Agenda item

Report of the Director of Housing

This report provides an update on performance for various aspects of the Housing service.

Consideration was given to the report of the Director of Housing.

Glendine Shepherd, Director of Housing and Ododo Dafe, Head of Innovation and Improvement, took the meeting through the report and they gave the following key responses to questions;

·       Rent arrears remained a key challenge for the Council, with tenants struggling with additional financial pressures from rising heating charges, rent charges and the general cost of living. Though the arrears had increased recent data showed a slow-down in the rate of growth. Officers had been able to recoup £200,000 this month through the interventions and support they had been given tenants to pay them pay off their rent arrears. Also in relation to arrears for some tenants who were receiving housing benefits, it should be noted that service charges were not included and tenants had to pay for these services themselves, the delay in receiving benefits due to the time taken for their benefit to be assessed, and not being in receipt of full benefit all had an impact on the figures. Tenants in rent arrears were being supported by officers through the difficult times they were facing, and processes had been put in place to ensure that officers went through appropriate stages before seeking rental contributions.

·       Officers were also enabling tenants to make contributions to their rent arrears easier. One of the ways they were doing this was enabling the tenant to now pay their rent contributions over the phone to the officer supporting them, rather than the tenant having to go through to another officer. The Council would though consider write-offs of the rent arrears if it was proving uneconomical to pursue the arrears, though it was not something it would do lightly.

·       The Council was working to achieve Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance (DAHA) accreditation and had been working with a full DAHA co-ordinator since March 2023. The Council was really just at the start of its journey in relation to seeking this recognition, and it would take the necessary time to get its processes and procedures right so at the end it was successful in its application.

·       The Domestic Violence and Abuse (DVA) Panel was being trialled for 3 months to assess and review applications made under this category. Following the three months trial then an assessment would be undertaken to see if the processes were working and see if it was making a difference, along with whether more time was needed to get a fuller picture. One of the things officers were considering was whether or not they could actually take out domestic violence from the harassment process and have it as standalone category, along with looking at different ways of attaching points to such a category as part of the Council’s allocation scheme.

·       Officers would provide members of the scrutiny committee with a copy of the presentation slides in relation to the process for seeking DAHA accreditation.

ACTION BY: Director of Housing (OD)

·       The Housing Transformation programme was seeking to look at all aspects of housing management services with a view to making improvements to service provision. A Housing Programme Co-ordinator had been charged with seeking to make improvements to the way the council responded to housing complaints and members enquiries.

·       The Council had a capital programme that sought to fund planned maintenance work to its social housing stock. The programme was led by the stock conditions survey that sought to identify issues that needed work, this included any works to improve the operation of the lifts it managed.

·       The initial findings arising from the intensive tenant participation program was identifying the key issue for tenants was anti-social behaviour. Anti-social behaviour issues were complex, resource intensive, required a multidisciplinary response and took a long time to resolve. So the Council was putting in place a team to look at the more complex cases to seek deal with them, rather than using the existing process. 

·       A repairs improvement plan had been developed, and one of its work streams was looking at voids performance with a view to improving the turnaround time. Part of this work would look at the work flow from when a property became empty to when it was let to see what actions happened, and what could now be improved upon to enable a quicker turn-a-round. This could involve an anticipation date being identified for the tenant when appropriate safety checks and subsequent repairs were to be completed. This would enable the property to be advertised earlier, allow for a viewing, along with the tenant getting themselves ready in terms of any benefits they needed to claim or any actions they needed to undertake before they moved in, rather than this process only happening when the works had been completed.

·       Some of the hard to let voids were now being put back into the system which had impacted on the void average re-let figures, as the Council was now seeking to get some of these properties back into use. These new approaches had been well received by tenants and residents after officers had shared with them at a recent DMC workshop that they had attended.  

RESOLVED –

THAT the report be noted