Agenda item

The group discussed the Directorate Report item in the agenda pack. Presented by James Barrah (Director of Housing and Communities), Ian Candlish (Assistant Director- Housing Property), Chris Brown (Assistant Director – Development and Regeneration) and Simon Lewis (Assistant Director – Housing and Community Development)

Comments/questions from the group members included;

·       With regards to the Government subsidy for the single homelessness issue, did this include converting commercial units? what was our strategy for bring empty properties back into use? We were asking for a grant from Homes England to match some funding from the general fund to purchase from the market 6 units but we also do want to use 6 existing single bedroom Council homes and dedicate these for use of the single homeless. Environmental Health dealt with empty properties and there were usually issues why these properties were vacant. As a Housing Service do not have much of a strategy for this;

·       What were the plans for retrofit works in the future? There was a programme running to replace existing electrical heating systems with Air source heat pumps. Unfortunately, we have had a high level of refusals on this, but we are encouraging tenants to take this up:

·       Would the Capital Works be completed in this Financial Year? Unfortunately, due to Covid etc, some works would go into the next Financial Year;

·       There were concerns from a tenant with the level of enforcement from the Compliance Team to keep the Communal areas of flats clear. Was this because of the Glenfel incident? We have a zero-tolerance approach to keep tenants safe and allow the Emergency Services to evacuate the tenants safely. You are encouraged to speak to your Housing Officer or a member of the Compliance team with regards to any issues that arise;

·       Concerns that there was one rule for flats and one rule for houses regarding the zero-tolerance approach for putting rubbish bins outside of your front door. A member of the Compliance team would come out to access this issue;

·       Concerns that there was no time frame from the estates walkabout once an issue had been reported with regards to a property. A report would be written up by the Estates Officer and actions taken and rectified as per the Tenancy Agreement;

·       Extra staff was needed to reduce the time scales for getting people to court for ASB. This was causing misery to tenants who had to endure this for months on end; The process took a while as we needed to produce evidence to the Judge that we had taken every opportunity for the issues to be resolved. We also needed to show the Judge that we had given the tenant every opportunity with help and support to change their behaviour before the tenant/family were evicted from their property;

·       Did the Council work with other organisations to help tenants that were struggling with ASB’s due to their children being the source of this behaviour? We link in with other agencies and if this went to court for possession of a property the Judge would expect us to have done this as it is good Housing management;

·       What happened if the source of ASB was a private tenant? This would be difficult to influence on properties that we did not own. We could engage with the tenant write to their Landlord;

·       How were we going to evaluate how good the recent Customer Service training had been? We had undertaken a mystery shopper exercise prior to the customer training exercise taking place and we would undertake this again once the training had finished. It should be noted that only eight members of the Customer Services team had been identified to undertake this training with the remainder not trained on Housing;

·       The Universal Credit top up of £20 per week would shortly cease. Do you anticipate that tenants arrears would increase? This would have an impact on some households. Communications had been sent out to all our tenants that were on Universal Credit to warn them that that this would be stopped shortly by Government, and to say that we were here to help and to contact our Debt Adviser Officers should they need support;

Resolved that the report be noted.