Agenda and minutes

Apologies for absence were received from Lisette Frias, Josh Rothberger, Karl Vaughan and Wolfram Westendorf.

Other Forum members not present included Diane Beecham, Yan Ting Choong and Edwin D’Souza.

Members to elect a Chair, Vice Chair and Communications Member for the rest of the municipal year 2024-25.

LHF Constitution attached for information purposes.

The Principal Committee officer invited nominations for chair.

Carolyn Morgan was nominated for the role of chair, Billy Byatt a Leaseholder Forum member seconded this.

As there were no further nominations Carolyn Morgan was elected as chair for the rest of the municipal year.

There were no nominations for Vice Chair or Communications member.

The Chair informed the Forum that Joy Palmer the outgoing Vice-Chair would be moving house and was likely to leave the Forum quite soon, so there was the need to elect a new vice chair as well as a Communications member as Louise Upton was not re-elected as a Forum member. Louise was currently working in the role in a coopted part time capacity.

The Chair asked that if any Forum member were interested in either role, they should nominate themselves and could either speak to her or Joy Palmer for further information about the role. Adding that training would be provided for the Communications member.

Action By: All leaseholder Forum members.

RESOLVED –

THAT Carolyn Morgan be elected as Chair of the Leaseholders’ Forum for the rest of the 2024/25 municipal year.

                               TO NOTE:              All

There were none.

To consider and approve the minutes of the previous meeting held on 18^th September 2024.

Consideration was given to the minutes of the meeting of 28th May and 18^th September 2024 and the actions arising from those minutes.

RESOLVED –

THAT the minutes of the meetings held on 28th May and 18^th September 2024 be approved as an accurate record.

Matters arising and action points from 18 September 2024 meeting.

Matters Arising from the minutes 18^th September 2024

Minutes 280524

This had been resolved and the minutes had now been agreed.

A Forum member queried the process adopted for the progress report/action tracker as he was of the view that the responses provided should be compiled and inserted into the table so an update was provided of the action taken or not taken. In cases where there had been no response or update from the service area/officers this should be reflected in the table.

The Chair acknowledged that this was a good point, some of the issues were recurring items on the agenda such as the request to share with the Forum a breakdown of incoming and abandoned calls, emails and texts from leaseholders. She informed the Forum that in a discussion she had with the Head of Leaseholder Services and Housing Income about this issue, she had been informed that the Council’s systems were not sophisticated enough to provide an analysis of the information at the moment.

Also commenting on this issue, the Head of Leaseholder Services and Housing Income informed the Forum that this issue had been a recurring action on the progress report because the Council had not been able to supply the information in a way the Forum would like. However, there would be an update provided later under the Head of Leaseholder Services update item with Steve Haydon Head of Digital Design (DDs) Operations in attendance to provide an update on the Council’s systems review.

Major Works Working Group Update

The issues relating to lack of detail explaining the reasons for increase in service charge bills as well as requests by leaseholders for a breakdown of details on major works done of their behalf would be picked up later on the agenda under the Head of Capital Works item.

Leaseholders Services Update

The Major Works Working Group had met with the Head of Asset Management Strategy to look at the Council’s Asset Strategy and share financial details on the budget. The Head of Asset Management would provide an update later on the agenda under her item. 

In relation to sharing the communication and engagement process relating to Fire Safety this again would be picked up later on the agenda under the Head of Capital Works item.

Draft Action Plan responding to the issues raised in the report of the Cabinet Adviser for improving services to Leaseholders

The organisation structure could not yet be shared with the Forum because the department was still going through a restructure and consultation with staff was ongoing. It was hoped that this would be concluded soon and the organisation chart could be shared early in the new year. Head of Leaseholder Services and Housing Income to share the organisation chart in January.

Action By: Head of Leaseholder Services and Housing Income.

Leaseholders Service Satisfaction Survey

It was suggested by the Forum that the Associate Cabinet Member for Leaseholders could set an annual measurable improvement target for future satisfaction surveys  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

An update report from the Associate Cabinet Member for Leaseholders.

Councillor Slater (Cabinet Adviser on Improving Services to Camden Leaseholders) was in attendance to provide a brief update on his report on pages 43-44 of the agenda.

He informed the Forum that he:

·       Was meeting with a few different residents’ groups to discuss some of the points around service charges and billing. He was aware that the Council was doing quite a lot of work in this area and noted that it would be helpful to receive feedback on how that had been progressing.

·       Continuing to meet with leasehold groups, so if there were individual concerns it would be helpful to flag on any of the recommendations he had made and would be present at the meeting in March to discuss, and

·       Would be bringing a fuller update to the March meeting when there was a bit more progress to report on some of the action points.

The report was noted.

Action By: Associate Cabinet Member for Leaseholders

Head of Leaseholder Services and Housing Income Update.

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

The Head of Leaseholder Services and Housing Income update report was considered and he informed the Forum that:

·       The key focus of the service area at the moment was the restructure which was progressing and the way the service would be set up.

·       It was anticipated that the new structure would come in January, with the service area fully staffed and people in position by April 2025.

·       It was important that all the restructures were completed as the Housing Department was conducting a broader transformation process across housing and repairs.

·       He wanted to carry out a lot of process mapping, look at service standards so that when there were issues cutting across service areas, they were mapped with appropriate response times available and it was known who was accountable.

·       The structures across service areas as well as escalation points needed to be agreed with timescales. The intention following on from this would then be to make the service as efficient as possible including tracking things much better.

·       Once the positions were filled the service would carry on with the improvements highlighted in the action plan. As soon as the staff positions were filled the organisation chart with names of key individuals would be circulated.

·       A lot of the actions in the action plan were linked to the digital service design review.

Responding to Forum members questions the Head of Leaseholder Services and Housing Income provided the following information:

Leaseholder Services would provide a clearer picture of what the model of the service would look like in January and as soon as the positions were filled the organisation chart would be circulated with names of key individuals.

Action By: Head of Leaseholder Services and Housing Income

In relation to the service’s response to queries from residents and leaseholders, the service was looking to establish response times for the types of queries and when an answer could be expected.  There could be holding emails and acknowledgement of the query but ultimately the person should be informed of when a response to the query would be received.

In relation to an officer’s out of office email message, there was the expectation that people would be informed who was dealing with an issue, when a response and final resolution of the issue should be expected. The out of office message received by the Forum member would be taken away and looked at.

Action By: Head of Leaseholder Services and Housing Income

The service did not have a means of monitoring a lot of correspondence and emails, so it was down to individual officers using tools such as outlook calendars to track correspondence. As an interim measure in the new structure an officer would be responsible using a spreadsheet to monitor and track correspondence. In the long term it was hoped that a management system would be in place.

The Head of DDs Operations updated the Forum on the work that was going on as part of the transformation process. He highlighted that:

·       A lot  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7.

Head of Asset Management to present and take questions.

Consideration was given to the report of the Head of Asset Management Strategy.

Sinead Burke, Head of Asset Management Strategy gave a presentation of the slides which were on pages 47-54 of the main agenda, informing Forum members that:

·       It was an update on the work the Council was doing on the new five-year asset management strategy, looking at what the Council would do to invest in its stock over the next five years.

·       This involved combining a lot of different requirements such as regulatory, technical standards, looking at the condition of the Council’s homes, as well as looking at this in the national context.

·       The new regulator for Social housing determined the regulations and standards that the Council needed to achieve and how this applied to Camden's stock and Camden's residents and although there was not much reference to leaseholders the standards still needed to be applied to blocks and flats, which leaseholders reside in.

·       A lot of the thinking that the regulator brought in was sensible and talked about people being safe and people having quality homes. It made sense to apply to leaseholders as well, but specifically speaking, the consumer standards in particular were directed at tenants.

·       The Council had looked at a wide range of different programmes of work and standards that it needed to achieve and had therefore organised the work according to whether they were regulatory requirements, which were often incredibly specific. Such as for example the need to complete fire safety inspections in a fairly prescribed way.

·       There was a document that detailed the kind of actions that needed to be picked up. Page 51 of the agenda highlighted those issues that were regulatory and those which were ambitious targets for the Council that were not regulatory requirements.

However, in order to obtain a C1 or C2 rating from the Social Housing Regulator the Council would need to carry out the following programmes of work:

• Complete Safety Inspections and Actions
• Full fill its Landlord Repair responsibilities
• Ensure Homes met the Decent Homes Standard
• Complete wider external repairs within the capital programmes
• Improve all homes to an energy rating of C
• Invest in M&E elements to expected lifecycles

·       Camden’s core function was as a social housing provider which needed to be achieved but this was also valuable to leaseholders and the reason the programme had been organised this way.

·       The Council had also looked at its housing stock which was a very difficult stock with lots of listed buildings.

·       10% of Camden’s stock consisted of listed buildings compared to 0.1% national average.

·       It consisted of a lot of street properties and older properties, these characteristics meant it was more expensive and more challenging technically to retrofit or to renovate the buildings.

·       The Council had done a huge amount of work on stock condition surveys and looking at works that were needed to achieve other standards and when put all together realised that the Council could comfortably spend a billion pounds over the next  ...  view the full minutes text for item 8.

Head of Capital Works to attend and take questions.

Susanne Afra, the Head of Capital Works was in attendance and provided the following information in response to Leaseholder Forum members questions:

·       With regards to condition surveys the process was that the Asset Management Team would undertake the condition surveys, which was on a 5-year cycle with internal and external surveys undertaken.

·       When identified from the survey that a property required work, it would be assigned to the Capital Works Team. This would be either the M&E team, Retrofitting or Fire Safety Team and those individual teams would Commission a more detailed survey.

·       The Capital Works Team had been delivering detailed scoping surveys for a number of years now, which helped the Council identify the exact works required. The Team would then commission a consultant to work out initial costs of the work.

·       The team would review the consultant reports and decide as to whether or not the work should go ahead. If it was recommended that certain works, go ahead, leaseholders or residents on an estate would be contacted to inform them that the Council was planning on doing works. Schedule an initial meeting to talk through the scope and the Council would start the conversation with residents at that point

·       With regards to support for people experiencing heat poverty, the Council had a team of Home Energy Advice Officers that worked with residents. However, this was more targeted towards tenants rather than leaseholders. They worked to ensure the residents were not in fuel poverty by supporting these residents with any grants received from government. It was targeted to assist low-income households and other vulnerable tenants.

·       In the case of the residents in a block of flats in Holborn who had no heating since 2019, the Forum member was asked to email the Head of Capital Works with the details, who would send this on to the repairs team to look into and also check with the Home Energy Advice Officers if they had the capacity to look into the issues raised.

·       Action By Peter Wright/Head of Capital Works

·       In terms of improving the quality of work and monitoring the work of contractors, in recent years, the Council had employed a Clerk of works on every one of its projects. In previous years the Council had received a high number of complaints regarding major works, the Major Works Team hardly received any complaints now, the service area had improved.

·       The Clerk of Works leads on some of the more complex schemes, while the Council also used Consultants who were employed to help manage the contracts. Particularly on some of the more complex contracts the Council worked with the consultants to basically look at what the Council should and should not pay for. Where the Council could push back and where it could not.

·       Some of the Clerk of Works were employed by the consultants, some were more specialist for example on the M&E projects there was specifically in M&E a Clerk of Works on some of  ...  view the full minutes text for item 9.

Note Ombudsman Report on Complaints System published 28 November 2024

Note Leasehold Reform Bill published 22 November.

HS2 Impact on Leaseholders – Nahida Islam to comment.

A Forum member highlighted the impact of HS2 on leaseholders,’ details of which were on page 85 of the agenda.

Responding to a query about responsibility for HS2 issues, the Associate Cabinet Member for Leaseholders informed the Forum that the responsibility fell under the Leader of the Council, Councillor Richard Olszewski.

However, the Cabinet Member for Better Homes, Councillor Sagal Abdi-Wali had been picking up some of these issues so it might be helpful in the first instance to get in touch with her.

However, for broader issues it would be the leader of the Council. Councillor Slater advised that he was happy to be copied into any emails sent as he could always pick up the issues with the individual Ward councillors as they would be familiar with the local context.

To agree Leaseholder Forum meeting dates for the 2025/26 municipal year.

Potential dates

Tuesday 27^th May 2025 – already agreed.

Tuesday 23^rd September 2025

Wednesday 3^rd December 2025

Tuesday 24^th March 2026

2026/2027

Tuesday 2^nd June 2026

The Forum agreed the meeting dates for the 2025/26 municipal year as follows:

Tuesday 27^th May 2025 – already agreed.

Tuesday 23^rd September 2025

Wednesday 3^rd December 2025

Tuesday 24^th March 2026

2026/2027

Tuesday 2^nd June 2026