Agenda item

F Williamson introduced the report and asked if Committee had any questions.

Cllr Adeleke commended Fiona’s team for the work they are doing at this very difficult time and requested that Fiona passed the good recommendations and thanks to her team.

Cllr Mahmood asked three questions; 1, what are the implications for Dacorum’s performance of the new Building Safety Bill, 2, is there a risk assessment for Covid for everything Housing does and 3, clarification on the table on page 100 garages figures in red.  F Williamson advised that that the new Building Safety Bill has not been passed through parliament and reached Royal Assent yet, there will be a period for compliance for the statutory compliance and building regulations that will create the framework for which we will need to work.  It’s focussed on the high rise, high risk buildings and we have six in that category, we have undertaken preparative work through fire risk assessments and we have all that data on a system called Geometra.  This will identify all of the work that’s required in those buildings, that will be done on a priority basis.  We have put a growth bid in the budget for a Building Safety Manager, which is a key role in the new Bill, they will coordinate all of the information to ensure that all those buildings will be certified by the new regulator who is part of the HSE, we have also increased the budget so that we can undertake the additional work.  In respect of the Covid Risk Assessments Fiona mentioned that all Group Managers have worked with their Team Leaders and Health and Safety to identify any risks with any of the job activities or interactions with the public, so each area has their own risk assessed method statement.  F Williamson explained the detail in respect of page 100 for the garages.  The employees were two members of staff who deal with allocations and the licences, the premises cost is maintaining the garages, but that has been reduced as there is a pressure on income, because there are 70% of the garages occupied, there has been an adjustment, but with the work being undertaken with the stock condition survey and targeted investment, which will be presented to Scrutiny in December, we have reduced the expenditure to make sure we don’t put additional pressure on that budget.  The recharges are through the general fund for the administration and central office function that we pay that is the cost of managing the garages internally.  F Williamson advised she will circulate more detailed information on the Capital charges breakdown.

Action: F Williamson

Cllr England said that on page 45 point 2.1.2 the performance of lifeline call services and asked how long and what method it’s taken to identify that they were out of action.  F Williamson replied that the Supported Housing Officers were contacting tenants asking them to test their lifelines, there was a problem when the Officers restarted the visits they found faults on the line, which meant that they could dial out but may have not been heard by Tunstall, it wasn’t a huge number but when the tenants said they had tested the equipment, it transpired they hadn’t done it.  O Jackson added that we spoke to our contractor and this was a situation that the majority of providers were facing, something like 20% increase on fault reporting when staff returned.  The majority of those faults didn’t affect the operation of the lifeline.  We set up some contingency plans to ensure that we could alleviate some of these pressures on tenants.

Cllr Adeleke asked for an explanation of satisfaction with Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB).  F Williamson confirmed that with ASB we set out the expectation, sometimes the expected remedy is eviction of the perpetrator, which is often the remedy people require, we advise we can undertake mediation or tenancy enforcement or demote the tenancy.  When it’s higher level we do work together with the Police.  F Williamson confirmed that it’s satisfaction with what we said we would do, not necessarily that they got the outcome they wanted.

Cllr Adeleke added that it may be more useful for Members if you could provide a breakdown of the work undertaken, for example evictions 10%, mediation 1% etc, in a table.  F Williamson confirmed that we have a KPI that actually measures that for management information, so it’s not one of the indicators that sits within the rocket report that comes to Overview and Scrutiny but we can provide that information if you would find it useful.  Cllr Adeleke said that it would be useful for Members to see the breakdown.  L Warden added that we have a satisfaction survey that we provide to all residents after a case has been closed, it asks how we have managed the case, for example, did we contact you when we said we would.  It is based on how satisfied they were with how we managed the case, it does also ask how satisfied you were with the outcome.  We could provide more information on the survey we carry out and the general questions we ask.

Cllr Johnson asked for clarification on the review of the Supported Housing sheltered schemes and developing a strategy and wondered what the strategy would look like and the timescales.  F Williamson advised that we have undertaken extensive work to look at the condition, the layout, the location of properties and we’ve done a lot of work with the occupants of schemes.  O Jackson has been responsible for this work and he’s now looking at demand with Housing Needs.  We are not in a position to formulate that strategy yet, but we probably have 80% of the detail to start to build that strategy in regards to the category 2 schemes, which are the ones that have communal facilities.  It’s in our service plan spanning this year and next, but we don’t know what the desirability will be when we come out of Covid, so we may have to potentially market schemes differently.

The report was noted.