Agenda item

The Group considered a comprehensive report from the circulated agenda, presented by James Barrah (Director of Housing and Communities), Chris Brown (Assistant Director-Development and Regeneration), Ian Candlish (Assistant Director – Housing Property), Simon Lewis (Assistant Director- Housing and Community Development), Shari Hallett (Housing Performance Manager) and Adam Evans (Compliance Manager).

James Barrah welcomed the new members to the group. He stated that the Group had a busy year ahead with plenty of matters being brought to them for their consideration.

Comments/ questions by the group included (responses in italic);

·       Were there any delays to any of the building projects that the Council would be commencing due to the delay of building materials? This was a challenging time but we were pleased that the Seaward Way project has a fixed price so that gave us a bit of comfort regarding an increasement of the prices of materials. North Taunton had been a challenge due to the risks being costed into the proposal.

·       The Internet Audit came out as reasonable. Were we going to increase the work being done to good or great? The internal Audit was based on compliance, governance, and reporting processes. All our systems and data were looked at and how we were progressing and reporting our programmes to make sure that they were safe;

·       On the Capital Programme report, it stated that there a was a charge for Water main replacement works was this the responsibility of the Council to replace? If the water main was on our land it be our area of responsibility unless it is of the shared element;

·       Concerns that the delays to responsive repair works meant that we could possibly spend more money to fix these repairs. During the Covid Lockdown period we were keeping a log of what works being requested. This was being monitored by the team to make sure that there was nothing that could cause an issue and if that was the case it would have been inspected. This was being reviewed regularly to get the repairs and back log down;

·       With regards to mutual exchanges and void properties. Lettings were now dealing more in line with the OT’s. Would this mean that void properties would now be allocated to the correct tenants, i.e. disabled tenants being moved into properties that already had adaptations to meet their needs? The Aids and Adaptions Policy was being looked at to get this approved as a policy. A bit part of that was that we properly advertised our properties particularly those with adaptations to ensure that the correct tenants were housed. The Home finder System now included notes from Doctors or Health Care providers with the latest information;

·       With regards to the Firepool development, did we as a Council have a stake in the accommodation property development? As a council we did but the site was owned by the General Fund as opposed to being Housing land. The new approach was for the Council to take a master plan with the developer. This had been divided up into differing sections. More discussions would need to be had with regards to Affordable Housing when this comes forward in the scheme;