Agenda item

Report of the Director of Housing Support Services.

This report summarises the financial position of the Housing Revenue Account and the draft recommendations on rent and service charges to be made to the Cabinet in January 2019. The report also provides background information as part of the consultation with DMCs on the draft recommendations.

Consideration was given to a report of the Director of Housing Support Services, together with a presentation by Jason Blackhurst, Housing Revenue Account Strategic Accountant. A copy of the presentation was tabled at the meeting.

The DMCs were informed that the Council was required to agree a balanced HRA budget for each year. This year the budgetary context for the medium term was again challenging with the Council needing resources to meet three key priorities; 1) building homes; 2) maintaining high quality housing stock; and 3) delivering a new standard in resident safety. The Government had not responded sufficiently to these challenges, and since April 2016 had imposed rent reductions of 1% resulting in the need for savings, simply to balance the HRA Budget. 

District Management Committees (DMCs) were invited to express a view on the proposed 1% rent reduction; service charges; heating changes; a new CCTV service to be funded from a new service charge and any other proposals. These comments would then be reported to the meetings of the Housing Scrutiny Committee and the Council’s Cabinet.

He also advised the meeting that the 2018/19 week charge for the Responsive Patrol Service would be 61 pence and not the 53 pence indicated in the report.

Councillor Meric Apak, Cabinet Member for Better Homes, then thanked Jason Blackhurst for his presentation.

Councillor Meric Apak, Rhys Makinson, Director of Housing Support Services, and Jason Blackhurst gave the following key responses to questions:

-       The Council had been charging tenants on behalf of Thames Water but had not been making any profit through the provision of this service. Thames Water had now decided to take back this service and would be charging tenants directly from April 2019.

-       It was not anticipated that tenants water bills would change following this change, and Thames Water may have offers in place that would allow tenants to pay less than they were currently doing. Though this would now be up to individual tenants to engage with Thames Water on directly.

-       The Council had put in place provisions to help elderly and vulnerable tenants navigate through the change to ensure that they were not disadvantaged. Thames Water were also setting up a team to deal with telephone enquiries from tenants at the same time, and they would be sending out a letter to tenants directly on the service change.

-       Any tenants who were in credit in relation to their Camden water bill by the end of the financial year could receive a rebate of the amount on request.

-       The Council’s procurement strategy for gas supplies included buying gas in advance from the wholesale markets, to even out fluctuations in wholesale prices. The Council did this as part of a consortium of other local authorities, which allowed those authorities to get a better deal from the market. This had enabled tenants and residents to benefit from this arrangement and allowed on this occasion for the heating pool to have a surplus, and heating charges to be frozen. This has enabled the Council to either reinvest the money into energy efficiency measures or offer tenants a rebate.

-       The Council would use the increased service charges to ensure that the cost of existing services were fully covered following inflationary pressures. Any concerns in relation to the performance of services should be raised directly, so that they could be looked at either at operational or at policy development levels.

-       The Council’s Caretaking Service was currently going through a review and a special meeting was being held on 11^th January, where tenants would be able to feed in their suggestions for taking the service forward.

The DMCs then went into their respective meetings to discuss the options available to them on the budget as outlined in the presentation.