Agenda item

To address items on the Action Sheet not covered by topics on the current meeting’s agenda.

The Head of Repairs had agreed at the last Leaseholders’ Forum meeting to take away and discuss with the Head of Capital Works issues relating to lack of detail explaining the reason for increases in service charge bills.

The Head of Capital Works commented that she had recently been informed of the request for more detail regarding cost increases in leaseholder bills. She would need to take this away to discuss with her team, colleagues in Leaseholder Services, and Major Repairs and undertake leaseholder consultation. They would need to collectively agree that if more detailed information were to be provided the format it would be in to make sure it was in a user-friendly format for Leaseholder Services to digest and share with Leaseholders. The Head of Capital Works agreed to take this away have some discussions with colleagues and follow this up.

Action By: Head of Capital Works

The action from the last meeting was that the Head of Leaseholder Services and Housing Income would present the process plan providing information on medium-term actions as well as some indication of what the long-term road map would look like.

The Leaseholder Services Manager advised that this action related to the Leaseholder Service redesign project and the Cabinet Adviser on Improving Services for Camden Leaseholders report to Cabinet which were both closely linked. She commented that a formal response to the Cabinet Adviser’s report would be presented to Cabinet in July, once this was approved along with any resulting action plan would be shared with the Leaseholders’ Forum at the September meeting.

Action By: Head of Leaseholder Services and Housing Income

The Chair informed the Forum that she had met with the Head of Leaseholder Services and Housing Income last week, he had provided information and an update on the Leaseholder Services Design testing phase which had been shared with Forum members, adding that she was happy to circulate this to leaseholders along with further information provided by the Policy Design team.

The Chair advised the Forum that the Head of Leaseholder Services and Housing Income had informed her that he was happy to provide an informal update on the service redesign to the Forum during the summer rather than waiting till September. She noted that the update would still be provided to the September meeting but it would be good to have an informal update which could be done virtually prior to September.

Billy Byatt (Member of the Leaseholder Services Working Group) who had also met with the Head of Leaseholder Services and Housing Income and the officer from the Digital Transformation Team provided a note of caution to the Forum, advising that nothing substantive was likely to be achieved by September, the Head of Leaseholder Services and Housing Income was not going to indicate that all the issues had been fixed as the team was working through how things were done at the moment, capturing a lot of the old ways of working.

The Leaseholder Services Manager agreeing with the comments of Billy Byatt advised that a lot of work was going into the process mapping, it was worth putting the time into getting that right so that the system that came out in the end met service users’ needs.

With regards to leaseholders providing feedback on the telephone survey to either Carolyn Morgan or Patrick Hagopian, it was noted that no feedback had been received from Leaseholders.

The Vice Chair of the Forum had written to the Leader of the Council endorsing the recommendation in Councillor Slater’s report for the appointment of a Deputy Cabinet Member for Leaseholders. The Cabinet Member for Better Homes commented that the Leader was supportive of the recommendation but it would still need to go through the process before approval.

In response to a Councillor’s query about whether calls to the contact centre would be tracked in the new system being developed as leaseholders had expressed their frustration in sometimes finding it difficult to get through on the phone to Camden officers, the Leaseholder Services Manager advised that if Contact Camden could answer the query this would be dealt with, without putting the caller through to Leaseholder Services. If on the other hand it was a more complex query it could be put through to Leaseholder Services but more information would be required which might result in the query being passed on to another department because it might for example relate to a repairs issue.  If the person really did want to speak to somebody in Leaseholder Services, then the officer from Contact Camden should be advised of this.

It was noted that this mirrored the feedback the service had been getting from the redesign project and the Cabinet Adviser for Improving Services to Leaseholders had got from his meetings with leaseholders. Camden was looking at all this in terms of how it communicated with residents and how residents could communicate with the Council.