Agenda item

Report of the Director Property Management

This report is about the Council’s Fire & Building Safety Charter commitments to working with residents to keep them safe in their Council homes, and the progress that has been made since the Charter was adopted in July 2021. The report explains how we have been doing and where we need help from residents to make improvements.

Consideration was given to the report of the Director of Property Management

Melissa Dillon, Resident Safety Engagement Governance Lead, took the meeting through the report and she along with Gavin Haynes, and Maria Jacobs, gave the following key responses to questions:

·       Accessing tenants’ homes has been a real problem in relation to the different work streams (30% no access rate), so the Council had been trying different approaches to getting the information across to tenants along with making the process for operatives easier to undertake without needing tenants to be present. These included putting letters in people’s homes where servicing was overdue, installing universal key systems in street properties communal areas and TRA halls, along with piloting new legal processes so the Council could take tenants to court more promptly if necessary.

·       Officers had been working with colleagues in adult social care and children’s services regarding learning and training staff on how they should disseminate information throughout the system, how to ensure tenants knew what, when and where they should report issues, how officers then responded to these requests and how they should be flagged up as serious issues to senior colleagues. Though staff had undergone mandatory training, further work needed to be undertaken regarding how this could be taken forward for tenants and residents.

·       If necessary the council could resort to using legal measures to ensure that tenants allowed access for the required statutory works. This could involve the use of injunctions and ultimately be considered a breach of their tenancy agreement, which meant that the tenant could lose their home. Before this was ever taken forward the council would ensure that due process had been followed, which could involve consideration of a tenant’s vulnerabilities and have an appropriate evidence trail of attempts that were made but were not taken up by the tenant, and that they were therefore refused entry.

·       The service had appointed a member of staff that was reviewing all the communications that the authority had done to date across the access areas and the communal areas policy. Also, they would be looking at previous newsletters, how libraries could be used to help share information, and other wide ranging information matching that against the Council’s statutory duty to communicate in particular way for particular purposes arising from Fire Safety Act, Building Safety Act and now the social Housing Regulation Act duties and responsibilities. Once this had been undertaken then they would come up with recommendations for the Housing Regulation Board for it to consider. This review would not impact on the publicity the Council would have to undertake in the meantime to meet its statutory requirements.

·       The council had put in a place a fire warden training programme that was available to approximately 200 TRA representatives to take up. As part of this process, they would be given information regarding why the council needed access to homes to meet its new statutory requirements that they could then cascade within the community.

·       Officers agreed to provide the Panel with a report regarding how it was seeking to take forward the issue of improving its non-access rate. The report would look at engagement processes, risk of non-access, legal processes being used, how it could be targeted, and how risk could be mitigated.

ACTION BY: Director of Property Management/Director of Housing

·       The current intensive engagement programme was being used to share information with tenants regarding allowing access to their homes, along with why the council was required to do these works. 

·       The Council was working with specialist third party advisors for the last 12 months to develop its approach to the implementation of the Fire and Building Safety Acts and its accountability framework. The next stage of this work was to carry out a third-party audit of the Council’s fire and safety management processes, and introduce a fire safety management system that meets the requirement of British Standards 9997 (which only a handful of social housing landlords had sought to achieve). This process would provide evidence to residents and the regulator of the commitment of the council to provide resources, support and awareness to manage fire risk in a consistent way across the authority.

·       Officers would provide Panel members with the outcomes report arising from the BS9997 process once it was available in November.

ACTION BY: Director of Property Management     

The Panel noted the work that had been untaken in regards to electrical and other safety checks and the impact that non-access was having on this and other fire and building safety issues.

RESOLVED –

THAT the report be noted