports, will they be used
and the information, where permissible, accessible to parties in terms of the actual – to help
with the conditions of the block?
Because I think you're going to gather a lot of information, and I think people had
questions about that.
I know social areas will also be covered, and we'll get that, but that was brought
up and I thought that was a valid point.
The other issue that has been worked on is the engagement issue, which I think is a huge
issue. I know everyone here does, and I think it's from the perspective of the social regulator
and this is an opinion, I think they're probably looking at areas that we don't even know about.
And so I think this is an approach that we need, and it has been, and I'll grant that
the Council has to be looked at formally, informally, and highly creatively. And I just
And I know that's happening, but I,
and that also applies to leaseholders as well,
because I think we're a part of it.
It's a 50 -50 partnership.
We can see the numbers in terms of the population
on the estates, and the RAs work that way,
whether you know that or not.
Tenants are equally as important.
They're not represented as much on the RAs,
although we just got added to.
One was added because we took them to a,
to a conference sponsored by housing.
So, but equally I talk to tenants all the time
about information and I just think
this has to be a very creatively done.
So that's all and I'm, you know,
I'm happy if anybody has any questions at all.
Thank you very much Mr. Glockner.
Councilor Govindia.
Apologies, I'm sounding a bit odd in this one
because I've often not read the full borough housing panel report in detail.
This time I happened to do it.
And because I did, I discovered that much of the report is about what we said to them.
There is very little about what they said to us.
And I think that the borough residents...
And I'm sure it's been there for decades.
So I'm not making a criticism of any individuals, either officers or members.
But it just seems that it's about them and us.
I mean, surely this is a forum where we want to listen to their views.
We want to inform our position, but actually listen to their views.
And the minute should reflect or the report should reflect what they want so that we can
actually take it into account when we make our decisions.
I'm just going to come in on this one, but I think there's two things at work here.
So I think one is that officers are nervous about writing down too much in detail because
then we go through the minutes and then people are upset about what.
So I think there's a there's a little bit of a bias in that we don't report as much
in detail as what residents say as we do officers.
But I think if you sit in those meetings, there is a full and frank discussion with
the residents, although at this meeting, I very explicitly, you know, Mr. Glockner was
there.
We were critiquing the model of the BRF in quite detail because it was the first time
we could go into the discussions we'd had at the special meeting with the BRF and think
through, you know, I was saying how absurd is it that I sit in this strange throne in
front of everyone in the chamber.
I mean, we should have it in this room.
It would be much, probably much, seem much more collegiate.
The accessibility issues around it being in the evening, there's no food for anyone if
they've come from work.
So we are, we're really getting into it and we'll come onto it in the main agenda on the
regulator paper but I know we were all disappointed with the result. The result
has to be a springboard for the things that Mr. Glockner was talking about. It's
why we we took him and others to inside housing conference on tenant
engagement because we want to try and learn what are the innit of his ways
that we maybe haven't caught up with yet. So but you're totally right about the
minutes I'll make sure it's reflected more and yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
Thank you Councillors. Councillor Graham.
Thanks Chair. What Councillor Govindia has said, I definitely also picked that up.
Halfway through the meeting, both the RA Chair of Scholey and Fitzhugh tried to raise with Councillor Dickerton
that they do have longevity of experience but also they used to have a
big group of people that would would be invited and it is it is true what
councilor give you said I felt there wasn't much love for the leaseholders
and that's why you didn't get very many people asking questions about the mode
And nobody asked about the mold, did they, Mr. Glockner?
And mold is so important, and so I do.
I think that's a bit of a dis...
Well, this is my take.
I think Marlene Price and Carly, who I'm very close with, got a very fair airing at that
meeting and we very open and discussed.
I think on the question of whether leaseholders got enough love I think
The damper mold team isn't accessible to leaseholders. So I think and because the meeting has majority leaseholders
I think that's why there were less questions on it, but I don't think it was because we wanted to shut down
discussion about
Disappointed I mean, I'm just pointing to the fact that it's
They are the ones we should be listening to.
Thank you.
Okay, well thank you for that feedback and I'm sure as Councillor Dickard said with that
refresher that feedback can be taken into account.
Councillors, were there any other questions?
And also Mr Glockner, I'm just coming, were there any other, I know you've said something,
are there any other additions that you'd like to make as part of this item?
No, I'm fine.
Good, thank you.
Councillors, any other points on this one?
No, okay.
The item is received for information, so thank you and that is noted.
Moving on to item four, this is an update on the regulator of social housing inspection.

4 Regulator of Social Housing Inspection Report Update (Paper No.25-188)

I'm going to come to Councillor Dickard first before coming to officers for an update on this
one, so thank you. Yes, so I thought it'd be worth introducing this one just because we had
the special meeting but I was aware that there might be colleagues here who weren't at that and
So to give a bit of a brief introduction, which is,
and for anyone online, which I would definitely say,
go and if you're interested in this, go and watch that,
cause I thought it was an excellent discussion
that went through in a lot of detail.
I think what we can try and do tonight
is maybe some updates on where we are relative
to where we were when we had that discussion.
And maybe focus in, it sounds like in this,
in the kind of the rubric of the new democracy review that tenant participation and engagement
is going to be one of the themes that really stands out as a piece of work from this that
covers all of the things that we do from leaseholders to policy as well as just casework. So I'm
basically, for those who are new to the committee, feel free to ask as many kind of questions
that you want regarding the kind of meat of the paper. But for those who were at the special
Committee we're happy to update on more timely specifics based on our most
recent meetings with the regulator and also how you think that the outcomes
from this should feed into the work program because I think I think I think
that's that's that's topical but I'll leave it there great thank you cancer
dictum and then I think I'm moving to miss woman for an update at the top of
the table hi so I'm always through this paper to some degree just because we've
that special committee and had quite a detailed discussion so I'm assuming people have read
this report. But for those of you who don't know, we were inspected by the social housing
regulator back in November last year and got our results end of February. And the results
are a C1 to a C4. So the C just stands for the consumer standards. And we sadly got a
C3, which meant that there were some serious failings identified. But this report sets
out in more detail all the different standards. So if you, paragraph 8 sets out what the consumer
standards are. So you've got neighborhood and community, safety and quality, tenancy
standard, transparency, influence and accountability. And in that table it also shows you the kind
of areas they look at within those consumer standards. So what I would say is on the neighborhood
and community standard, they didn't identify any issues and they felt that we were broadly
compliant with that standard.
Safety and quality, the two serious issues were around stock condition survey that we
didn't do surveys of 100 % of our stock and also electrical safety certificates where
we hadn't, we weren't, we hadn't, we weren't as compliant as we hoped to be.
Although we had a contract in place since 2021, we weren't in the position we wanted
to be at the time of inspection.
So they were the two serious failings and in that standard they also highlighted some
other areas around outstanding fire risk assessment, some issues around outstanding overdue repairs.
Tenancy standard again we were compliant and transparency, influence and accountability,
there were no serious failings in that standard but there were some weaknesses around as Councillor
Dickatam's alluded to around our informal roots of resident engagement of which we're
doing a huge amount of work to broaden how we engage with residents.
So going through the paper, and paragraphs 12 to 28 set out by each standard, how we delivered against each standard.
So it gives examples of some of the areas of good practice and also some of the areas where they identified weaknesses.
You've also got paragraph 29 to 34 set out the next steps of the regulator.
So we're now meeting on a monthly basis with the regulator.
And in appendix two, which you can see attached to the report, that is the tracker that we're
using with the regulator.
So when we meet them, they ask for a whole range of information.
But the overarching document is that appendix two, where you can see it's a tracker setting
out all the different areas they either that we said we were going to do to improve or
areas that they picked out as weaknesses.
And it then gives an update in our position against all those areas.
So you can see on stock condition, for example, we've moved on and
we've agreed now to do a 100 % survey.
So that, as Mr. Glockner said, it's both common parts and 100 % of tenanted units.
So common parts, they would look at things like the roof and the lifespan left on your roof,
all communal areas, and then within tenanted properties they rate it against the, Tom,
HHSRS, Health and Safety Rating System, I always forget it.
So that has now started.
We've done a pilot, they've done around I think 60 inspections so far.
And that will be over five years, and then it will be a rolling program.
So 20 % of tenants who start each year for five years and then start again.
And then we've just got to make sure we're capturing all that data in the right way.
And then you can see in the appendix as well on EICRs, which are the electrical safety certificates,
we're in a much better position now where we've done in the late 90s of tests, completed tests on the communal areas,
and about 74 % on talented, so we're in a much better position than we were at the time of inspection.
And then we're also going to undertake a deep dive of repairs, so that's, I mean,
Tom can answer some questions on that if you've got any, but that is to look more broadly
at our repair system.
So cost of repairs, efficiency, the contractors, how we deal with overdue repairs, communication
with residents, so a whole range of issues that that's going to look at.
But we're in the very early stages of that where we've developed a scoping document,
but we haven't really started the full deep dive.
We've just so far looked at what we're going to consider in that deep dive.
But that also doesn't mean that that wouldn't expand because different areas crop up and we've started those early
Conversations with other local authorities and housing providers about what they do and what we can learn from them
So that's I think all I wanted to say on it and unless people got any other detail they want
But I just feel like because we had quite a robust discussion about it. I don't want to go over the same ground with everyone
Thank you very much and to Councillor Dickerton for that introduction.
Just before I open it up, I am aware that there was a special meeting on this where
specific elements were discussed.
I think just focusing the discussion tonight would be great if this could explore anything
new or not trying to cover any ground or duplicate anything that was discussed at the previous
meeting.
It's also worth noting that paragraph 34 of this paper notes the previous agreement to
establish a cross -party working group on this.
This is a group that can be established
as a scrutiny working group,
and obviously the committee members will be aware
that they will be invited to a meeting
on the evening of the 7th of July,
which will start to discuss some of those
cross -party working issues that the committee
might like to focus on.
So just with that in mind, I'll open it up for discussion.
I believe we can go to Councillor Corner first online
before going to others.
Thank you, chair, and thank you to
Councillor Dickard and officers for this paper.
I do have a number of questions and maybe I
just rapid fire them and then they can be responded to,
in whatever ways most convenient in the room.
The first relates, and of course,
if exactly the same question
was asked at the emergency meeting,
then of course, refer me to that.
But my first question relates to table one on page six.
We see that Lambeth was inspected at exactly the same time.
They've got a much larger stock volume than us,
and they also got a better grade.
And historically, Lambeth haven't had as good a reputation,
from what I've heard, on council housing as Wandsworth has.
So I would really like to hear from the cabinet member and officers
about their rationale for why we seem to have slipped behind our neighbours in Lambeth.
Also, and I appreciate that we are having this separate working group structure to go into the
deep dive of this, but will the sampling approach that's being proposed here, will that capture the
most at -risk properties as part of its methodology,
it would seem to me that to
reassure residents following this inspection finding
that there should be an element of risk assessment in that.
Also, what immediate actions is the council taking to make sure
that the tenant feedback structures that are being put in
place and input structures are not going to be a talking shop as often happens in local
authority consultations.
Thank you.
I'm going to move to the cabinet member then for a response to your questions, Councillor
Coroner.
Yeah, so I can't really speak to the reason that we got our grade is because of, in my
own personal opinion and officers can jump in as well is because of the safety and quality
standard element.
I think that was key, particularly around Stockholm, because while other authorities
might for instance have more disrepair cases and us, they might have to pay out more and
you know, disrepair claims and have different challenges to us as a local authority.
I think where the regulator understandably is most concerned is that safety and quality standards.
So in our report for instance, damp and mold wasn't mentioned or repairs weren't mentioned.
Even though that is probably the thing that we get the most case work on.
Which was a surprise to us, but it shouldn't really when, if you look at the standards through which we are assessed.
We did well in lots of the standards apart from that safety and quality.
So I think because that safety and quality standard is almost like probably the most significant one
I think that explains the C3 rating and by time of publication we had
progressed very largely on the electrical safety certificates for instance
But the stock con is a kind of systemic thing and so that that leads on to your second question, which is
We're moving away. I couldn't quite work out your question because we're we're we're moving away from the sampling model
So the sampling model was the old model that the previous administration used for many years.
That was the RIC's guidance.
We discussed this at the special committee.
I'm not here to litigate why that decision was made, because it was industry standard at the time.
So I can understand why officers took that position.
Because of where the direction of travel is, the regulator can't prescribe, tell us what to do.
but it is clearly very obvious that they want everyone to move towards 100 % stock condition survey model.
So we're moving away from the sample and going towards 20 % a year to staircase up to that.
And I think that will be crucial in any regrading that we ask for.
And could I just clarify, I appreciate that.
You're right. In my mind, both of these methodologies are sampling methodologies.
So he's absolutely right. They does say on paragraph 13, starting from spring 2025, 20 % of the council's stock will be surveyed every year.
Will that will it start with the most at risk stock or is it just, you know, almost a random sample or maybe a geographic one?
So I can't jump in. I mean, I just add that I don't know if we have it would be hard to work out what you would define as the most at risk.
So we're trying to do as broad a sample of our stock each year.
Is that fair, Kate?
Yeah, it's based on a few factors.
Some of it's geographical, like you said, Councillor Corner,
because obviously it's got to be the most efficient way of doing it.
But it's also based on properties and blocks where we perhaps don't have up -to -date data
or we suspect we haven't got most up -to -date data.
So whilst they won't necessarily be the most vulnerable people,
I suppose they're the properties that we know the least about
and therefore we want to get that information quickly.
But geographical has got to be part of it because otherwise they'd be darting around
the borough and they wouldn't get the numbers done.
Thank you.
And just the final one was on feedback structures and immediate actions, so making sure that
that resident feedback is taken into account.
Just to check, Matthew, are you talking about in relation to the stock condition survey
or just more broadly in terms of the works that we're doing?
More broadly, the report talks about residents being out,
tenants being able to have their say
on the council's response, right?
So what I would hope for is meaningful consultation
where residents are able to make recommendations,
the council publishes their response to it,
why it can happen, why it can't happen, and so on.
Is that something you're happy to do?
Yeah, definitely.
I mean, the springboard for this,
that will bleed into all parts of what the council is doing.
So we've set up focus groups and Tom can speak a bit more about that particularly in relation to the repairs deep dive
we you know
Good is
Getting feedback
Excellent is co -design of how the service functions and I know that that many of my colleagues sitting on next to me
That is the direction they want us to go in. So we're starting off with the repairs deep dive
To think through what is the experience of tenants to have run focus groups and but we want to
get to the highest level whereby residents are helping to co -design services.
And we have an opportunity, which again Tom can talk about, which is on some of our contracts, they're coming to the end of their time.
It's an opportunity for us to think about how residents engage in the process of procuring those new contracts.
But Tom, do you want to jump in?
Thank you.
Just to sort of reassure you, I mean, since the judgement, in fact before the judgement,
We had a focus group in January on residence associations and the accreditation process.
And we obviously had a really lively discussion with residents there and have already implemented the actions that were decided upon.
But in addition to that, we've already had two other focus groups, one on repair satisfaction and one on complaint handling.
And we published on the council's website what the outcomes of that discussion were with residents, sort of short, medium, and long term.
So obviously they will hold us to account and we will be happy for them to do so.
And we're already kind of moving through and progressing those points.
So when we do meet with residents, it is meaningful and we do make sure that we act on their concerns.
Another example of a kind of probably change to our previous approach was obviously taking
residents to a resident engagement event up in London.
And out of that, through discussions, we talked about some customer service training that we're introducing for
the area housing teams and how residents will have a say in the format of that
training you know some co -design of that with us so there's already a few things
we're working on but there's there's more to come in terms of some large
scale resident engagement events and again publishing what residents have
said to us and what we're going to do in response to that.
Great, thank you very much.
Councillor Gavincia, then Councillor Bharath -Raj.
Thanks, I mean we had a very long discussion but
Unfortunately, what I expected to happen afterwards,
that a lot of the co -commissioning that's heralded in here
would have happened before this meeting,
so a lot of the questions I have in my mind
would have been answered,
and what looks like a four month since the inspection
would not have been used, well, wasted in my view.
Can I just, two questions, I mean, I've got many others,
but can I just ask two very specific ones?
In the summary box, it says that it is our ambition to be an efficient, strong and efficient landlord,
provide strong and efficient landlord services to 17 ,000 residents.
The point is that we are a landlord to a lot more than 17 ,000 residents
because we are a landlord to leaseholders as well.
And some of the issues that are in here about failure to inspect and so on,
impact on their lives as well.
and what they fail to do as leaseholders
impacts on the lives of our residents as well.
So I don't find in this paper,
I know strictly speaking,
the Ombudsman doesn't have responsibility for it,
but we as the landlord ought to really work out
what is good in terms of safety for our residents,
irrespective of tenure.
And that's not reflected in here, and I just wish.
Now I hope that, you know,
doesn't have to be answered here,
but we'll go back.
I mean, dampen mould is the same question, and in a sense, you can have a damp home flat
next to a non -damp flat, different tenure, and it seeps through.
I think we need to address this question of how do we engage with leaseholders, inform
them, get them to do the right thing, and so on for communal goods.
So leave that in your box and it can happen in due course.
The other question is about sampling.
Whether it is sampling of people who feed into what we do, or whether it's sampling
of the properties we go and look at. The sampling of the properties we look at, there has to
be a geographical spread, otherwise all the samples come from Battersea and it doesn't
give you a picture. So we do need to do that. We do need to also have a sample which is
tall blocks, long, not tall blocks, and all of that. We also need to have a sample that
reflects the type of build, system build and not all that.
So I think there is some real sensible thinking
needs to be done about what an ideal sample would be.
We will never achieve it,
but how close to the ideal sample do we get to,
it should be our ambition.
And when it comes to engaging with residents,
and I've been to a number of engagement meetings
both here and elsewhere,
It doesn't always reflect the actual tenure profile, and in some ways we need to almost
reach out to see how our sampling reflects the real tenure profile. Again, we may not
succeed, but shall we not start with what our ambition should be so that people are
empowered to say things.
And everybody comes to Dampenmurd and I know this is slightly conflating to people.
There is an issue that there are some lifestyle issues which are particular about some communities
and not others.
And so if your sampling or engagement doesn't reflect the involvement of communities and
broad communities, then you never get the feedback that you should do.
So I'm just hoping that this will be a time for us to be careful and also imaginative
about how we reach out to get the right sample.
We will fail.
I accept that even now.
But our ambition should be to get to that point.
Thank you, Councillor Cominci.
I'm going to go to Mr. Wirth for an answer.
Thank you, Chair.
And we were discussing this very issue this morning about how are we going to structure
the 20 percent this year, where is it going to be, and so on.
So I think the short answer to your question is we needed to get this moving, so we started
on the basis we have.
But it's something which will probably be certainly a discussion amongst people in this
room this morning.
And of course, we can direct the contract, the inspection team, the contractors, as we
like. But it's also something we were reflecting this morning that may well be an issue for
this committee and its scrutiny function. So as Ms. Willman mentioned, we do need to
consider the efficiency of the inspection regime. We don't want an inspector going to
all parts of the borough on the same day. That would be daft. But yeah, so it's a moving
thing at the moment. We just wanted to get it moving. And of course, in a year's time
and we've done 20 % and so on and so forth.
And generally speaking, I suspect your knowledge
of the borough's housing stock is at least as good as mine,
probably better.
But yeah, if we start in say the western area,
we will get a reasonable good mix of tall blocks,
you know, small houses and the rest of it, so yeah.
I have lots of other questions.
So what I am going to do for,
because of, you know, we all press your time,
I will write to Mr. Worth and give some of my detailed questions.
So my other question is, and the more general one,
the paper talks about engaging with the ombudsman
and having a meeting with officers and the cabinet member going to that.
With the regulator, sorry.
So can you tell us how many meetings there have been,
what sort of stuff has been discussed,
whether what they're interested in is reflected in the appendix
that is attached to this paper. When will the next inspection be and when that next inspection
happens, what is the grade that we are anticipating or what is the grade we are aiming for? So
that sort of, yes, I mean then there are other questions that I might come to.
So if I could just answer your second point and the short answer is there is no answer.
We have been discussing this as well.
So it's entirely at the regulator's discretion when they choose to reassess us.
We've been discussing it, probably only time will tell.
Is there, because we need to do 100 % of the stock,
and because one of the consumer standards is focused on the confidence that we as a landlord have in our knowledge of the stock,
it's arguable that the tipping point where we can have that knowledge is quite high.
So what I'm saying is the regulator might say, and they've not told us,
that they won't reassess us until we've done a quarter of the stock or a third of the stock
or possibly a majority of the stock. So we don't know. It's a live conversation with the regulator.
We're meeting with them on a monthly basis at their requirement.
We're sending them information in advance, some of which is in the appendices, so there's
transparency there.
What we can reassure you is, as those conversations progress, when we feel there might be a moment
to pop the question, as it were, we will ask that question.
But it is entirely a matter for their discretion.
As someone who sits in those meetings, the questions are broadly around the speed in
which we are catching up on some of the standards that were asked of us.
So we've done pretty well on communal areas of electrical safety, for instance, but they
were saying, oh, okay, on the fire risk assessments, that isn't progressing as fast.
What is the reason for that?
And then we explain.
And so it's that kind of meeting.
It's an hour of them kind of going through the data asking us what, you know, some of
the things that weren't necessarily as flagged in the report, so things to do with over repairs
that are overdue, going into some of that data.
So it's a useful meeting, but it's to kind of make sure that we're on track and that
we're following up on the actions based in the report.
And like Dave says, like, you know, the aim is C1.
The aim always has to be C1.
And so if the aim is C1 and you haven't done, you've only done 20 % of your Stockholm in
your first year, then, you know, think about whether that's a good use of time.
Thank you.
I'm just going to, we've had Councillor Varatharaj waiting for a while.
So I'm going to go to Councillor Varatharaj.
Thank you, Councillor Corindia.
Thank you, Chair.
So my question was actually very similar to Councilor Galindi.
I just wanted to know a little bit more on how the monthly meetings with the regulator has been going.
So I just want to say, obviously since the grading it was quite shocking to hear,
but it's really great to see that the electrical safety certificate that was a big concern is now at 96 % for communal areas,
74 % for homes and then on night compliance is at 93%.
So I just kind of want to welcome the changes and improvements that the council is acting really fast on.
So thank you for all of that.
I do understand there is a lot more to do, but my question has been answered. Thank you.
Thank You councillor. Do you have any other questions?
Councillor Graham and then Councillor Stock.
Thank you chair. It's interesting that Councillor Dickerton mentioned C1.
I note that City of Westminster, OK 12 ,000 but it had a C1.
Is there any light or information that you know could have brought that to you know where I'm coming from?
assist us in looking at what the route, our route cause is, you know, because that's what we're looking for, isn't it?
What's the root cause of why we actually got a C3 as well?
So I actually know the cabinet member there quite well, so I called them up and congratulated them.
I actually went and had tea at their flat in West Minstern and congratulated them and asked them, of course. I was massively curious.
I think one of the things was
They had had an arms -length management organization, Westminster Homes, I think it was called,
and they brought that in -house.
And in the process of bringing it in -house, they had a very high stock.
They needed to know the stock that they were bringing in -house, and so they had done very detailed investigation.
So I think they had much more knowledge of their stock.
And I also think they had done some very interesting things on resident participation structures.
is why I was particularly interested in them is because they also share the same challenge
on leaseholders that we do. So they also have a very high percentage of leaseholders, I
think second to us or maybe a bit more than us. So, you know, I'm very open to learning
from other authorities and, you know, Liza can be incredibly proud of what they've achieved
at Westminster. And if, you know, in a couple of months' time the working group wants to
and visit and do that kind of things those are the you know we should use
this as a springboard to improve our service that's what we've got to use it
for so yeah it's what I said at the special meeting right which is I think
you know I'm gonna be more frank than I probably should be right like you know
We're the chair of arch.
Okay. Yeah.
Yeah. I know, I know, I know, I know.
But I know I'm thinking of my officers, right?
I with it, with it, with a chair of arch, right?
With a chair of arch. And so in some ways,
our job is almost like sometimes to represent
the interests of local authorities in
the challenges without any additional funding
that the regulating is.
So I think we fought our corner on
Stockholm and I think we shouldn't have fought.
Well, that didn't prove fruitful.
And I've been very open with the regulator about that.
I understand the reasons we did.
We discussed at special meeting, you know, Ravi's glorious decency rating was very much
linked to the fact that we had a very low sample rating, right?
So that the change in direction, we are a council that's willing to move with the times
when the times change and that we just have to be honest and frank about that.
And I know my officer Cora also taking this very seriously.
And I have, I think, very quickly gone off
and done some quite exciting new things,
particularly around participation.
But we also have to get the basics right
on the safety standard.
And so monitoring those fire safety measures,
monitoring where we get to in terms of,
we were meant to get to 10 % on Stockholm and we got to 6 .5.
The access issue, I think, is gonna be a real one
that we have to wrestle with.
So we might say, oh yeah, 20 % in a year,
but our tenants are not used to having people coming in and inspecting their homes.
So there's going to be a piece of work around making people feel comfortable in that process.
So, you know, there's lots to think about.
Thank you very much. Councillor Stock.
Thank you, Chair. Actually, Councillor Dickerton just preempted my first question.
But just to come back on the point, I suppose, about the cross -party working group,
I think all of us in this room have quite a lot of questions about the paper.
Some of us, myself included, are new to the committee.
So I don't know if there is any scope for there being a commitment that actually before the summer holiday will perhaps have a first
meeting of that working group to dig into this a bit more because it sounds like we might not have enough time this evening to
really understand
everything that we kind of want to want to
pull out and understand from here, but in terms of my
questions one it firstly was about access just looking at
Paragraph 13 of the report we talked about the sample that we tried to do in
I was wanting to try and achieve 10%, but unfortunately we're only able to achieve 6 .5,
and there's a reference to kind of letters that were being sent out but not responded.
So it was just interested, you know, obviously the stock condition, really important work,
but also kind of probably the, it sounds like kind of the heftiest piece of physical work
alongside the kind of piece of work around participation.
I just wanted a little bit more information about where we are on that challenge of access
and how much of a challenge we see and kind of what we're doing to address that.
And then I have kind of other questions around participation and repairs as well.
I'll answer that one first.
So I think part of the Stockholm sample in 2022, there was a little bit of a hangover
from COVID, I think, which meant people were less likely to agree access.
I totally agree with you.
I think a lot of times with the regulator,
when we say we're in the late 90s
on percentage of compliance with something,
they say, when are you gonna get to 100 %?
Well, we all know that when you're trying
to get access into properties,
that can be quite difficult,
and you don't want to use your powers to force entry
for any old thing.
You want to use it when you really need it.
We've been more proactive with our comms
on stock conditions so far,
so we've got information on the website
about what it means and why it would help us
to let us in, we're trying to make sure
your properties are safe.
We've also sent some proactive letters out to residents
because we started with a sample.
But even from that, we had a small number ring up
and various reasons why they didn't want us to gain access,
they didn't think the properties were in good condition.
I think we're bound to come across some issues of access,
issues perhaps with hoarders.
So I think we need to do, I think 20 % the first year
will be okay because you can do any of your 100 %
to get into 20%, but yes, I agree.
I think there's going to become issues,
and it's that work we do between my services
managing that contractor, and also the area teams,
and how we deal with those residents,
because we'll know some that automatically
are going to maybe cause this issue.
So I think Tom and I have to work closely on that
to make sure we get access, because I do agree.
I think while 100 % is the ambition,
it's going to be challenging to get to 100%.
Thank you.
If I may just before going back to council,
So on that last question, I appreciate I'm new,
but in terms of resident outreach,
I sit on finance committee and they have challenges
in terms of getting those communications to residents
or trying to get answers in relation to areas
in that director, but one of the things
that we've talked about in that area
is potentially looking at where potentially
those residents are interacting with the council
in other departments, whether it be through
Adult social care or through the children's services. I'm wondering if you know, I appreciate there's a lot of people
If you're getting those responses, you know, is there any way of kind of coordinating that back office to to look at if there are other
Not saying it would help you into the property
But you know you touched on hoarding for example there to explore if there are those other
Barriers that you might be able to find trying to entering some of those properties. I
Think we will definitely have to do all those things, but I think while we've got such a large number
we need to get into. I think we need to wait until we get to that nub of people where we've
got some issues. And I totally agree, you know, working with social services, financial
inclusion, the rent collection service, all those things to get into properties. Because
what we don't want to do is worry residents about why we're going in. You know, I think
some people just need that reassurance that we're not going into, you know, somebody
rang up and they had some medical issues and that they felt their property was messy and
didn't want anyone coming in and we you know we've got to reassure to say well
we're not coming in to look at you know depending on what level of messiness
but we're not coming in to judge the messiness of your home you know we're
looking at whether there's health and safety and repairs so yes I think we'll
get to a point where there's a lot more engagement with other services about how
to get into some of those properties.
Thank you.
Did you want to do the last of your questions then I'll go back to Councillor Guindia.
Happy to, thank you chair. So just then on the participation side of things I do
welcome the regulators comments in a way about kind of really strengthening our
informal participation and we have committed as a council to be a
listening council and I think we really should work harder I think that is the
way that we can improve brief services. So I would just kind of again I think
it's a lengthy conversation it's a journey that we've probably all got to
go on but just kind of where we are on that journey towards really like
Councillor Dickardham says kind of co -design you know we've got as I
understand it we've got the repairs contract that are coming to end within a
reasonable amount of time you know to what extent are we thinking now okay
actually we are going to make sure that we've got tenants, leaseholders, other
tenure types involved in the design of that specification of that contract or
even in the you know process of awarding the contract to really make sure that
we're getting things right and I suppose another way that I see things
potentially in terms of understanding on the kind of repairs issue is I just
would like a little and I'm new to the committee so you might have to help me
just I would be interested in a little bit of more information about we talk in
paragraph 17 about we do think that our repair satisfaction is improving I would
just like to understand a little bit more about how we know that you know
because I don't always feel that from feedback from my residents.
So kind of do we actually send a text message after every single repair,
whether it's our own repair or a contractor repair,
you know, what questions are we asking and is there any opportunity
through the deep dive which the scrutiny committee might be involved in
to kind of unpick that a bit more?
So two questions really, one about the journey towards co -design
involving tenants and leaseholders in that
and then one about just feedback at the moment on our repairs and satisfaction levels.
Ms. Wilman referred to the scoping document that we developed.
And we're still at the relatively early stages, but what we've already committed to within
it is that sort of co -design element.
It's about making sure that residents are involved at every stage of the process.
And that probably will be in the form of a working group, but we haven't quite decided
yet.
I think part of the deep dive will be thinking how will we involve residents and then committing
to that and committing to that over a timeline and that will link as well to sort of what
the different options are for the repair service.
So as you mentioned in the paper mentioned, the contracts are coming to an end relatively
soon so the deep dive will look at what kind of options we have with that coming up and
as you say we will need to speak to residents to find out what their concerns are and what
they would want from a new contract.
So yes, that's definitely all going to be part of it.
We can set that out, I think, more clearly and in more detail when we were clear on that.
On the repair satisfaction point, so when the regulator visited, the TSM, annual TSM
score that they were looking at and taking into consideration, the repair satisfaction
rate was 53%, but it has risen to 58 % from the last satisfaction score.
But obviously that's still lower than we want it to be.
We want it to be much higher than that.
And again, the deep dive is, one of the outcomes we're hoping and expecting to get from it
is working out how we can arrange our repair service and VA's with residents to make sure
that that satisfaction rate rises.
We had a repair satisfaction focus group in March.
We have some actions which we're already implementing in relation to that, which hopefully will
make a difference.
But yeah, there's a lot of work to do in that area.
There is, in addition to the annual Tenant Satisfaction Survey, there is a transactional
survey that is sent out in response to every talented repair that's completed.
So the resident will receive a text message inviting them to comment and give their assessment
and they then respond to that.
And I look at those fairly regularly through a portal and they're also then referred to
at each individual contract meeting as well.
So I can say to a particular contractor,
this was the repair satisfaction rate for you
over the last quarter.
It's very good or it's not good enough.
If it's not good enough, what are you gonna do about it?
So there's that kind of constant monitoring as well.
And they do seem to track one another as well.
So looking at the transactional survey satisfaction measures
that appears to have risen in line
with the kind of annual TSM survey.
Great, thank you. Getting moved to Councillor Gurney for the final question on this paper before we move on.
I think we talked about access and I think paragraph 15 talks about 74 % of the homes having electrical tests completed.
Which raises a question for me, does that mean that we have access to 74 % of the stock
and therefore if we do, then does that inspector not actually look at other things?
And I suspect the answer is no, because there are different skills and different qualifications.
But if you take it from a tenant's point of view, a series of different people coming from the town council
saying I'm here from Wonseth Council, I'm here to help you, is not going to be received very well.
So we do really need to find a way of saying where you have access, one access, all jobs done.
And we need to reach out to, I know that will be a training cost and all sorts of things,
but I do think that where our rating is dependent on stock condition surveys,
and access is a fundamental part of getting that condition survey outcome right,
then we do need to think very carefully how we get into the flats and make that inspection.
So that's just a comment rather than a question, frankly.
But the other, my question is probably about question 34, and inviting Councillor Dickerton to say,
what happens next? I know 17th, 7th of July is a date that's been talked about for a briefing kind of thing.
or when will we get a group set up, when will we get its membership fixed, its terms of reference fixed,
its timelines fixed so that we can all get going and actually work jointly to improve the lot for our tenants,
who, you know, some of them will be worried about what this means to them,
and I think we have a duty to gird our loins and get on with the job.
I mean, all I can really answer is that I was caught out by the fact that our entire
democratic structure has changed in the middle in between.
And so otherwise, I would have normally gone and set up.
This is the first time you're saying progress is actually not a good thing.
Well, basically, I would be overstepping my role now to – if I, as a cabinet member,
set this up and then said, this is how I'm setting it up, I would be stepping on the
of the new chairing system.
So I understand it is at this meeting,
and we'll do this at the end.
Is that right, Chris?
Yeah, that you collectively have the power now
to require this of me yourselves,
rather than me, do you understand what I'm getting at?
I didn't wanna, because I sent you an email.
I did send you an email about trying to give you
pre -briefings and things like that, yeah, yeah.
Microphone, please.
Tell us what you would accede to.
We came and said here are all our demands, which will be many, but tell us what you would
exceed to so that we get a feeling of what this working group will look like and how
we might work together.
I think just on that, we are going to have a, there is an item on the work group at the
end of this, but that is exactly the things that you're saying is for us to describe.
I think kind of what you're asking of the cabinet member is really testament to that
old style of system we shouldn't be looking to take out so decadent for that
guy like so it's for us to collectively decide and I know councilor in G with
you with your experience I'm sure that whatever contributions you make as part
of that will be you know will be of interest to counsel dick of them as part
of that so what we can discuss that but when we meet and and there's a this item
to discuss that at the end of tonight's agenda as well and we are going to come
to it, but I think this is a kind of a rather unique situation and this if we
set up a task and finish group which is what we heralded last time it probably
will be the first of the council's task and finish group under the new regime of
governance. So I think it's quite important to sort of see this slightly in
isolation and to see whether this actually addresses some of rather more
specific concerns of 17 ,500 households and 17 ,000 more households too.
I mean, I accept what you're saying, so we can defer our discussion till then, but I
do think this is an appropriate place to say this rather special circumstance deserves
a separate and special answer.
So I mean, let me tell you if I'm barking up the wrong tree, but I mean, if you ask
to meet me every day. I would say no. But if you are, exactly. But if you asked to meet
me once a month and with officers and there was specific data that you wanted access to
or you wanted to, as a working group, delegate someone who sat in on one of the meetings
with the regulator, these are all creative ideas that I think you can come up with. But
I would feel uncomfortable if I passed them down at this stage because that's the whole
point is I'm meant to be outside of the process now. So it was a courtesy that I, that was
the reason why I didn't go full hog and set one up by myself, only for you guys to ratify
in this meeting. So yeah I think that's an added here Councillor Dickard earlier
say that the email yeah I know he's more than happy if you've got those those
thoughts and those suggestions I'm sure he'd be very grateful to have them
land in his inbox as well. Yeah so the Councillors are you happy for that to be
This is noted as for an item, there's no vote on this paper.
So, yeah, I think, yeah, those have been well noted and minuted this evening.
So, given that, I'm now going to ask that we move on to item number five on tonight's agenda,
the council's approach to damp and mould.
And I'm going to move to Mr. Crawley for an update to start us off, please.

5 Update on the Council's Approach to Damp and Mould (Paper No.25-189)

Thank you.
So this paper provides an update on the significant amount of work that's been undertaken to improve the Council's response to dampen mould since 2023.
I'm also going to just outline some of the further changes we proposed to make to ensure that we comply with our OBS law when it comes into force in October.
So since 2023 we've updated the Council's website to provide more information on dampen mould and we've done regular features in home life.
We're also making better use of data on our housing system NEC to identify blocks that
might be particularly susceptible to issues of damper mould and then proactively sort
of survey and contact those residents.
We've added an automated text message so that when residents have mould removed from their
home six months after that, they then get a text message to say, you know, do you still
have these issues?
If so, please contact us in order to be a bit more proactive and make sure that we're
sorting these issues out for them. And checking for Dab and Mould issues is also
now part of the routine occupancy checks that our officers undertake and that's
about 1 ,200 visits per year. So the idea is that these measures encourage
residents to report issues to us as soon as possible to proactively deal with
these issues. And we rolled out specific training to all our frontline officers. I
mean they already had a good knowledge I think a lot of them in terms of dealing
with Dab and Mould issues but wanted to enhance that so every officer has now
had training specifically on dealing with damp and mold,
diagnosing the issue and what we should do to address it.
Probably the most significant change that we undertook
was a creation of the mold removal team.
That was in March, 2023.
We started off with just two officers
because we obviously wanted to test it out and see
how well it was going to work.
And the feedback was really positive.
So last autumn, we expanded that team
to six mold removal officers with an admin officer
to support them.
And we've had some, I mean, I had a look through the sort of satisfaction responses in relation
to their work.
And it was pretty much all nine out of ten in terms of, nine or ten out of ten in terms
of the service they received from the old moving officers, to the point where I was
quite cynical about it and actually rang some of the residents up to find out whether it
was accurate, and it was.
So they are doing a fantastic job.
What I'll just summarize in paragraph 7 to 14 is what our current approach is.
So we aim to remove mold within seven days in a tenant's property and inspect the property within 14 days.
And on that inspection, the officer that's had that training that I referred to, what they'll do is they'll provide advice to the resident.
But they'll also look at how they can prevent that mold from coming back in the property.
So look at improvements to the heating or ventilation system.
And then they'd aim to complete those works within 21 days, but that can obviously vary,
because sometimes it can take longer.
So, for example, fitting a positive input ventilation system is quite involved work
that requires a survey before you do it.
So something like that would generally take a bit longer.
Now, Paragraphs 15 to 21, they just outlined sort of current performance in this area.
So you'll note the expanded mold removal team, they've completed many more sort
of mold removals than they were previously.
but they're not quite doing it at the volume that we were expecting, so the cost saving that we previously expected isn't quite being achieved yet.
But they are clearing a very high percentage of mold within the seven day target time.
So although they're performing really well and they're doing everything we kind of need them to,
We don't intend on expanding the team at the moment because it's helpful for us to have
more resilience by using the air repairs contractors as well because
Obviously if you had a few members of the mold removal team that went off sick or left a short notice
You then have a gap in the service
So the kind of hybrid of having an efficient mold removal team that's quite well resourced in addition to our air repairs contractors
Is continuing to work well?
So, paragraphs 22, 26, they just set out what the requirements are under ALWAB's law.
And you'll note that the exact time scales, they've not yet been released by the government,
but they did consult with us on some time scales.
So that's what we've, we're basically assessing ourselves against and making sure that we're
complying with.
So paragraphs 27 to 34 just set out what further changes we proposed to make.
So in order to provide a written summary, shortly after an inspection, we proposed for officers to use iPads
and we purchased the NEC Go mobile app to record the outcome of the inspection.
So the officers can record the outcome of the inspection on a tablet while they're at the property.
And then once they've done that, that should automatically generate an email or
a letter that will then go to that resident.
So straight after the inspection's taken place,
that resident will have an understanding of what was found, what issues were, and
what actions going to be taken to resolve that.
Another key change is the need for
officers to have a greater knowledge of the housing health and safety rating system.
So they don't need to be fully trained to do an assessment in the same way
the Environmental Health Officer needs to be, but they do need to have an understanding of it.
And some of them will do it already, but what we want to do is make sure that that understanding increases.
So we'll be rolling out some further training over the next two to three months to all frontline officers so that they have that.
And a further key point is the vulnerability of residents.
You'll be aware we brought forward a vulnerable residence policy.
But obviously, dampen mold does affect residents in different ways.
If a resident has breathing difficulties, then obviously it would affect them far more than someone without.
So a key part of complying with our law for us, I think, will be triaging the calls that we get on dampen mold to find out about the residents and their household.
And then sort of adjust our response accordingly and make sure obviously that those
and vulnerabilities recorded in our system
so that they're acted on in future as well.
And what I would also say is that,
and we've referred to this in terms of the deep dive,
is that residents and tenants are a key part
of this process, so what we'll be doing
is running a bit of a focus group
to kind of test this approach
and the changes we're proposing here
with a group of tenants as well
to make sure that they're kind of comfortable
with what's being implemented.
And because this is such a key area of work, we're committed to coming back again next
year.
We did a report, I think, last autumn that covered this topic, obviously here now talking
about it, but we'll be back again next year to kind of provide a review and an update
for everyone on how what we talked about here is going and how it's been implemented.
Thank you.
Great.
Thank you very much.
That was a really comprehensive and helpful update for the committee.
So thank you.
I'll move first to Councillor Coroner who has to turn it off online before coming back to any
Council's hate for questions. Great, thank you Chair and thank you for the update. Looking at
the Council's response to this new legislation it seems that there's a high level of confidence that
simply continuing with the current performance would be adequate to be compliant with this.
albeit there are some new kind of applications of technology which are most welcome.
One of the questions I have on the technology side is, can we use, and it speaks to a broader point of helping residents to help us to tackle mould and damp it in their properties.
perhaps we could use AI to identify, you know, the more serious cases of mould. I know that
that can be done now through taking photographs, sharing them. So I wondered if there could
be a comment on the use of technology and AI in that way and whether we've seen that
happen in the social housing sector yet. And then it would also be good to understand what
other measures we're doing to train residents and upskill residents in identifying mould early and understanding what actions they need to take. I think there's a lot in the paper about what officers are doing, which is obviously great, but we need to be supporting and helping residents to help themselves as well where we can, I think.
And finally, I think with the position being that the current performance is adequate,
would that really reassure residents that we've got Damper Mould under control?
Because I'm sure this is the case across multiple local councils and local authorities.
But we do hear a lot as councillors about damp and mould in social housing property.
So I would like the cabinet member to set out whether he thinks that the current performance,
whilst it might already be compliant with IOB's law, is it in his view something that
that is acceptable going forward,
or do we need to see an improvement,
regardless of what the legislation says.
Thank you, Councillor Corners.
I'm going to go to Mr. Crawley for the questions on tech,
the role of tech and what are the measures we're using
or could use to help residents.
And then I'll move back to Councillor Dickerton
for that final one on our approach.
Thank you.
In relation to AI and technology,
I mean we're kind of keeping a bit of a watching brief on all the different technology that's being used to try and tackle issues of damp and mold.
For example, some local authorities have put sensors into properties to measure humidity, etc.
That's something we've considered.
We've thought about the cost of it and what we'd actually do with all that data that comes back to us and how useful it would be.
And at the moment, we're not looking at necessarily doing something like that.
We would rather have officers visiting people in their homes
to talk to them and actually look at the problem
and then deal with it in that way.
And obviously, there's technology
that we refer to in this paper with regard
to NEC Go Mobile, which you've only just purchased.
And there's lots of other kind of applications
unrelated to AMP involved that we want to start to use it for.
So I suppose the question with AI is, yes, we
will use it where we think it will be useful.
But at the moment, we're concentrating
on getting the kind of more basics right I think in terms of having officers
having tablets with NEC Go Mobile so they can do those inspections you know
efficiently in the in the property and I think perhaps the next stage you know
maybe when I come and talk to you on this topic next year I might have some
other ideas or have learned some more from other local authorities and
housing providers about how AI could be applied in these circumstances. On the
helping residents. I mean the key for us is is them reporting the issue to us
because I think certainly the the feedback from the mold and removal team
often is that they will have a report that there's mold in a property, they
will attend within seven days and they will get there and the mold will be
really quite extensive you know it might cover a couple of walls, ceilings and
really you know be a serious problem for that resident but they haven't
necessarily reported the problem before to us and that is obviously poor for the
resident but it's also difficult for us to, that modern removal officer or
officers will then be there for possibly the whole day kind of removing it.
So it's both in ours and the resident's interest to report it straight away just when there's some mold spotting in the property.
Then we can go there and move it quickly and then do all that suite of other responses like
providing advice and improving the ventilation or checking the heating.
So I think it's with terms of helping residents mainly I think about communication and making sure that they are happy to report to us promptly
And they know how to do so
I don't think we would go back to a period where for example
We were encouraging them to remove the mold themselves and kind of not tell us about it
Which I think some tenants are probably still in the habit of doing and we'd rather they came to us and spoke to us
Thanks very much and then to council dick for the final one
Yeah, so I mean, I'd like to think that we were a leader in this.
We introduced the in -house mold and damp team prior to any local authority that I'm aware
of.
We moved fast.
We predicted the direction of travel after the tragic events in Rochdale.
So I think we've been a kind of leader on this.
Now does that mean that we've solved the problem of mold and damp in social landlords?
Not at all.
The aim is to learn, to always get better,
to be honest and frank about the fact that we have an aging stock
that is going to require more and more, I think, advice to families.
The thing that we were discussing in our pre -meeting is the particular
challenge of balancing the, I think, important changes to the way
that officers are expected to deal with mold and damp that comes
out of our law with the reality of overcrowding in much of our stock.
I think that is a tension that still hasn't been ironed out yet in the national legislation,
which is because it's not something a family can be blamed for, but it's a reality based
on the housing crisis.
You've got buildings where there's more people living in it than it was designed to have,
but the likelihood of them moving out anytime soon is far away.
So I think we've been a pioneer in this area.
Now, I think this paper is, like Tom says,
kind of first, one of many reforms that will come.
It's very clear that once the team is working more efficiently, there is spare capacity,
there are savings that can come from this whereby we can expand it so that it can reach out to more residents.
The blight of mold and damp in our properties is going to continue and we've just got to be adaptive to it.
Thank you, Councillor Dickerton. So I'm going to go to Councillor Govindia, then Councillor
Vratharaj, then Councillor Graham. Thank you very much. I mean, many of my, much of
my contribution might be comment rather than questions, but one couple of questions. What's
this about the area repairs contract? There's reference to when the in -house team can't
handle the work or can't cope because of workloads, we pass it on to ARC and there is reference
the rest of the agenda of some ARC contractors not up to scratch. So in a
sense I want to understand about how we make sure that the work is not
allocated to a poor performer or how their work compares to the in -house team
and how their throughputs are. Because we have figures of how the in -house team is
performing we don't have figures for the ARC. So that's one specific
The other is about, when you're talking to residents who have been afflicted with this
problem, they will say things like, I've had to throw all my stuff away. I've had to get
rid of all my food and it's cost me a lot of money and so on. And inevitably at surgery,
the question is, will the council compensate me? In a way, it's very difficult for a council
to answer that question.
But nonetheless, that is a question people ask.
And so, what is our view?
Or whether if we don't have a view at the moment,
should we consider and think about that view?
And my other, and this is kind of a general point,
but because of cost of living
and people's view about ventilation as being a way of cold coming in,
People block their ventilation blocks, gaps and things.
And how do we get around that problem is a real difficulty.
And I just think that it's a challenge that both offices and residents representatives will have.
And I think we almost need to find a way around that.
The other is that, as my understanding of the Arab law, and perhaps paragraph 31 we
could look at that and explain, is that our duty is to every individual. We will not fulfil
our duty by saying we've done 75 if the person afflicted with dampen mould is in the 25 who
So in a sense, as I understand it, that our duty is to each and every individual.
And so that puts a very, very high burden, which then means that this is a cost shift
or additional cost pressure coming through legislation which has not been supported through new government funding.
And then what are we doing about...
Because this can balloon in cost terms.
And so what are we doing in making our case
and other local authorities case to the central government
about saying this ain't going to come cheap.
And all sorts of other housing pressures
won't happen if this burden has given a primacy in our budget.
So it's an important area for us to push for.
And my final comment, and I won't
talk about this paper anymore, which
is about, I mentioned lease holders at the beginning of the meeting, but we also have
other social landlords which are not local authority. I happened to go to a housing association
tenant in my ward yesterday complaining about dampen mode. And they are not as responsive.
They don't seem to have this as urgently in their inbox as we have. What can we do to
make sure that housing associations active in our in fact take this
obligation as seriously as we are. Thank you Councillor Garinja. The housing associations we're
having almost I think it's bi -annually now meetings with each of them well
there's quite a lot to get through so to a year and but we meet them
individually so we're not meeting them as a group anymore because that is
better I think because as a group we go through things some might stay quiet
you'll be sitting around the table it's but when you meet them one -on -one twice
a year we get asked for updates we asked for how how many complaints they're
getting and we're all talking about the same things because we like you say
we're all facing this new burdens without the additional funding so
Arabs law the green agenda fire safety regulation the squeeze on section 106 so
there's there I think that is a very good forum for us to say now there's a
almost implicit in that is a separate point about,
will we ever get to the stage whereby we can contract out
with our own service to various different,
maybe, maybe, but we've got to build it first.
We're not quite there to own 100 % of the DLO aspect of it.
So the co -ops, for instance, have already written saying
they would like access to this.
We can't do it straight away,
but we'll probably start with the co -ops next
who would like to procure this service from us.
And I think we'll expand it that way.
but there is a, like on the next paper you'll see,
there's a much more aggressive ombudsman,
a much more aggressive regulator,
and our obvious law is law.
So housing associations that do not meet that
will face consequences.
I'll allow you to go back, I am conscious,
I've got another few people waiting.
They make two suggestions.
In terms of the damp and mold removal,
our own in -house team probably could actually
set a standard, ideal standard, and we sell that standard to the associations rather than
contract out our services. So maybe you want to give some thought to it. And the second
thing is that perhaps you could, or Mr. Wirth could give some consideration to keeping a
tally of casework that we all get from housing associations so that he can then say to you,
these are the four cases Councillors have reported when you meet the particular housing
Association so you can hold them to account there and then. Thank you and I
know that before a recent meeting that Councillor Dickerton did have with one
of them I raised a particularly serious one that had been going on for for far too
long as part of that meeting so it's good but thank you Councillor Goindje.
I'm gonna go to Councillor Bharath -Raj and Councillor Graham. Thank you chair.
My question was related to paragraph 33 where six families had to be moved into
temporary accommodation. I just wanted to know how long were these families in
temporary accommodation and how much did it cost the council? You might not have
this information to hand. I can understand why they've had to be moved
and all those six families doesn't seem like a lot. It almost feels like that
number should be zero and we shouldn't have to move families out their home into
TAs. I know we do also rely on residents to kind of report it to us but
it's anything the council could have done to intervene earlier so it didn't
have to get to that stage. And finally it's just a point of clarification for
myself am I right in understanding that the seven -day target time we have is from the day of the inspection and not from the day that the
residents report it. Thank you. On the first point yes I don't have those details to hand.
I mean we will look at those cases as a matter of course to see what could have
been done differently particularly if a complaint arises out of them but I'll
have to come back to you with with sort of more data detail on them and if
that's okay and with regard to the seven day time so that starts from the time
the mold is reported to us and so does the 14 day inspection time so they're
kind of concurrent if you know what I mean yeah thank you thank you Councillor
Graham thanks chair it's looking at number 39 page 27 members should be
therefore aware of the non -compliance of the Act and subsequent regulation would
leave the council potentially liable to damage and calls to the regulator to
investigate. So having read 2407 some time ago, the council has an
obligation through the changes in the law as they will have as I've just said
a liability for breach of tenancy through the court. So is the council, are tenants aware
and also is the council going to address this through the changes to their tenancy agreements
and also that does impact on leaseholders and co -ops. I mean I know that as you're just saying
They can order their own seven -day mold, but the potential for breach of tenancy through
the courts, this could be a liability even though they're co -ops, housing associations,
leaseholders, the council is liable.
My question is, are tenants, well the tenants is going to be changed to actually look so that they are aware of their responsibility to report that date dump,
but also if they are not satisfied, I'd like to know what you're thinking.
There is no requirement for us to change the tenancy conditions.
The legal requirement of Arabs Law is on us as the social housing provider to adhere to
the timescales that are set out in Arabs Law in terms of cleaning the moulds or removing
starting repairs, undertaking the inspection and then feeding back on that inspection.
And that's applicable to cooperatives as much as it is to ones of Council's directly managed
stock.
So all in all, thank goodness then we do have the housing ombudsman and the regulator because
that is where they would go if they were not satisfied and then possibly you could actually
be penalized after the judgment or not. Yeah, I mean tenants would have the option of going
through the complaints process and the housing ombudsman. They could approach the regulator
directly or they could approach solicitors and make a claim against us if they felt that
we were in breach of our law.
Okay, thank you very much. I don't think I've seen any other hands for questions. No, okay.
So on this paper, recommendation 1B is for the committee to approve a positive housing
revenue account revenue budget variations of fifty two thousand three
three hundred in twenty five twenty six and twenty two thousand eight hundred
in twenty six twenty seven and in a full year for the purchase of sixty six zero
iPads and for the license fee for the NEC go mobile application which we were
just talking about and say that information is to be noted by the
committee is that noted thank you very much counselors okay moving on to item

6 Housing Management Complaints - Annual report 2024-25 (Paper No.25-190)

6 on the agenda is the housing management complaints annual report for 2024 2025.
I'm going to move to Councillor Dickerton for initial introduction on this paper.
Yeah, I just wanted to say that, you know, I hope everyone read through it. I think it's really
important you get a sense of some of the trends, you get a sense of some of the places where things
were upheld and not upheld. Like I said on the previous paper, we're entering a climate in which
the housing ombudsman is likely to be much more aggressive,
we're entering into a much more,
I don't want to say kind of libelous period,
but my Instagram is just bombarded with claims support,
legal officers, and so we're in a different environment
to where we were when I was first joining this committee,
particularly on complaints and the kind of activeness
of the ombudsman.
So I think definitely, I hope everyone read through
the different examples.
I'm sure some of you will recognize some of them from casework and things like that.
But I also think it's important that we brought all of them in detail for the committee to
be able to go through.
You know, we're trying to be as transparent as possible.
And I think it's something to factor in in terms of the way the service is going to have
to adapt to the new environment where this is the kind of new reality.
So when we come to the finance paper, you know, you'll see the overspending repairs.
I think we are having to be much quicker, much more agile.
The stock condition survey that we do as part of the first paper will highlight that we
need to, you know, we will find category one hazards if we enter more properties.
The mold and damp is another issue whereby we know that some people won't give us access
to do the mold and damp because some lawyer will have told them they can get a claim and
that they'll get wasted their time with the ombudsman.
So I think that's the new environment, the new reality, and I hope this paper gives you
sense of how the council is trying to adapt to that new reality but I'll hand
it over now to officer to introduce. Thank you council Lickitum. I'm Nancy
Carissa I'm the statutory and corporate complaints manager. Just by way of a
very brief introduction for some more context this is the first time that we've
produced a standalone housing complaint report due to the requirements of the
newly aligned complaint handling code. So that's made it difficult to do
comparators to previous years. The data will also be included in the annual
Wandsworth corporate complaints report alongside the other complaints data for
the Housing Directorate which will be going to the Finance and Policy
Committee in the autumn. But just very briefly over the past year housing
management have responded to 329 complaints. Positively 67 % of those were
resolved at stage one and nearly 70 % all within the target time scales. So I think
you know this that's good demonstration of the effectiveness of the complaints
handling. The report highlights key themes such as repairs, delays, communication issues
and dissatisfaction with major works, areas where housing management have already begun
implementing targeted improvements as well as continuously reviewing and improving the
service as a whole. It outlines the learning from the stage two complaints in the appendices
and also the housing ombudsman determinations and our progress in aligning with the complaints
handling code and I'd be happy to answer any questions.
Thank you very much. I know that starting us off, we've got Councillor Corner with his hand up online and then I see Councillor Comindia.
Great. Thank you, officers and Councillor de Kedem and the chair.
I have a question. I'm not sure if it's buried in the report and I've missed it, but how much compensation are we paying out to residents for upheld claims?
claims, just ballpark figure is fine. And then my more substantive question is related
to the causes of complaints. And I know that this is actually often a judgement that the
council is making, but the paper says that 68 % of claims are arising from service delays
and failures and 26 % are citing staff attitude. That seems quite striking to me. And it seems
that there's potentially if we can get the service right, we can get our very hard working
teams kind of customer service right, then we can bear down significantly on the incoming
complaints. I appreciate some of these complaints might not then get upheld as well. So that
is a factor. But I really wanted to comment on how we can be quite aggressive in bringing
these staff attitude and service delays and failures, complaints down.
If I could just comment on the compensation. I don't have an overall figure for you, but
I can get that. But I oversee all level 2 complaints for my service, the housing management
service and generally the awards at level two are between £200 and £600 £700. Very
seldom do they go over that. The OMB is moving, if they find against us will generally increase
that figure but I can provide an overall annual sum.
I would be grateful for that and it would be interesting to compare years controlling
for inflation as well.
I mean, to the second, I'll come back with the figure on that.
To come back to the second point, I think that was with regards to reducing complaints
about delays and staff behavior.
I mean, that's a tricky one.
I don't know if there's anything Housing colleagues wanted to add, but there's a lot of information
on learning in the report, and that shows how Housing Directorate are continuously learning
from those complaints.
And the report also does say that,
and I think this is a good thing,
people are much more aware of how to complain
and their right to complain now.
And we do actually welcome complaints.
We don't always see high volumes of complaint
as a negative thing.
And I think as long as we're continuously
learning from those complaints and we're being transparent
and we're making the process of complaining easy for people,
then we're doing the right thing.
I think that's definitely correct in terms
of welcoming them.
I think we've kind of changed our approach a bit in that we treat far more expressions
of dissatisfaction now as complaints, whereas in the past we may not have treated as many
of them as formal complaints.
And then there's learning from those that we then adopt.
I can think of a number of different things that in response to complaints that have gone
through the process, we've then changed policies, we've changed our IT systems.
So for example, with antisocial behavior, we've created a task manager system so
that officers are kind of prompted to do certain things at certain stages of an antisocial behavior case.
And again, there's been training to staff in response to complaints.
So we rolled out knowledge and information management training to all our officers,
because that was one of the issues that came up in a few different complaints.
And therefore, there was a bit of a theme there.
And we're in a similar vein, and I mentioned it earlier,
we're rolling out customer service training to the area housing team staff as well to try and
address some of those kind of staff attitude and behavior issues that have been raised.
Thank you.
And I think Councillor Dickerton wanted to come in here as well.
Yeah, when we went to the resident participation conference that was a C1
and the Housing Association did a presentation almost around this and they framed it as a
complaint is an opportunity to improve the service, right?
And they started, they put on the first slide on this slide deck was a quote from a resident
and the quote was, you ruined my life.
And the chief executive of the Housing Association walked through the experience of that tenant
that led them to think that the Housing Association had ruined their life and the series of steps
that had happened during the various things where officers had tried to do the right thing
or something had gone wrong and they used that as a learning pathway to then go on and
train their staff. Like that is where we need to get to. This paper is now part of the new
regime, the new reality for social landlords because for many, many years social landlords
were not responding to complaints in the way that they should. So we're hoping that by
publishing them in very detail, like there are, I went through and there's a number where
They literally named, contractor was rude,
person was aggressive on the phone, bad attitude.
We want to get to a place whereby we understand,
we understand in detail that we shouldn't be able
to shy away from these because part of the process
of the ombudsman being more active
and also the regulator being more active
is kind of, as well as our systems,
a kind of cultural change to how we approach things.
Now, our complaint satisfaction is very low.
Sometimes you can't work out whether that's
Because the complaints aren't being upheld and so they're upset because their process hasn't worked out.
But I actually think that if we've done it correctly and their complaint isn't upheld,
they should still go away feeling like they at least know how the process worked and
they understand why their complaint wasn't upheld and there was some good spirit in it.
So sometimes we hide behind that measure and I think we need to improve that measure.
Thank you, Councillor Dickerson.
Councillor Govindia and then Councillor Stucke.
Thank you very much. I'm sorry I didn't catch your name and I didn't hear all your presentation because I was just momentarily out.
But you said that the data we have had is, you cannot compare because this is the first time we have had it presented like that.
Well, I looked at the finance OSC report last year where every department's data is there.
And whilst the remit of departments has changed over time, but there were figures.
And in a sense it would have been useful to have those figures here with the caveat that
it is slightly different.
So I see that in 2324, that report shared 403 complaints
attributed to the director of housing.
Now, it doesn't make much, but it's helpful
to be able to compare that we are now actually
trajectories going down, which is a helpful lesson
to learn from that if that figure was the case.
But that's just an observation.
I was struck by the language in paragraph 3 .3,
which sounded a bit like when the police said
that there are lots of complaints against them.
They say, oh, well that's because we are working very hard
to encourage people to complain.
It sounds a little bit like that.
I do think that we need to embrace both our responsibility
and in a sense our duty to put things right.
It's just an observation.
But I want to go to paragraph 3 .16,
which again says things like,
We're quite bad, 65%, but we're not as bad as others, which is really a back -ended compliment.
I mean, I find that sort of, well, there is a complacency that comes through that sort
of language. So, it's just my thoughts. But paragraph 3 .19, what took 455 days to get
Others are comments, I mean I don't need to comment on it.
319 is where I want an answer.
What was going wrong there?
And then I have some comments on the appendices.
Okay, just in the interest of time,
is it, I think I'd rather you do all your feedback
so I can move on to other things and move us through.
On Appendix One, I noted that the southern
and western area generates more complaints
than other parts of the borough.
So is there an explanation?
and much of the learning is about communications really, in some ways, and so what are we doing
about that? Staff communications as well as contractors. Something about how do we hold
the contractor to account? Do they get penalized? Do they get dropped? Do they get taken to
task? And all of that. And I think on Appendix II I sort of talked about 18 ,000 people.
and the income compensation listed in there.
But on Appendix 3, the last item has a no.
This is on page 94.
So we are failing there and so I just would like
some comments on that.
That's my line.
Okay, thank you.
So yeah, so the questions I noted there
from Councilor Guindi were in relation to the 455 days
to determine in paragraph 3 .19
and perhaps what is particular about southern housing in terms of the number
of complaints and holding contractors to account. Okay so yes so passed to Nancy
and Tom at the top. So it was Nancy the officer of Council of India. Thank you. I can answer the
first question about the dates to determine that's relating to the housing
ombudsman and the length of time it's taken them to determine cases when
they've reached the housing ombudsman and I think it's trying to demonstrate
that they've had a backlog which has put pressure on us. So quite often we'll get cases that the
housing ombudsman have had for a while and we can sometimes be waiting for quite a long time
when they've done their investigation to get in the final findings from them.
Okay great thank you very much. On the point regarding southern team and we had
sort of post pandemic I suppose we had a lot of high staff turnover some staffing issues
particularly in Southern Area team,
they've now been addressed,
so I think performance has improved within that team,
and we're getting fewer complaints.
Sometimes you do find, though,
that the performance of an officer
and a resident being let down,
it takes some time to kind of feed through the system,
if you know what I mean, into them being let down,
getting around to making a complaint about it,
and then it going through stage one,
stage two, and housing ombudsman,
so there can be a bit of a lag
between us addressing an issue and then actually coming through as a housing ombudsman determination.
So it may already have been kind of resolved and addressed by the time we get that point.
And particularly as Nancy just said, sometimes it takes a very long time for
the housing ombudsman to kind of report back and determine their findings.
In relation to holding contractors to account, we don't necessarily have a mechanism within the contracts as they are at the moment to penalize them in relation to complaints.
but what I do is meet with them monthly and go through individual complaints where, you know,
they as a contractor have let the resident down, discuss those, and then work out what they can and should do to address that point.
So there is that sort of monthly monitoring in relation to complaints and discussion with contractors on those particular issues and cases.
Thank you.
And then capsule stocks next.
Page 94.
A bit where we say no instead of yes.
I think Councilor Gavindya is referring to the, of all the, yeah, page 94 and it's the
part of all the areas where we're meeting the complaints standard and then on the final
9 .8 page 94 it says that we're not meeting the standards which is landlords must have
a standard objective in relation to complaint handling for relevant employees.
I know there's an answer to this but.
So yeah I can answer that.
So that's one of the outstanding areas of the self -assessment that we're working on.
We're making good progress with it.
So that's a new, fairly new requirement of the complaints handling code that came in last year,
that landlords should have a standard objective in relation to complaints handling for all employees.
So the complexity for us is we've got a huge organization
where any officer working for the council could be somebody who's handling complaints.
So the complaints handling code applies for complaints across all services, not just housing, office and complaints.
So we're working with organizational development
to look at what that looks like in practice.
Is it realistic that we can put something
in appraisal objectives for every single employee?
Or is there another way we can approach that?
We're looking at potentially socialization
through training and development.
So yeah, it is outstanding, but it's work in progress.
So when we're setting the self -assessment this year,
we'll be explaining that we are making good progress
to finalizing that.
I appreciate you are a big organisation but we're no bigger than other councils.
Everyone has this challenge. How is everyone else doing?
And that's a good point and we have complaint forums with other complaint handling authorities and councils
and they're the kind of questions and discussions that we'll have together about how other councils are approaching challenges like this
and that's something that I'll raise.
Ravi, I think we are one of the biggest in the entire country, aren't we?
Because we have the shared staffing arrangement?
Well yes but we don't necessarily...
I think the staff... we can argue that somewhere.
Yeah but I think it's better that we are honest about the complexity than we pretend that we've got the...
Sorry with... yeah I think... thank you Councillor.
Councillor Stark you've been waiting patiently.
Thank you very much chair. No, no, no, that's what we're here for.
Thank you very much for the report. I think it's really helpful and just to touch on a theme that's come up a little bit more.
I do think we need to embrace this report and I'm glad in the new style of scrutiny this is still coming through
and I still think it should because I think it should inform our understanding of what's going on in the system
and even with a more aggressive housing ombudsman I think we have to embrace the learning from this
I know the report touches on the learning a little bit.
I think Mr Crawley, you even just,
all in one of your answers,
you brought out some more learning.
So I do wonder if in the future,
we could have a little bit more in this report
on those learnings, because I think that's really helpful.
This is not just about, you know,
a resident had a poor experience and it was dealt with,
and this is what happened for them.
I think it's that broader learning,
and I'd like to see kind of a bit more of that
in a future report.
And then I would also echo some of the concerns
about the, you know, a quarter of the complaints
being around staff error and attitude.
And I think that chimes with something that's come out of the focus group on repairs around
communication record keeping customer service it chimes with what and if I've heard from from residents, so
I don't know if there's any more that necessarily can be shared on that
Now or if you know, this is this is something that we do really need to drill into and what we're doing as a director
But whether this is something that kind of a street in committee. We want to look at a little more deeply because it does
yeah it does seem to be coming up in lots of different places I would say so
I wonder if there are any reflections on that more generally and whether it's
something that you know how are you taking it forward as officers as an
executive and how we might take it forward as a crew to me. Just on the
learning point so we should add that we now are sort of explaining what we've
in home life periodically.
So we'll kind of reflect on our complaints within that
and say, you know, these are the sorts of complaints
that can't, these are the themes,
and these are the things we put in place
to stop them happening again.
So that even if you're a resident
that hasn't made a complaint,
you're still kind of seeing how seriously
we're taking complaints and what we're doing
in response to them.
On the other issues, I mean, there's kind of a lot
to take in there, and it's difficult,
because it's difficult reading through all those complaints.
You know, it's not a nice experience, certainly,
as an officer who's in charge of those teams.
And certain ones I can think of, well I know it was a particular member of staff who was performing poorly and has subsequently left the council.
Sometimes I can see that it was a training issue and that's something that we've addressed.
So I suppose it's not an easy question to answer because there's lots of different kind of things at play in regards to those complaints.
And even though it's kind of described as staff attitude or behavior, yeah, often there's a lot more to it than that.
And sometimes those have already been dealt with those issues.
And I think it's linked to the repairs deep dive as well,
I think, because a lot of these complaints do relate to repairs.
And it's about how internally our teams are kind of set up to respond to those and
to communicate with residents effectively when there is an ongoing repair issue.
But then also how our contractors are performing and
how they're liaising with residents and serving them.
So I can't kind of give you a sort of quick and easy answer, I suppose.
But I can just reassure you that they're all issues that we're working on and
working to resolve and to improve the service as a whole.
Great, thank you.
I've seen Councillor Graham and then Councillor Ayres.
On transparency, I think one of the issues in this paper
has been the lack of, and so I welcome
what is being said in this meeting tonight
so that we can actually make a judgment,
back you up, scrutinize, and as we are a new,
in a new way of working, working in Tatham for the sake of our residents.
So I really support that 100%.
Thank you very much. Councillor Ayers.
Thank you, Chair. Mine was about your training.
We've spoken a lot about technical training.
I wondered as people are going in a team, our teams are going into people's homes,
This kind of, I think, touches slightly on what Dr Ravi was saying
about one person going in and sorting out all the problems.
Going into someone's home is a kind of invasive thing
and I wonder if they get training.
Do they get training in how not to point fingers
or do a double teapot or start whistling?
I mean, how to behave in someone else's home.
Do they get training in that?
They do, I mean, generally speaking, it's been officers shadowing other officers for
the first kind of two or three weeks of them being in the department and then learning
kind of on the job about how to behave in certain situations.
But as I kind of referred to earlier, I think, you know, there has been customer service
training in the past as well that's kind of dealt with those sort of issues, but we want
to do more customer service training this year and with, as I say, co -designed with
residents so you're kind of getting their point of view because there's
obviously kind of obvious customer service principles that we would want
officers to have but I think having residents viewpoint about what they want
from officers when they go into their home because you're right it's it's a
sort of for a lot of people it's an obvious thing how to behave when you go
into someone's property for some people it isn't and we want all officers to
behave obviously impeccably and to make sure that they're empathetic and that
they listen to residents and then that they act on their concerns.
For some people that comes less naturally you need to provide training
to make sure they do it. So that's what we have in mind and that's what we're
going to make sure all our frontline officers have over the next few months
and like I say residents are going to be involved in how we offer that.
Right, thank you very much and I think that's been a really constructive
discussion as part of that papers night. So on this one members are asked to
the report and to accept the self assessment including the actions
proposed for dealing with the learning from the past 12 months. Can I ask that
that is noted? Thank you very much. Okay moving on to item number seven we have

7 Housing OSC Outturn Report 2024/25 (Paper No.25-191)

got the housing OSE out term report for 2024 -2025 and we are going to have an
update on this from Sandra and Mark. Over to you.
Hello, I'm Sandra Burry, I'm the Assistant Director for Business Support and Finance
within Housing. I'm just going to give an introduction to this report, there's a lot
of detail. It details the General Fund revenue and the Housing Revenue accounts out -term
positions against budget for 24 -25 in relation to those services falling within the Committee's
terms of reference. The committee total unfortunately was an overspend of 5 .1
million in 24 -25. The general fund detail is shown on Appendix A but the
main drive for this overspend is related to the significant pressures relating to
the council statutory homelessness responsibilities as reported we've been
reporting this throughout the year. The HRA, the housing revenue account, we've got all
the detail in Appendix C and that shows the reserves reducing by 38 .9 million which was
lot more than budgeted. Again this is mainly due to one element which was the
additional one -off costs relating to the revised delivery and the arrangement
for Winstanley and York Road regeneration scheme and also the
continued, as has been previously discussed, the significant pressures on revenue
repairs and maintenance. So myself and my colleagues are happy to take questions.
Thank you very much. And we have Councillor Cornyn first online.
Yes, thank you very much. Just on that 5 .1 million overspend related to homelessness and
temporary accommodation. I have a question around the approach to rush sleeping and emergency
accommodation being addressed by the new homeless hub. I think this is the one on Lavender Hill,
right? And I know it's been sometimes controversial, but been a proposal that would
actually help address that. Could you give an update on how that would actually provide
a material improvement in the performance in this area? And secondly, just on the piece
around the reserves reduction being greater than expected by a tune of $24 .5 million,
this seems to me to speak to a wider issue that we've detected across the Council about
costs for capital programs being vastly underestimated and then we got a significant
overspend occurring later on. And it seems that we don't hear about that until the overspend is
really quite large and that you know there are issues related to this for example in the
Children's Directorate as well and Councillor Stock will recall our discussions at that committee
well. So about some of those issues. So could I ask for a kind of reaction to that? What
can we do to get these costs lower and get a better forecast of spending?
Thank you, Councillor Corner. I'm going to go to Mr. Worth for an answer on that one.
So thank you, Chair. Just to address your question around our sleeping Councillor, the
A point of clarification, the budget overspend referred to on homelessness in this paper
is the statutory homelessness, so the mainstream, what might be called the mainstream provision
rather than the specialist provision for our sleepers.
That aside, the hub is in its final stages of being built out at the moment.
We are hoping for handover and contractors offsite for early August, followed by a period of about a month when the staff will assemble, get used to the system, the building and so on and so forth,
with our first residents occupying Albeam Well early to mid -September.
So in the run -up to that, and we had a meeting with Councillor Dickerson and various colleagues yesterday,
We will be holding a further community engagement event and a panel meeting
towards the end of July to be arranged and confirmed.
And then in the run -up to our first residence arriving, we'll also be having the first of what we're going to call a sort of standing engagement forum.
So all that's looking good.
It will assist in a number of ways. In its most simple form it will give us 11 units of accommodation for people who are currently rough sleeping that we don't have at the moment.
So that's the practical thing. But beyond that, without going into huge detail, it will allow us to ensure the former homeless person is only telling their story once,
because it's a multidisciplinary team that will be working out of that hub.
And that we're going to use this thing which, the jargon is called the supra -outreach model,
whereby whoever is best placed to engage with, has the best relationship with the individual,
becomes their key worker.
And it doesn't matter what agency there is.
Too many times in the rough sleeping world, people are passed from one service to another
And understandably, they fall down between those handoffs.
So we're hoping, and time will tell, it will make a really strong contribution to how we tackle rough sleeping in the borough.
Great, thank you very much.
Councillors, were there any other questions?
Councillor Barath -Raj, Councillor Graham, Councillor Carina.
Thank you, Chair.
I had a question on the housing management overspend.
The main reason for this overspend is reported as increased graffiti.
So I think in comparison to the rest of the paper it almost seems that's something that we could avoid.
I know that the council has been promoting or encouraging residents to report more cases of graffiti to be removed.
So is this a case of where more residents are reporting graffiti rather than cases of increased graffiti coming up in the area?
And are we doing anything to kind of prevent graffiti from popping up in places in the first place?
So specifically if graffiti is coming up in same locations
or they're like hot spots, is there something that we can do
to prevent that from happening?
Thank you.
I'll address the reason for the overspend
between at quarter three we were reporting
that graffiti was coming in on budget
and unfortunately at our turn it came in nearly 100 ,000 over.
The team have reported that there was no increased
meterage of graffiti actually removed.
But we do feel that there were a backlog of orders that perhaps hadn't been processed.
That's why they weren't picked up in the forecast.
But the team are working to work to within budgets.
But it's something we have discussed with the Director of Finance in that if this is the true reflection of
the amount of graffiti in the borough that we need to remove, we will be trying to address the budget shortfall.
Thank you. Councillor Graham.
Thanks, Chair. I had a question on damp and mow, but I saved it to this paper,
and I hope it's the right paper. As regards to the scale 6 £40 ,000
pound cost that council put forward to the extra team of the mold plus an
administrator. That was going to be a saving of fifty thousand and then ten
thousand and then when we move to Paris 16 the represents an estimated saving
approximately 12 ,000 in seven months in large team has been in place and that is
20 ,000 but then when I move to para 20 it says at the end that the team has not
yet delivered the anticipated savings and the use of arc contractors to assist
So where does that stand in the savings as regards to dampen mould in this budget?
What's the reason?
What is the cause?
So when we expanded the dampen mould, the mould removal team,
We were comparing their capacity and ability to remove mold with the air repairs contractors
and the cost, the relative cost of each of them doing so.
And that calculation then led to an anticipated saving from expanding the mold removal team from two to six officers.
And that hasn't quite been met, the anticipated saving.
There's still a bit of a saving, but it's not as big as we thought it would be.
And that's because the mould removal officers, as I kind of alluded to earlier, they're often arriving in properties and the mould is more extensive than perhaps, you know, they're expecting it to be.
So it's taking them longer to remove mould and therefore the volume of orders and requests that they're processing is a bit lower than we thought it would be.
But the team's only been expanded since autumn, so I think they probably will get a bit quicker.
And if we encourage residents to report it earlier that will also increase the volume of requests they can they can process so it's
Something that I'll be able to report back on probably next year when we've had another kind of winter
They've been through and I can provide an update on mold generally
Arc charge 213 pounds
That's what how I read it and
And then in -house, now that you've gone in -house, is that the equivalent per household?
Or is that where you're saying that the complications which have arisen that is causing the non -saving?
Is it with me?
Yeah, the cost referred to is the average cost of the air repairs, contractors removing mould.
So it's an SOR code, a schedule of rates that's based on meterage, so it will vary for properties.
So you will have a property where it might cost a hundred pounds to remove the moulders there.
You have another one where it might cost, you know, eight hundred pounds.
It depends how extensive the mould is.
So that 213 is an average.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Chair.
Thank you. Moving to Councillor Govindia.
Thank you very much.
Just on the general fund aspects of this.
There's a figure for the warden service, overspend on the warden service, isn't there?
page 102 which says Warden Service watch and telecare. There's an overspend of 96 ,000.
Any explanation for that?
So in previous reports we've been picking up that watch service has a deficit on the DC income target.
Sorry, thank you. Sorry, did you hear?
So part of it is to do with the watch service and part of it is to do with charges for staff within the Joint Control Centre that are operating CCTV and monitoring.
and we have to do an internal exercise to recharge and tidy up these budgets and to fully recoup and show and reflect the costs in the correct budget area in the correct department.
So for example the teams are monitoring cameras that sit within ECS, they would benefit from the income etc.
So we just need to do a little exercise to tidy that.
So that was the reason for an additional overspend at year end.
Also within this area, we've got the watch and telecare.
Those services are transferring over to adults in 25, 26.
And the hope is there that with the new technology
that will be used, that they will be able to make
efficiencies within the running costs for the service
and to attract perhaps more clients
because it's more of attractive package.
On the telecare and what's more that, I mean there's some anxiety about when it
goes digital that there will be a lot of people with, will be locked out of the
system and in a sense, I don't know what we're doing about that.
I know that it's not a finance issue but it's a general thing.
And the other more general point is that we are probably, this department and this
Committee is probably stronger at managing budgets, although there are overspends habitually,
but nonetheless it's stronger at managing budgets.
And adult services habitually is not, and I'm just wondering what lies ahead in terms of budget management when it comes to that.
My name is Mark Davies, I'm the financial controller for housing regeneration.
I mean, as Ms. Barrie said, once it transfers over to adults, it will also be subject to
normal monitoring processes.
And I take your point about maybe past performance.
But, you know, hopefully going forward, focusing specifically on this area, they can drive
the efficiencies on their running costs and increase the client base as well.
So, you know, hopefully what we're seeing in other areas across adults isn't repeated
on this little niche area.
Just one more on that area of things.
The homelessness cost is obviously the big drag on the general fund cost.
But I see that the family housing or the family cases, homeless cases,
are the most difficult to house and most expensive to house, temporarily or otherwise.
How is our housing stock coming into the pipeline of housing stock
reflecting this particular pressure and are the units being delivered in the future
going to be more family orientated or are we going for two bedroom ones?
I know there will be an argument about trickle down and all of that stuff,
but frankly it's not worth the paper it's written on because the papers say somewhere here
that downsizing hasn't really delivered the outcomes we want.
Thanks.
Councillor Carindji, we're going to come back down to this end of the table for an answer.
On that specific point, so in our section 106 negotiations now, we are really, really
honing in on family units, more bedroom sizes.
If a developer is chasing units, we say we'll count by bedroom.
The number of units is not relevant to us.
So it's an absolute priority.
And I think I'm glad you raised it about the us often leaning too hard on the underoccupation
We try, we will continue to try, we offer the money, but the best thing we can do is
build three and four bedroom units.
Yeah, so our own pipeline, again, some of the schemes where there is a criticism on
the three and four bedroom units are your schemes that were the ones for sale that we
flipped.
So...
You are able to change them.
You've been two years.
No, no, no.
You can do it.
No, we couldn't because...
If you take a clip like Randall, Randall Close,
to redesign, go back to planning, restart,
we thought it was better to deliver.
So there are some schemes where it's not perfect,
but the ones that we've had more control over,
we think we're getting a better number of family units.
And that's not to attack you
because they were being built for sale.
So that makes sense why they were single bedroom units.
But for our own program, yeah.
You could have done it because you did, in fact,
have a planning application to change
the Randall Close tenure.
So you could have done that.
More importantly, what's coming through the pipeline in Alton?
Because are we going for more family units in Alton?
100%.
And in a sense, what is the balance between family units and single person?
I mean, the gold standard, and this is, you know, I'm going to be a bit nicer now, is
Broad Mansions.
You know, Broad Mansions, you have a six bedroom, 10 person unit designed for a specific, that
is the gold standard.
And that is what we need more of.
Thank you.
And Mr. Worth.
Just on the point of the underoccupation stuff, as you raised it, there's a paper going to
Cabinet next month.
It's the annual resources report equivalent that would have previously come to this committee
in June.
In that, it reports that last year we made nearly 200 offers to underoccupying households,
and we had at year -end, from memory, 89 successful moves with 15 offers that had been accepted
but not yet occupied, which conveniently is exactly the forecast we set.
That paper will see an increase in the target for this year.
So the investment that was made a few years ago in expanding the underoccupation team
is paying off.
Those numbers have gone up by over 200 % in the last couple of years, and we're looking
to build further.
I see some wages paid, but I'm sorry, Chair.
If you can point –
I'll take the eyes.
We'll come into it.
Okay.
Yeah, that's noted.
Okay.
Councillor Stuck for the last one on this paper. Thank you chair. Just a question on the increased costs of repairs.
Just to understand a little bit more about whether we're seeing more repairs
or the costs of the repairs themselves are increasing in cost if you see what I mean.
Is it the number of units? Is it the number of units or the cost per unit?
And if it does if it is both and includes the cost per unit just I am
I'm interested just in the actions that we're taking to try and reduce the unit cost of
repairs, whether it's kind of, you know, trying to search for kind of economies of scales
or contracting together with other councils, working with our direct services team, just
on how we can, what else we're doing to reduce the cost of that.
I think there's a few factors to explain it.
I mean, one relates to obviously, you know, inflation that we've seen over the last few
and the uplifts that we had to grant to our existing air repairs contractors.
But we've also been doing far more fire safety work, for example, than we've ever done before.
So making sure the front doors are compliant, so that's more orders and more cost.
And obviously, damp and mold works as well.
Mold removal is only one part of that.
There's also going into, as I sort of referred to before,
improving the ventilation and heating systems.
So positive input ventilation system, we probably three years ago, if you'd ask me,
we hardly installed any of those at all, only in very exceptional circumstances.
Now it's becoming far more standard that we would install those in someone's home,
where there's a condensation related mold issue.
And Councilor Kavinda kind of alluded to disrepair, legal claims.
So there's obviously a cost associated with the claim being made.
But in addition to that, we would agree works with the claimant and their solicitor to undertake in the property.
And I think those claims probably are leading us to do more work than we probably have done before within homes.
So it is both more orders and probably more cost associated with those orders.
To tackle those issues, I mean some of them are things that we obviously have to do,
we're statutorily obliged to do and we want to do to improve people's homes and their living environment
And we'll continue to do so something like fire safety works and front doors
There's probably a bit of a sort of hump in terms of the spend. So we started those annual front door inspections in
2020
2 -3 and
We're obviously gone through, you know undertaking all those raised the subsequent orders
So there should be a slight fall in that that expenditure
And I think the same will probably apply to Dampenmold to an extent as well because we've gone into a lot of the properties where
it was kind of a big issue and we've put in the measures to help prevent it from coming back, but
you know, the spend will still be higher than it has been historically in those areas
I think and there's only so much that we can do to resolve that.
I mean part of the repairs deep dive will be looking at costs in more detail and
how we can potentially make savings either in terms of
how we're set up internally or how we procure contracts and work with our contractors.
Thank you very much. I don't think there were any other questions.
Thank you, Councillors and thank you, Officers. That report is noted for information.
Moving on then to the penultimate item on tonight's agenda, which you'll be relieved to know,
you're doing very well in the heat. So to take you through to the last one is the

8 Wandsworth Corporate Plan actions and KPIs - End Year 2024/25 Report (Paper No.25-192)

corporate or penultimate one for officers is the One's Earth corporate plan actions and KPIs.
So we're going to have a short update from Miss Jingliska. I've said that correctly,
I'm sorry if I butchered your name. Thank you very much. So this is a report that comes to
this overview and scrutiny committee at this time every year. It sets out the end year 24 -25
progress updates on the agreed corporate plan actions, as well as the year -end results of
the agreed key performance indicators, both that fall within this Committee's remit.
So in Appendix A, you will have the details of the progress made against a wide range
of actions, and in Appendix B, you have, it sets out the end -year KPI performance, key
indicator performance against target as well as the direction of travel compared
to the same period in the previous year.
Thank you very much. Do we have any questions? Councillor Stock. I just
wanted to say to Mr. Werth I had a question just for an update on the rough
I think that was really comprehensive and I'm really interested to hear some more about
the super outreach model that I was also going to ask about that and the detail that you
gave just before I found a really interesting and entirely right approach in terms of choosing
the right agency to work with vulnerable, vulnerable adults.
So thank you very much for that update.
I look forward to it opening.
Thank you, Councillor Stuc.
Councillor Cornyn.
Thank you, Chair.
Just on that point around the hub,
it has been quite controversial locally.
So I'd be interested to know in how
the Council is addressing the concerns of residents around the pub.
I know that there have been some justifications made for the last position of the hub.
But how are we making sure that there won't be any disruption to the community for this
service, which I think everyone would agree on.
On the, sorry, Councillor Corning, you've got this, there's something playing in the
background wherever you are.
That's I don't know if you can mute it or we've got some background interference there.
I cannot mute it, but I'll just talk louder.
It's related to the net zero target.
It seems like it's very late. We're meant to be getting to net zero by 2030, but we still don't have a plan.
Could the officers please give reassurance on that?
It seems very unlikely and unrealistic to suggest that we can still make that target by 2030.
Okay, thank you. So that was a question on community impacts around the Rough Sleeper Hub that we've previously mentioned and the net zero target.
I can jump in on the hub.
On the hub, we've set up a kind of neighborhood kind of committee, I guess, forum, which I
chair and after a year I'll hand over to a resident that would like to chair it.
We're going to have one, we recently agreed, I think did we say we're going to have one
early August ahead of possible physical opening of the center in late August.
Then as the service starts up, people start to use the service, we'll have another residence
forum to see how that's going.
And then we said we'd meet, I think it was four times a year, was that?
Yeah, at least four times a year.
That will involve tours, meeting staff, and just so that residents feel they have ownership
and they can bring things up.
We've had a number of different public meetings on the matter.
I think we're in a good place on it.
Because of some of the delays in terms of the building
opening, I know we were meant to have,
they thought the building would open in March
and now it's opening in August.
So the next meeting will be a kind of update saying,
right, this is when we think it will happen
and then planning from there.
So I genuinely think we're in a good place on it.
You know, compared to where we were say a year ago
and I think residents were a bit nervous
but I think we're in a good place.
Thank you and sorry sorry before you move on there was a question on the net
zero target as well. I don't know if any of that oh yeah and I believe that must
be on them page 9 where is referring to the action about aligning and
integrating decarbonisation work within the council's emerging asset strategy
new leisure strategy to support the Council becoming carbon neutral by 2030.
I don't have any more detail apart from what's already included in here about the work that's
ongoing in the property service environment and community services to align the decarbonisation
strategy and leisure strategy, but I can find out some more detail that supports that action
and feed that back to Councillor Corner.
Thank you, that would be very much appreciated and thank you for that input.
I think it's all Councillor Graham next and then Councillor Govindia.
Thank you. I think the idea of the hub is very exciting.
I think I would very much like to see how it works because it could tie with food banks
and all kinds of areas where we have these issues.
I've got somebody already I'm dealing with.
But my question is, it is in such position,
it'll become pan London.
Will the mayor pay for this, or will it come from our money?
So most of the cost of the costs are coming from central government
grant direct to the council through a couple of years ago. It's
exclusive for the use of Wandsworth enrichment. It's a joint scheme. It's not
pan -london, so Lambeth and any other, all those other 30 boroughs cannot place
there. They can't nick it. So what you're saying is it will be paid for by the GLA
and but where do we manned by us yes so the setup funding and some revenue
funding is coming from MH CLG residents will be charged a rent and occupancy
charge whatever we call it and that will help run fund the ongoing revenue costs
So yeah. Thank you. Councillor Govindia. Thank you. The home purchase grant shortfall of the KPIs.
Sorry I'm struggling to hear you Councillor Govindia. Can you move the microphone a bit closer?
The home purchase grant on page one to five. The shortfall there is explained by saying the mortgage
in the market, but the mortgage rate's been coming down since August, so I'm kind of trying to understand
which mortgage rates are we talking about, and whilst I have the microphone, and I also ask about
the, on page 120, this is about the London Council's retrofit bid. That was, bid was for 225 properties.
That was cut down to 50 % and our new allocation is 77 instead of half of 225.
So why are we being shortchanged there?
Is there kind of an explanation for that?
I think I should.
Hi.
On the house purchase grants, that's the information I've had fed back to me from the Housing Initiative
team is it's in relation to high mortgage rates, making financing more expensive and
reducing overall affordability. I think they predict that this year due to falling rates
they expect the numbers to increase again. So I think it is just in relation to affordability.
On that grant, the warm homes bid, so we were part of a London consortium bid, so that was
other London councils we bid and that enabled all councils to club together to bid so each bid didn't have to be that big to make a big number.
So as a consortium we got 50 % and they've divvied that up and we've got allocated 77 out of that.
So it isn't strictly 50 % but it's 50 % of the overall bid for London consortium so that's why it's not quite worked out 50 % for us.
but I think also depending on the speed in which different local authorities carry out the works,
we may be in a position where we could retrofit more properties.
I understand that, sorry, I mean I understand that.
We bid for 225, that was 50 % of the London Council's bid, that bid was cut down
and I just feel that 77 does not give us 50 % of the revised lower figure.
Now, it may be, that's, you know, take it and leave it, but I just would like to know,
how are we being short -changed?
I can provide more detail on that, Councillor Windier.
Thank you very much, Councillor Graham.
Thank you, it's actually page 117.
We haven't talked much about leaseholders this evening and leaseholders are have, we've
got about 15 ,000 in our borough and as you know as councillors the actual bills for major
works is horrific and that's been very, very hard for many of the leaseholders trying to
A, pay for it, but also understanding what is going on.
So how you've got 15 ,000 leaseholders,
so you're going to have a meeting with housing and finance,
especially as regards to transparency.
How are you actually going to, A, start it, because June's nearly over,
and with two and a half, three years into a completion of an administration.
You know, 24 ,000 pounds for a roof of the Henry Prince,
that's an awful amount of money.
And a lot of people also, can I just say,
when they actually buy their property,
there needs to be a clearer information
as regards to what the responsibilities are
and that's something else which...
I would like to raise because I know that's a problem.
So the Leasehold Steering Group was established a while back and has met once and it's now due to
meet again with a presentation on consultation over major works and service contracts and we're
trying to establish some dates at the moment with members of the group. The group can look at what
it wants and I think we'll be consulting them on the new service charge system that we're
going to procure.
New services, what's that you're trying to procure?
We're going to procure a new service charge system.
Okay.
We're operating on one that's from the 90s so we need to.
Yes, it's dinosaur.
So the Director of Finance will be leading on that.
Sorry, what was the other point you made about?
Well, I just want to know how you are actually going to manage it and also it would be interesting
to hear from Mr. Crooknow who is actually on the forum, how have you been able to select
residents who, well, leaseholders who… Well, we had two nominations from each area
panel, so we've got eight and I think we want one reserved.
Okay, so two from the area panels. And I facilitate the meeting, but it's
leasehold run and we will administer it but it's only been up and running and it will
meet on an ad hoc basis as issues occur.
So another area we're looking at is the information provided to leaseholders in their annual service
charge billing.
I agree.
How that looks.
Yeah.
Yes, we could look at pre -enzyme inquiries but we have a very well established procedure
regarding releasing information to potential leaseholders so they know they come into the
into the borough knowing how much they're going to have to spend on major works over
the next five years.
But everything's up for grabs really.
We can look at anything we want.
Would you have a comment?
The only comment is, as I stressed in the Bureau, I just want to get this focus group
going again.
And it can be very ad hoc and it could be one subject matter expert to do it.
And, you know, yeah, leaseholders, the first meeting was, I think, seven months ago, or,
yeah, seven months ago, so I think people are just, you want to get this thing going.
And I think we'd be pretty agreeable to the topics and when we're actually in the sessions
to stress that it's informational and be respectful.
So it doesn't have to dominate a lot of,
I know you have one person lined up,
and yeah, so we'd like to get a couple more
probably scheduled and that would alleviate
a lot of people's concern.
Thank you very much.
You said that when we went to the conference,
get one in the diary, we've got to get one in the diary.
Yeah, yeah.
Thank you councillors. Were there any other comments on that paper?
No, just to finish up, and as it's my first meeting I think I'm quite selfishly going to point out one on page 114,
which is improving conditions for those in temporary accommodation, including works at Nightingale Square and Carney Lodge,
which is in my ward. I was delighted this year that actually, you know, after years of asking for laundry facilities to be included there,
where for years the largely single mums who were there,
not exclusively but largely,
had to trek to expensive launderettes each week
to know that we all know how expensive they are.
So just really grateful for the work
that has taken place there
and for the visits that have taken place.
I know there've been deputations at this committee
from residents of Nightingale Square and Carney Lodge,
so really just pleased to see that work
that's taking place to make life easier
for those who really don't have a lot of money, so thank you.
So yeah, so a selfish end to that for me, but thank you.
So I think the corporate plan is submitted for information
and no decision, so thank you for that,
which moves us onto the final item of tonight's meeting,
which is the Housing OSC Work Programme.

9 Housing OSC Work Programme (Paper No.25-193)

So on this one, I'm asked that the committee,
to note that the committee work programme,
including the addition of the working group,
to consider the regulator of social housing's report and the approach to developing it further.
As part of that work and as we've noted there'll be the meeting on the 7th of July in the diary
where we can discuss items and welcome suggestions for possible topics for that meeting. We can take some tonight
but there's not a lot of time to discuss those in depth and really want to use that meeting for those discussions.
And so yeah, we welcome
and obviously Councillor Davies as chair of the committee welcomes suggestions for that
and she's not here tonight so conscious of not trying to step on her toes on that.
But what we can discuss further in the work programming session that we're going to hold
on the 7th of July.
As I say, I don't intend at this hour to get into long discussions on that but if anyone
has any quick fire suggestions that they want to include, but obviously we've got the date
which has been put in kindly now, or sent round by Mr Kelly, that we can discuss there.
I'm just wondering if there are any comments.
I accept the lateness of the hour.
I just want to shed on Appendix 1.
I just want to, this is effective in advance notice of papers that will come to this committee.
And what I find missing in here is rent setting.
Presumably there is a paper on rent setting and there is presumably paper on the committee's budget for going forward.
I mean that usually comes in the January cycle, so I don't know where those are.
Hi Councillor. I believe those papers will be cabinet papers rather than scrutiny papers.
The appendix one, as it is written now, it's just a snapshot of the report that we already are expecting to come to the committee.
You can meet further on the 7th and discuss items that you would like to be added to that.
So, I mean, I guess if the committee...
Basically, if on the 7th you suggest to me,
I would like this rather than going to cabinet to be brought to than that.
Let's go for it.
I'm not going to hide rent setting from you guys.
Absolutely. I just think that in some ways, this is something for the administrators to work with.
It is this committee's responsibility to interface with the tenants and the biggest cost on the tenants purse is the rent.
and we are not going to take part in those discussions, irrespective of whether we can change the outcome or not,
if we are not taking part in those discussions, then what are we here for?
Thank you. And note that feedback, Councillor Givindji.
Okay. Were there any other suggestions or comments people want to make?
Perfect. Thank you. So noted and thank you to Mr Kelly for sending that round.
Thank you councillors for treating me kindly for my first meeting of tonight's housing committee.
The only one, the only I see that I've not been on in my seven years on the council.
So I'm glad that you all treated me kindly this evening and dealt well with the heat.
So thank you all very much and good night.