Agenda item

F Williamson presented the HRA Business Plan report and asked Members if they had any questions.

Cllr Freedman queried the number of new units for the Borough and how many people would benefit, will they be two person units or family units.  F Williamson replied that the 280 units are not even at design stage at the moment.  We constantly monitor the demand from allocations team in respect of the people that are on the active housing register, we also take regard for affordable units that are being delivered by registered providers in the area, to make sure that there isn’t an over provision of one particular unit type.  The only ones that we have detail on are the ones that are currently in the pipeline.

Cllr Freedman mentioned that given the amount that’s been borrowed for these units, looking at those requirements that you’ve seen so far and your expertise in the area of how much these things costs, would you be able to give a rough figure in terms of the amount of people we would expect, what I’m trying to work out is are we talking 280 retirement units or are we talking 280 family units.  Most people will understand the amount of people that will be housed rather than units.  F Williamson confirmed that we don’t have that level detail in the Business Plan at the moment, what we do have is some ongoing work around supply and demand, so you mentioned sheltered schemes and supported housing units and there is a piece of work that is ongoing around looking at supply and demand within that particular area.  All of our development pipeline is focussing on general needs properties and that is based on a mix of single person units, through to three bed family homes.  We still have a relatively low demand for four and five bed properties and we do have enough within the stock and allowing for another project that we are working, which is moving to properties of a more suitable size for households to try and ensure that we have a suitable number of properties for the demand that’s out there.

Cllr Freedman said thank you very and that he was very glad to see that the council seized on being able to access more funds and build more, that’s certainly what we should be doing.

Cllr Barry noticed on P5 on 4.1.5 upgrading the stock to adapt to the zero carbon target for 2050 and wondered if we could do it sooner, because that’s 30 years away and if we can build an amazing new solar panelled sports centre within the next three, why can’t we have all our existing stock be carbon neutral before 2050.  F Williamson confirmed that with new build it’s included within the design brief, towards carbon neutral but in respect of the existing stock because some of the stock that we own is non-traditional, in terms of it’s construction and some we’ve inherited through Commission for New Towns so we’ve got some turn of the century Victorian solid wall properties, so it’s really a question of trying to ensure that we can implement as many measures as possible to reduce the carbon in respect of those properties.  Some are more difficult than others, which is why we’ve aligned it with the overall carbon reduction target rather than try and be overly ambitious.  Our disposals policy does look at those hard to treat properties, when it comes to thermal performance and we are looking at what microgeneration options we have in terms of solar thermal, solar PV, we’ve got the biomass boiler that we’ve already commissioned and there is the potential for extending that to other blocks within that development.  We are always focussing on what opportunities we have when we are looking at any improvements and certainly with the new build it’s actually part of the design brief.

Cllr Adeleke mentioned that on P26 there is a table of improvement works, on the boilers we seem to be quite large numbers, the boilers that we are fitting now are they environmentally friendly.  F Williamson confirmed that all of the boilers that have been installed are condensing boilers at the highest energy performance ratings, so they are all A+ boilers.  In terms of the environmental impact Members may be aware that there is a move for all boilers from 2025 onwards to be electric and there is a lot of work going on at the moment looking at the efficiency of gas versus electric boilers.  Currently we are installing the highest performing rated gas boilers in our stock.  Where we have off gas properties we are looking either ground source heat pumps or air source heat pumps because often in those situations we are replacing very inefficient night storage heaters, so it gives the opportunity for more controllable methods of heating that are more energy efficient.

Cllr Adeleke said that in March 2019 there is 96 homes identified as being non-decent and asked how many of those are still identified as non-decent and what have you done with them.  F Williamson confirmed it is a rolling position, a bit similar to the gas servicing position in respect of constantly monitoring and ensuring that we are targeting any properties that fall in to the category of non-decent.  The decant homes standard is no longer current and the industry are looking at a replacement standard, looking at the fitness of homes, so there is also a supplementary piece of legislation around the fitness of homes for habitation and that crosses all tenures, but it doesn’t set out prescriptive standards similar to the decent homes.  The social housing sector are looking at which areas they feel are now priority areas, so you’ll appreciate that climate change and environmental impact and the safety of buildings in respect of in particular fire safety have become two areas that are really taking a priority over some of what could be considered nice to have kitchen and bathroom replacements.  With respect to the 96 properties, they will have been in the programme for this year financial year, so either the works will have been completed or due to complete within this financial year.  But during this financial year other properties will have obviously got to the situation where they would have been classified as non-decent and they will be included in next year’s programme, so it’s a rolling position.  Cllr Griffiths added that non-decent doesn’t necessarily mean what concept we might have in our head of non-decent, i.e. no doors, no windows, no bathroom, etc or failing or not working, it’s means that there’s something in the house has reached what is considered to be at the end of its life, it may be perfectly okay, the non-decent thing if you’re not aware of it, almost identifies what we’ve got .7% housing not decent enough, that isn’t what it’s saying.

Cllr Bassadone asked if some of the 96 properties elderly people or people who do not want any improvements to the properties and was aware we’d had problems with this in the past, is that still a problem or are we now managing to make them have improvement work.  F Williamson confirmed that if it’s a health and safety issue or a compliance issue then obviously that overrides their tenant choice, if it’s a kitchen or bathroom replacement we still allow tenants to make that decision whether they want the upheaval to have them replaced, but that wouldn’t be included in that figure of 96, because the tenant refusal, then classifies the property, for the purposes of reporting, it’s not a non-decent property and they are recorded separately as tenant refusals.

Cllr Mahmood queried the rents going back up again, not for the fact that we do have the budget constraints the last three/four years where there was rent reductions for us, on P28 point 4.3 where we sell off high value council homes and wanted to know how these are identified and put them on the market if someone is living inside.  F Williamson advised that we have a selected disposals policy which isn’t this sale of high value council homes, sale of high value council homes was the Central Government was looking at ways to provide, similar to right to buy scheme in the housing association sector and in order to do that they were going to provide similar levels of discount and they needed to have the opportunity to be able to fund that from existing social housing stock.  Currently we are assuming that this policy is not proceeding because following consultation and a pilot in respect of housing associations that we looking at offering properties for sale for their tenants, take up was very low, so as a result of that there no assumptions made within this business plan that the policy is going to proceed.

Cllr England wanted to go back to 4.1.5 to ask why does the HRA Business Plan refer to 2050 when Dacorum has declared a climate emergency specifically requiring that we try to get to zero carbon by 2030, this policy does not match up to the motion of Full Council.  F Williamson said that it’s in respect of what we can do and earlier as I explained some of the properties are going to be very difficult for us to actually do anything to get them to zero carbon position.  Also when we look at zero carbon, whilst we can look at what we can do to the fabric of the building, to the heating systems which are controlled, the one thing that we can’t influence completely is the behaviour of the tenants in respect of the use of the heating and electricity, so it’s really to acknowledge that we are working towards doing everything that we can to try and support the climate emergency and that includes an education programme, but it does mean that some properties are going to be virtually impossible for us to get to zero carbon position.

Cllr England said if we are setting a Business Plan, then it should try to achieve what we as a Council has decided to try to achieve, whether or not we achieve that, I accept there may be some difficulties and we might have to have a really serious look at what we do with those properties because are they sufficiently a big enough factor that we can make an exception or not, but the fact is the 2030 is the number and this document doesn’t have 2030 in it, it’s got 2050 and I think that needs to change.  Cllr Griffiths advised that the Plan runs out in 2021, so this was set in place before the Policy was done last year, the commitment was already made in 2017, this is an existing policy and we have an update figure wise, for things that have changed in legislation and all that sort of stuff.  It will be updated in 2021 onwards, what we decide to do in that will obviously be a decision for this Council.

F Williamson said that we will take on board the Full Council climate emergency agenda resolution, but also we have baseline position that’s being modelled so that we can then demonstrate where we are likely to get the biggest impacts.  The Association of Public Service Excellence are doing some modelling around our existing stock level and our existing energy performance of that stock so we can make sure that where we target investment we are increasing the energy performance of those properties to the maximum impact in respect of carbon neutrality.

Cllr Adeleke mentioned that on page 30 point 8.3 the 1% rent reduction, this is the final year of the four year national policy and wanted to know how that affects the Council.  F Williamson confirmed that we will be adopting the national formula rent which is CPI+1% in terms of an increase, that will start from 01 April, so tenants will receive information about their rent statements at the end of February/beginning of March, so that they will be aware of what the impact is for each individual household.  In terms of the overall impact of the 1% rent reduction, Finance has calculated that as having an impact of £33m over the four year period.

The Chair confirmed the recommendation to note the report.