Agenda and draft minutes

To agree the minutes of the meeting held on 16 September 2015 which can be viewed at:

http://www.dacorum.gov.uk/docs/default-source/council-democracy/minutes-(pdf-15kb).pdf?sfvrsn=2

The meeting began at: 7:35pm.

Before the meeting begun Cllr Mahmood introduced Cllr Guest who was attending in regards to item number 7.

Cllr Mahmood asked for Portfolio Holders to send their apologies if they are unable to attend the meeting.

The minutes of the Housing and Community OSC meeting on 16 September 2015 were agreed by members and signed by the Chair.

To receive any apologies for absence

Apologies received from Cllr Mclean, Cllr Banks, and Cllr Timmis and Co–Opted TLC Members Howard and Horn.

Councillor Howard substituted for Councillor Banks.

To receive any declarations of interest

A member with a disclosable pecuniary interest or a personal interest in a matter who attends a meeting of the authority at which the matter is considered -

(i)            must disclose the interest at the start of the meeting or when the interest becomes apparent

and, if the interest is a disclosable pecuniary interest, or a personal interest which is also prejudicial

(ii)           may not participate in any discussion or vote on the matter (and must withdraw to the public seating area) unless they have been granted a dispensation.

A member who discloses at a meeting a disclosable pecuniary interest which is not registered in the Members’ Register of Interests, or is not the subject of a pending notification, must notify the Monitoring Officer of the interest within 28 days of the disclosure.

Disclosable pecuniary interests, personal and prejudicial interests are defined in Part 2 of the Code of Conduct For Members

[If a member is in any doubt as to whether they have an interest which should be declared they should seek the advice of the Monitoring Officer before the start of the meeting]

Cllr Guest was here to present on item 7 she presented a declared and interest as she is Dacorum’s Representative on Drug Link Rep, Cllr Howard also declared that she sits on the CAD board.

An opportunity for members of the public to make statements or ask questions in accordance with the rules as to public participation

There was no public participation.

None

S Baker introduced Claire Lynch, who is the Community Partnership Team Lead and is heavily involved in the project and the author of the report.

Later this month, Cabinet will be receiving a report seeking their approval to replace the current core funding arrangements. The new processes are what we call outcome based commissioning. We currently have 10 locally based Strategic Partners these are listed in the report and receive annual grant funding to deliver a range of services for Dacorum residents.

The agreements don’t focus on what the outcomes or benefits are for the residents of Dacorum or the Council and the agreements themselves are not contracts and therefore are not enforceable.

This Council has agreed that the grant funding for the Strategic Partners would cease after this financial year and from 1^st April 2016 it will be replaced by an outcome based commissioning model.

Members should note that the advantage of the commissioning approach is that the actual needs of Dacorum residents are assessed using the best available evidence. The Finance and Resources Overview and Scrutiny received a similar report to this last week and their comments have been incorporated in the Cabinet report. Clearly it’s too late for your comments to be incorporated in the Cabinet report so we will record any comments made and verbally relay them to the Cabinet Meeting so Cabinet can take into account your views when they make their decision.

Cllr Hearn asked if this had been discussed with the voluntary sector and what was their feedback?

S Baker said yes there has been two rounds of consultations with the Strategic Partners Claire has been to the consultation meetings and she will brief you on it.

C Lynch presented the report explaining they are moving to an outcome based commissioning model. This is in line with Cabinet office good practice. It is a four stage process, analyse, plan, do and review, and at the minute they have gone through the analyse stage. There have been two stages of consultation; the first stage was a survey that went out to users and face to face meetings with Strategic Partners, a survey and conversations with internal staff was also carried out. Once they had a better understanding they then moved onto stage two consultation where they started to develop some of the outcomes that they wanted to see for each service.

There have been  two CMT and Cabinet Member joint workshops to set the direction, group the services into contracts and shape outcomes.

What we are proposing is that the funding from the existing ten organisations that are funded through the Strategic Partner Programme is used to fund seven services that are based on evidence.

We are now in stage two consultations until 6^th November and we have had requests from two services to have an additional stage three consultation (Living Stable Live – previously the Druglink and DENS grant funding/ Preventing Relationship Breakdown – previously Mediation Hertfordshire and Relate Dacorum, Watford  ...  view the full minutes text for item 36.

Cllr Guest announced that she requested this report to come to overview and scrutiny because she had had an issue in her ward.

The mother had not assigned her house to her son and then lost capacity and then her son had his tenancy removed by DBC.

Cllr Guest said we need to have a policy for when someone loses their capacity, she asked if Power of Eternity entitles someone else to assign the house to them?

Cllr Mahmood asked the office to present the report before questions were asked.

A Vincent said yes it’s a complicated area of the housing law it relates to assignments and successions and he differentiated the two.

Successions and assignments can only happen once, this causes some difficulty when that has been used up.

A Vincent said that assignments can only happen once they have exceptions and can make some discretion.

There is a statutory succession if the property is correct for the remaining household that would be ok but if there was an issue with the size of the property there is no legal right for a person to succeed the tenancy.

We then make a judgment as to whether they move to a smaller property or if they have any duty at all to house someone.

Cllr Mahmood said you can’t make someone homeless can you?

A Vincent said they could make people homeless what they wouldn’t do is make someone who they consider is statutory homeless. Statutory duty, for example would a house hold with children, where as a single women or man they would not be considered as statutory so therefore they could be made homeless.

Cllr Mahmood raised an issue; if someone is homeless they come to the Council anyway!

A Vincent said yes but it doesn’t mean we house them, it’s only if they have a priority need.

Cllr Imarni also said that she knew of someone in the Hemel area who has lived in a DBC property for 20years with their mother and they were told that they can’t be added to the property tenancy so if the situation then turned out like Cllr Guests there was no ability to transfer the tenancy.

A Vincent gave an example of survivorship and that would then equal to one statutory right, which would then use it up. Children do not have a statutory right; this is not good practice however the son would have a statutory right if anything happened to the mother.

Cllr Mahmood referred to 2.1 from March 2012 it says things have changed, is that what you are telling us now about children?

A Vincent said if the tenancy is older than 2012 then the tenancy right will be obtained if it’s newer than that then children don’t have a statutory right in law.

N Harden added to that it’s a Localism Act 2011 section 160.

Cllr Mahmood said you talked about 3 types of tenancies, secure, flexible and introductory. Could you please explain?

 A Vincent  ...  view the full minutes text for item 37.

J Still presented this report and apologised for the structure of the report as she had been on annual leave later than anticipated.

J Still gave a very brief overview of the events in February in Highfield. The event was very well received by residents and had some really great outcomes and some individual stories from residents.

A resident got work experience from it; someone had got a full time job, and managed to get off benefits. People benefitted from the healthy eating programmes and it has had an impact on families.

The event in Tring was also very successful.

Moving forward they are going to target certain areas that flag up red alert, Adeyfield’s event will be next in April. It’s not about DBC delivering it all it’s about facilitating and working with agencies to deliver.

J Still was happy to take questions from Members

Cllr Wyatt-Lowe had a question on funding, how do we get funding from outside for what we do he believes it should come from HCC and the CCG’s at future events. Secondly he said that too much reliance is currently placed on Councillors. While it is appropriate for

Councillors to turn up to events in their areas, those events should not be impeded if Councillors are unable to be present.

. Cllr Wyatt-Lowe also put forward a question to the Portfolio Holder, strangely the text doesn’t talk about plans, futures and lessons learnt, could you tell me how far the funding can run in the next year and if you will be looking for more.

N Harden said that the neighbourhood action team and the rest of the services as a whole are doing it from the resources that they carry out with other departments, in the past it’s a case of neighbourhood action groups were set up, this funding that does that has been restructured and that’s where Love your Neighbourhood comes from we will be targeting what is needed in that community.

J Still added have had offers from Thriving Families who have offered to help

with the Tring event 37 older people attended and 31 of those signed up to different clubs it’s about the outcome in changing lives.

Cllr Conway said the comments have been fantastic and she attended the Tring even and said it was very successful.

Cllr Link went to the Highfield ones on a few occasions was really good for the community and got to see people she wouldn’t normally see.

Cllr Mahmood highlighted that there was a section that was blank in the report.

J Still apologised, the report is only a draft and still to be completed.

Cllr Mahmood asked if they could have plans of what’s going on so they can benefit from the plans.

J Still to send an email to the committee with future plans.

Cllr Mahmood asked how it was publicised.

J Still said they do everything they can do, letters in school bags. The local paper, hand delivered letters, posters  ...  view the full minutes text for item 38.

F Williamson presented the Interim report for Gas Installation and Servicing to give the committee an update of the progress, they last reported to Overview and Scrutiny in January This report includes the financial statement. The figures from the final audit on Osborne haven’t been included because there subject to some further clarification, once this has been finalised the committee will be updated.

F Williamson briefed the committee on some key things, Gas servicing compliance has remained high and the installation programme is resulting in a reduced number of CAT 1 breakdowns where a boiler fails and requires immediate replacement. Please note the CAT1 breakdowns in the report should read 120 year to date, the 29 figure in the report relates to April only

Osbornes they are getting involved it youth projects and apprenticeships and have created 17 new jobs and 6 apprenticeships.

The performance within the contract, they have seen Osbornes turn around 79 properties since the start of their contract in the same day as part of the empty homes project; this was done in partnership with the Housing Management Team, this has created a net increase in revenue.

There are details of the planned works programmes that are being delivered to date, currently they are on target to get front and back external doors replaced in the next financial year. The customer satisfaction graph remains high.

As a result of the year-end review which was taken in conjunction with the partner advisor the key strategic indicators were reviewed for Osborne’s compliance with those. As a result of the year-end review which was in conjunction with the partner advisor they need to have 100% of the performance indicators met for a minimum of 9 months of the year, they only had 9 months of the first year’s period anyway and they were reviewed on a minimum level of acceptable performance which meant they lost 0.8% of their performance related profit. In terms of their overall performance the partner had advised, whilst they hadn’t achieved 100% they had achieved a sufficient minimum level for compliance.

F Williamson was happy to take questions.

Cllr Wyatt-Lowe asked to what extent did Osborne’s write the report.

F Williamson said the year-end report was drafted by herself and the Partnering Advisor, the community initiative is Osbornes material that they have provided and the information has been validated.

Cllr Imarni asked how they would address the situation if one of the contractors were to slip what would happen as the partnership is so close.

F Williamson said if we did feel that anything did slip or was to fail or had failed then they wouldn’t be granted another year.

Cllr Mahmood said AM is stated in the appendices, who is AM?

Am should be TAM and apologised for the formatting.

Cllr Mahmood asked who Wimal was.

F Williamson replied he is the Commercial Relationship Surveyor who has commercial Quantity Surveying background and worked both on the consultant side and with a number of contractors.  ...  view the full minutes text for item 39.

Agreed