Agenda and minutes

Apologies for absence were received from Patrick Hagopian and Isabella Luger.

Other Forum members not present included Aldires Bugia, Billy Byatt, Philip Dunne and Dr Clive Sneddon.

There were none.

To consider and approve the minutes of the previous meeting held on 28 May 2024.

A forum member queried the accuracy of the Head of Capital Works response to a question about what Camden’s strategy was for future maintenance of its housing assets.

It was,

RESOLVED

That subject to clarification with the Head of Capital Works for accuracy of bullet point 6 on page 18 of the agenda stating that “The Asset Management Strategy would identify what the Council needed to do to generate potential income so it could continue to invest in its stock” the minutes be agreed.

ACTION BY: Principal Committee Officer

Matters arising and action points from 28 May meeting.

Matters Arising from the minutes 28^th May 2024

Major Works Working Group Update

The Major Works Working Group would be discussing the action outstanding relating to issues with lack of detail explaining the reason for increases in service charge bills with the Head of Capital Works at a later meeting. Further discussion on this item would be considered under the Major Works Working Group report agenda item.

Action By: Head of Capital Works / Major Works Working Group

Leaseholders Services Update

The action plan from the Cabinet Adviser on Improving Services for Camden Leaseholders report was on the agenda for discussion later.

The Leaseholder Services Manager had provided a breakdown of leaseholders occupying Street Properties, on Estates, non-resident leaseholders and registered sublets in response to the request at the last meeting.

The Chair commented that the Head of Leaseholder Services and Housing Income had not been able to provide information relating to the breakdown of incoming and abandoned calls, emails and texts. She was of the view that it was important to understand the mix of the various means of communicating with the Council and the Forum would continue to request for this information.

To share a breakdown of incoming and abandoned calls, emails and texts with the Leaseholders’ Forum

Action By: Head of Leaseholder Services and Housing Income

Other actions still outstanding were:

The Major Works Working Group to meet with the Head of Asset Management Strategy to look at the Council’s Asset Strategy and share financial details on the budget.

Action By: Major Works Working Group / Head of Asset Management Strategy

To share the communication and engagement process relating to Fire Safety going to all residents at the next Forum meeting.

Action By: Chair / Fire Safety Engagement Officer

The Chair informed the Forum that in relation to the communication and engagement process she had not heard back from the Head of Capital Works and the action point could be carried forward to the next Forum meeting which the Head of Capital Works was scheduled to attend.

Head of Leaseholder Services and Housing Income Update.

Draft Action Plan from Leaseholder Services responding to issues raised in the report of the Cabinet Adviser for Improving Services to Leaseholders.

Leaseholder Services Working Group Report.

Consideration was given to the action plan drafted by the Head of Leaseholder Services and Housing Income to address the recommendations in the Cabinet Adviser for Improving Services to Leaseholders report.

Jo O’Donnell, Principal Consultation Officer and Antonia Shortall, Finance Accounts Officer were in attendance and presented the slides explaining the action plan on pages 33 – 42 of the agenda.

They outlined that:

·       The strategy and design team had worked with staff and leaseholders to develop a number of priorities to focus on, including improving the accessibility and transparency of the Council’s written communications, such as bills sent to leaseholders and consultation documents.

·       Improving and providing more relevant information on the Council’s website about the roles and responsibilities of the different teams in the Housing Department.

·       Improving the way information was shared between teams such as Housing Repairs and Leaseholder Services. The teams now had regular collaborative workshops.

·       Improving monitoring of contractors and holding them accountable for their work was an action point for the Heads of Repairs and Capital Works.

·       Introducing an IT system to record all work streams, including correspondence which would enable the Council to have and retrieve all the available information, to improve the way issues were resolved. The Principal Consultation Officer advised that although the Council was working on getting a suitable IT system for this purpose, she had no update on the timescales for this.

The Chair commented that the need for the Council to get a fit for purpose Correspondence Management System had been an ongoing issue for two years and there still appeared to be no end in sight to this issue being resolved. In recent discussions she had with the Head of Leaseholder Services and Housing Income, he had indicated that the Council was undertaking a broader IT review. She was of the view that it was fundamental that the Council resolved this issue as a lot of the satisfaction survey problems were due to the lack of an IT system tracking the progress of customer queries.

Continuing with the presentation, it was highlighted that:

·       A review of how the Council’s written communication could be made more accessible and transparent had been conducted resulting in the rewording of the information, more use of plain English and changing the layout of the letters. The new templates based on feedback from leaseholders would be used over the next 12 months.

·       The department was going through a restructure at the moment once that was completed by December 2024, the new roles responsibilities, job titles and contact details would be circulated. The chair requested that the organisation structure be circulated to the Leaseholder Forum once completed.

          Action By: Head of Leaseholder Services and Housing Income

Responding to Forum members’ questions the Principal Consultation Officer and Finance Accounts Office provided the following comments:

·       The teams being restructured were those areas that fell under the management of the Director of Housing.

·       A high-level summary of the teams being restructured was available on page 31 of the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

Key points from the survey – and an opportunity for Principal Consultation and Finance Accounts Officer and Head of Repairs to respond with their key action points.

Consideration was given to the Leaseholder Service Satisfaction Survey.

The Chair explained that the Leaseholder Services Satisfaction Survey was a telephone survey conducted in March this year by House Mark an independent organisation. The results and full report were in the agenda pages 45-86.

The Chair presented some slides highlighting:

·       That leaseholders’ overall satisfaction level with the service provided, showed a downward trend. It was 40% in 2015 and had been going down ever since.

·       In March 2024 the satisfaction level was 30% which meant that 70% were not satisfied with the service provided.

·       The satisfaction level on repairs was even lower and was also showing a downward trend. There was clearly a problem which had got worse over the last few years.

·       When broken down into more detail into those very dissatisfied, fairly dissatisfied, neither, fairly satisfied and very satisfied, it showed that only a very small number, 7% of respondents were very satisfied with the overall service.

·       In comparison with other London boroughs the median satisfaction score was 37% with the range between 24% and 54%, Camden score at 30% was towards the bottom of the range, which was not good, hence the suggestion that Camden talk to those boroughs that attained 54% satisfaction levels.

·       With regards to repairs, questions were asked about value for money, the time taken to do repairs, the quality of the work and the overall conduct of the contractors.

·       There was a real problem with value for money as there was a high level of dissatisfaction on the value for money and timeliness of repairs question with very few leaseholders feeling that the repairs they were charged for were value for money.

·       Not many people were pleased with the quality of the repairs and the conduct of the contractors either.

·       With regards to major works, the same sort of questions were asked and similar responses were provided on value for money, time taken to complete the work and quality of the work. Consultation was scored a bit better but a majority of respondents were dissatisfied.

·       Overall service was poor with 20% satisfied, which meant that 80% were either neutral or dissatisfied. Ease of contact was not great, neither was value for money. Information was a little bit better.

·       There was a real issue around value for money and time taken to complete major works projects and quality of the work which would be taken up with the Head of Capital Works. There were issues with being able to contact the appropriate people which was also affecting the rating of the overall service.

A Forum member commented that the survey results were not a surprise as these had been issues that had been continuously raised over the past 20 years as a Camden Leaseholder with no changes from the Council and was not convinced that anything would change going forward.

The general consensus from the Forum was that the results were extremely poor and there could be no more excuses. It appeared to be  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6.

Head of Repairs to respond to issues raised by the Repairs working group.

Consideration was given to the Repairs Working Group report presented by David Hart which could be found on pages 97-98 of the agenda.

David Hart explained that the report provided an update on how the Working Group was engaging with the Council on various issues that had been raised. In the recent meeting they had with the Head of Repairs, it was agreed that these issues would be addressed at the Leaseholders Forum meeting this evening.

The Head of Repairs provided the following information in respect of the issues raised.

·       With regards to GEM contractors as already highlighted two of their officers were based in Council offices for two days a week. He did not appear to have much feedback about how GEM were currently performing asking if Forum members could let him know if they were still experiencing missed contractor appointments or bad experiences.

·       The Council was looking to take on five new contractors for the M&E Works. As part of the procurement and tendering process, the contractors were required to agree to cohabit in the Council with Council Officers as part of the contract so one of their officers would be working alongside Council officers a couple of days a week which appeared to be working.

·       It was suggested that contractors were marking their own homework. This was not the case as contractors had to complete their paperwork on completion of repair work. Without this being done, they would not be paid. The Council held up payment to contractors particularly M&E Contractors where there were issues or paperwork had not been completed properly.

·       All Leaseholders from a repairs point of view would be provided with a satisfaction survey that could be fed back promptly to the Forum and the Council.

With regards to the repair complaints case management, David Hart explained to the Forum that the Council had published its complaints handling and service improvement report 2023-24 in July this year, which was its annual self-assessment against the Housing Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code. The complaint figures presented in the report did not include leaseholders repair complaints. Requests were therefore made for further repairs data detail on the number of cases where the resolution period was longer than 10 days, the number of complaints upheld and the number of cases which were appealed to the second stage and beyond. The Working Group was informed that this information would be available in a report to be published by the Council in the next few months and when published this information could be requested at that point.

In relation to the Roc repairs interface system this was due to go live in late October. The way it worked was once a job was completed a text message would be sent out to the resident providing them with an opportunity to feedback. The Council would be able to assess feedback as long as the resident replied to the text message. This would depend on the Council having the correct number  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7.

Report of the Major Works working group.

Consideration was given to the report of the Major Works Working Group on pages 99-100 of the agenda.

Brigitte Ascher (Major Works Working Group member) informed the Forum and Leaseholders that they were still waiting for feedback from Forum Members and leaseholders on the type of information leaseholders wanted to receive on Major Works bills. The Major Works Group wanted to have a better understanding of what detail people wanted to see and at what stage of the process. Members were asked to send the information by email to Brigitte Ascher and Leaseholders to the leaseholderforum@gmail.com email address

Action By: Forum Members / Leaseholders

Resolved

That the Major Works Working Group report be noted.

The Chair informed the Forum that elections for membership of the Leaseholders Forum took place every 3 years and new members would be elected to the Forum towards the end of this calendar year. Notices explaining how people could join the Forum were going out with Leaseholders Service Charge packs which should be received towards the end of September.

Forum members wishing to stand were required to renominate themselves, nominations closed at the end of October. There were spaces for 21 people, 4 in each of the 5 districts plus a chair. If there were more than 21 people across the districts then an online election would take place.

Those on the Forum’s email list would receive the list of candidates, if not on the email list you could request to be included by emailing leaseholdersforum@gmail.com The list of members by district could found by going to www.leaseholdersforum.org.uk

The new leaseholder Forum would be in place by 4^th December meeting.

Councillor Steve Adams raised the issue of residents on an Estate which had just been marked for demolition and rebuilding. Leaseholders on the estate felt that they were being disadvantaged with the valuation of their properties and whether there were any remedies. It was suggested that there was a statutory process which could be discussed outside of the meeting.

A Forum member suggested that in the newsletter circulated to Leaseholders people could be asked to correct or update their phone numbers on the Camden Account and in other interactions with the Council. There followed a discussion where it was noted that the Camden Leaseholder Forum’s (CLF) own email newsletter was circulated to 1500 leaseholders, this information could be sent to them. There were however about 9,000 leaseholders in Camden, assistance would be required from Leaseholder Services to reach out to all the Leaseholders for this information. Leaseholder Services had indicated they would assist with this.

David Hart advised that there were issues currently with the Leaseholder Discussion Board on the website so the mailing notification of post had been turned off. The issue was being investigated.

The Communications Member informed the Forum that on 28^th September the Council was running a Housing Action Day at the Crowndale Centre. Leaseholders Forum would have a stall and more help was required with manning the stall as certain times of the day. Those offering to assist could contact the Communications member.