Transcript

No, no, I'm perfectly fine over here, good evening everyone. My name is Councillor Jason Jackson and welcome to the housing scrutiny committee meeting. First of all, apologies for the let's start. This is very unusual not to have a parrot members. We need to have a minimum three Councillors, four Councillors for us to be able to go ahead with the meeting officially, but we can have this meeting as an informal meeting, however, going forward. But any decision making cannot be made for at this meeting unless we're a parrot. Am I right? You're referencing that. Okay, so with that, I would ask the members that are here and also the residents and the co-members is what to introduce themselves and the officers starting from my right. Hi, I'm Councillor Gordon, I was the main member for Tucknell Park. Councillor Nestis, we've got over Sam Strongfall Highbury. Rosewood Donald, a PFI observer. Dean Donigue Co-op, team resident observer. Councillor Dermot Ward, executive member for finance planning and performance. Okay, Councillor Uno, Halloran, executive member for finance and communities. My name is Ian Swift, director of housing operations at Isington Council. Jade Young, acting co-op director of finance and aid beds at the council. Alice DeGail, currently acting assistant director of the Nubil team, Islington Council. We do have members of, I can see quite a few members of the public and more than normal, that we'll have on the committee. It's a shame, we didn't have a full-quality meeting for that. However, we're happy to always have residents here in the chamber. I, if need be, I will give opportunities to members, I mean, sorry, the audience to be able to feed into some of the conversation we're going to be having, which is informal now. So maybe you could even say more. However, this meeting has been webcast and also, at any point that a meeting becomes quiet, we might be able to start making decisions. However, just some housekeeping, if there is any fire alarm goes off, please do follow my instruction, because we're not expecting any fire alarm tests today. We clearly have apologies from the Vice Chair, Councillor Chico Uno and Graham, I make go again. I think for lateness, we do have Councillor Postman. For the members that are here, do you want to declare any interest? Okay, right. I don't have any report outside of we ongoing work around the draft recommendations. Informally, I would like to go into the first point in the agenda, and that was an agenda point that was moved from our last meeting. Just the arts, which of the officers would like to introduce this? Or is it the member who's doing this? Go ahead. Apologies, sorry. This is the report we've bought last time, yeah. I'm happy to, all the committee's read it, and just take any questions from last meeting. Do members of the committee have any direct questions? Lots. Go ahead, you have a free floor. Thank you, Chair. I think I'll probably just take it one at a time, and then obviously, coaching players do interrupt. So, just with regards to the report, I think you're open of by mentioning that we've had a positive housing ombudsman report, and I think it is worthwhile to reflect on that word, because I think the initial report, I wouldn't describe as positive. Obviously, the developments since then have been positive, and I think what we've come to be good to update, I don't know if it's official yet or not. Yeah, just before I hand over to Jade. When I said it was a positive, if I said that, you know, I'm not excusing that we were in front of the housing ombudsman, and to the day I have housing, we'll apologise to anyone with damper mold, and we do need to do better. Only if in a council flat, you know, we've got to look after our residents, so I'm going to put on record again for anyone out there, apologies. I'm not saying, hey, look at us if it's positive. The outcomes, we worked very well with the ombudsman. We were the first council to have an open forum with the ombudsman in here, where residents on screen in the audience got to grill us all, so I'm going to pass to Jade now. Yeah, so just specifically to answer your question, we've had formal confirmation that the ombudsman satisfied that the council's implemented actions against each of their recommendations, so they've discharged their monitoring period, so we have had that formal now. Yeah, you have a free floor? Oh, okay, and next one there, in the report you mentioned about reducing car parking base and garage voids by 55%, and I know that as part of the new build, we're actually looking at converting garages, so I just wonder if there's a conflict involved there, what the garages, is that part of that process of converting them to housing, how we managed to achieve a net 55% decrease. And so I think that was the first instance, so primarily that's just by improving our management procedures and providing a better and more responsive service to people who need parking allocated to them or wish to have parking allocated to them. There is a balancing act for the council, so obviously we have a kind of a large and wide climate commitment to try and reduce vehicle ownership generally, as a matter of course, lots of measures have been taken across the organisation to try and reduce people's need to have motor vehicles, and there is a balancing act for us as a landlord as well, with opportunities that may come through things like the new build programme, as I think you've seen in previous meetings where we have converted some garages into additional accommodation. When we rent out garages for storage or vehicle use, they're rented under licence. So if the council were to find a successful conversion scheme to deliver additional accommodation, we could reallocate those spaces. But yes, there is a kind of, it is a balance in all uses and priorities. Thank you, Chair. Next question is with regard to the 100 remote sensors that I think have been installed out of 1000. So we're looking at 10%, which is not a great take-up. I just wonder whether that figure has changed, is there anything else that we can do? Is this in relation to the environmental monitoring of capital? Yes, so it's part of a pilot program. We're going to be using these things more. So having connected technology within our buildings gives us more information and in many cases we'll remove the need for residents to tell us there's a problem because the equipment will report itself, will report faults. So that's certainly the case where I live for renewal. With the damping environmental monitoring sensors, we're testing it and it's very much in consultation with and with the agreement of individual residents. So I've been quite surprised at the limited take-up of it. We'll continue to kind of offer and promote it. It might be that as they've been in place full time and people get to learn a bit more about it, it isn't about us. They just reported on humidity and temperatures over time, effectively, and given us. Information of humidity rises above a level which could then generate a damp and mild. But yeah, so there's been a level to take up. What we'll be doing and I think slightly later on in the next committee cycle we'll be bringing in the changes coming through the repairs, the new kind of repairs policy and some of the changes the services are working on. What we expect to be able to do over time is to have, both as in the case of lifts, with other elements of buildings which are able to report on their condition or their performance, residents won't then have to tell us as a need to repair. Those devices will trigger an automatic appointment being made and there'll be a contact made that way. So it is the first step in a series of steps. I think with this is something we've just started out using this year. It's provided us with some specific examples that have been effective. It's fair to say, yeah, either we're not communicating the benefits of it well enough to residents. All of these people kind of just try to mull up whether or not they want to allow this technology to be used within their homes. So the take up hasn't been as high as we'd have thought it might have been. We'll kind of continue to kind of monitor that and seek to improve the way we communicate how we're planning to use them and the benefits they provide. There is a very low energy consumption of those devices so it isn't going to change people's kind of right-cost cost of occupation. But I think some of those things just take a bit of time for people to get used to. It's my sense. And just to add to that, some London Councils, I've put sensors in without, you know, like where they're voids are. They're just putting them in as a matter of we're actually asking people. So and I think I'm talking to London Councils all the time. I can't get it if you've got a void and you put them in a property. I can see the benefits but like Jed said, it's about testing trial and then we, you know, down the line if it's giving you information, this would give us readings and give families, you know, and it's all about trying to make it easier, trying to get ahead of damp and mould and humidity. Right, can I just follow up a question and I'll come to other members. The data that is currently collected from this, is this directly fed straight into a system that we have? Or is there sort of any hands on someone having to go and read it or anything? Yeah, so it is a smart system. So it reports directly, it goes on to a dashboard that feeds into repair service. So it's the technology is the same system we're installing for our new fire safety installation. So the same thing happens there. So they will automatically test themselves and they'll notify us if there's any fault. So we can respond to faults. It's effectively doing the same thing but it's doing environmental monitoring. So it does temperature and humidity plots over time. The data just feeds into a dashboard. If the humidity goes above, I believe it's 55%, a threshold level, then it kind of, it traffic lights those properties, so it kind of highlights that there's an issue. But it's still relatively, you know, I think it's still a kind of developing area. Okay, and they're just to add to that. So is this the reading of the data? How is that analyzed itself? It's what tools are being used as some AI tools or it's just used sort of the same system that we have. Yeah, so currently we don't use any predictive AI algorithms and I am aware that there are some people piloting the use of algorithms to try and predict and search for potential errors for repair. So this one in a sense works at preset levels. So we've set a humidity level that if that, so those 100 properties, in fact, actually there is somebody periodically looking at the list. But if any of those 100 get a humidity level above 55%, that property gets kind of lit up and is an alert for it. And the more, I think as more information gets built into buildings and the systems get more complex, you might, we might have sensors installed in new roof installations or, you know, in rainwater goods or other aspects. If we end up with a lot of data, then I think those kind of algorithms that help us sort it and find problems will become sort of increasingly useful. But at the moment, we don't make use of any AI algorithms looking for predictive stuff. Something personally, I'll be very keen for the council to do. There is a work stream. There's a colleague in our digital services department who is looking for areas of automation and use of deploying those kind of low level AI tools to kind of algorithm sorting tools. We're pitching to be in their kind of first, you know, the early tranche of how the council might use that. But it's still a little way off. Just to find one of that, I think as we all know as a council, we sit on historic data. There's probably more likely there's a pattern that develops in terms of data that we sit in terms of the number of people that lives in a particular home. And those data you're getting from the systems itself is more likely the more than them develop much faster if the number of people in the home was a lot more. So there are data that we sit on that at least we need to be able to cross match those data in order for us effectively. So yes, it's good to know you're bidding for that because I think in all honesty, having those data not being maximized with the ones that we already have in-house is, in my view, we're missing something there. So I would encourage that the team look further into that because that would be quite useful in terms of dealing with this issue. Yeah, thanks, Cher. I think that's a really sensible recommendation. So what we have done to kind of overlay those data sets is I think we shared an example of it. The damper mold specifically is we have overlaid data sets and use tools that the council has at the moment. So Power BI is the kind of is the tool that the council's got available. So we can overlay overcrowding and any other kind of vulnerabilities and historic reports of damper mold and use that. But it's not quite manual, but it is work done by a data analyst manually, if you like. So it does take some time to build and to use. So you're absolutely happy to take that recommendation back and use it to support our support our pitch. We'll say we've got a clear recommendation. Okay, thank you. Yes, Dean, I'll take a question for you. I remember you was getting a team together for this damper mold and things like that. Did we work on anything about the pre maintenance to avoid the dam in the first place? You seem to be making smart houses, but smart houses don't make smart decisions. The fans I asked for to be replaced, these little cheap fans that you've got, Dagenham Council have these great booster fans in the toilets and bathrooms and kitchens, which make a massive difference. And to educate people as well a bit further, because just a leaflet or something would help a lot more because people with fish tanks and lots of garden stuff in the house and things like are actually adding to it. And what I have heard is people cleaning it with bleach, which is actually doing the opposite effect. So what happens to that team? More education, please. And when are we going to see results where this team is going to cause an effect? Because you've got so many flats and houses in, each one you cure would bring it down, wouldn't it? When are we going to see them sort of results? Yeah, there's a number of things in there, Dean, but if I just start, I think of the communication. So we have, we have renewed the information we provide on the website. We've kind of refreshed it. I think it's, I think it's easier to read and is more helpful as a result of that. And that's part of partly based on the feedback we've had from discussions at this meeting and so many engagements we've done. There is a permanent increase in staff resource, and there's a kind of still a above establishment level of investment that the council made. So there's a permanent additional provision of a million pounds a year for investment to reduce, alleviate the impacts and reduce the likelihood of damper mold. But we spent 2.7 million in the first year, so we didn't kind of limit it to that additional budget. And we just took it as a funding pressure in order to be able to respond to the level that we needed to. So while Matt's now has more diagnostic surveyors and more people out there, you can do a damper mold wash down safely. And they are increasing the amount they invest per dwelling. So if they need to, rather than just repair the defect that they identify, they can fit additional ventilation. I think we bought some information a few months ago, but we could always ask Matt to bring an update on it that showed the difference between the amount of ventilation they were installing, you know, sort of three years ago, compared to what they've installed in the last year. So they are, you know, as they need to, they can increase those things. So as you say, if households are, you know, if they are overcrowded, the reality is they will produce more moisture. So in fact, the only solution to that is to give people housing the right size, which we'd love to do. But frankly, we can't always, or to increase the ventilation. So yeah, so we are making like humidist that systems and increased kind of ventilation. Also, they, again, they can if they wish to identify like they are defining cold bridging or any areas of cold spots. What used to happen is they repair the leak or the defect, but they wouldn't carry out upgrades to insulation. So they wouldn't be providing additional and sort of thermal upgrades as a repair. And now they can do that as well. So our spend per dwelling is up and the hope is that that will start to reduce the prevalence of damper mold through that kind of responsive activity. And you asked a question about whether we've put on some things to kind of other things we've done to try and reduce it, you know, being present within the stock. And the other one which sort of, you know, comes to mind, I think was just sensible to put back in, was having a route and got a program that runs through the summer and autumn. And sort of, you know, clears gatters and gets leaves out and things that otherwise were creating problems. It was saved out a few years ago as lots of plan maintenance unfortunately was, you know, my view as a false economy. So we've reinstated that. So that should also provide some improvement. Okay, thank you. Unless there was a really burning question, or anything that our officers would like to add. And thank you so much. I know this meant to be on our last last week as a gender. And thank you for coming back to follow it up. If not, I'm happy to move on to next a really burning one. You have three questions, go for it. It's not supposed to be a fun, but this is a question. It's about the fire call outs. I think there was 650 to communal areas last year. That's almost two per day. Is this normal for a borough or? Can we have a straight one minute question answer to that? We have a lot of fire safety and FRA data, but I don't have those data sets with me. So we might need to send out a written response to you on that. If I ask for that over the last three years and give you a picture of it. That's okay. Okay. Thank you. So we get that for the next one. Councillor Bussman, do you want to introduce yourself? Because you're late for the meeting. And just ask you a quick question, please. Thanks, Chair. Councillor Bussman-Kwashi, Valerie from the Bonnehill Ward. I guess it's just a supplementary to Councillor Anister's question, Chair Chame. Just going back to looking at I guess people that are in private occupations are private tenants. All those that are having to rent, you know, that because we have different housing providers, etc. I can't remember all the names. But how much support are they getting in terms of having the damp, mold, etc. Because I've done that something that should always be something we bring forward. So wherever yourself or Councillor Una can give us just some updates or because for the next time I just think it's important to keep them in the conversation as well. Thanks. Thank you for that question. We do have a partners agreement with most of the landlords, Peabody, Clarion, and Onherzin. We meet them. A lot of them are quite far behind in the damp and mold. They're regulators and things are just going in there. So we've had three different hide, I mean, come to us asking us how to do it, how to go through it. They'll be in the same problem. So just as this weekend, I've been on the primary green estate. Lots of damp and mold there. Similar issues of, and they do have bigger fans in their properties, but there's still problems with damp and mold. So it is going to be, but we will give whatever advice. We will share anything, you know, best practices. We're on to London Councils all the time, you know, like it's not about, you know, we might end up because there is a lack of surveyors and everything and it's how we move forward to make every resident, whether you're renting privately, whether you're housing association, you know, some of the private renters are probably in the worst conditions because they're not reporting it, you know, and there are people renting and think if I go to my landlord, I'll be starting out. So we're on this all the time. Just to add, in terms of the private rented sector specifically, the Council has a licensing scheme operating in some parts of the borough and has done for a number of years. That's been expanded to include a further three wards this year and we're just developing an evidence base after Council is a directorless to seek the maximum coverage. We can provide evidence to support which we expect and to report on later on this summer with proposals to expand it as far as we can. That effectively requires landlords to register where they have property and meet certain standards and it and A, there's a charge for registration that enables us to employ environmental health and other offices to carry out inspections and therefore provide a better service to those tenants and where landlords fail to comply with those conditions, they can be served with enforcement agencies and fines and that does happen, you know, in the existence scheme. Thanks, Chair, because it's just reassuring for, you know, for residents to know that you are doing all you can and it's not always the sort of past the buck because I'm sure you can all concur that as Councillors, we get a lot of case work and sometimes the buck is passed quite a lot so thank you for that, Chair, and Councillor interjecting. Can I just add also that MPs meet regularly with their sort of people right to their MPs? It's not us as a landlord. We sit there, Ian and I, often meet with residents and other landlords just to keep an eye because you are a resident. If you live in this bar of private, whatever you are a resident. Thank you so much, Team and thanks to the officers as well. With that, it will be nice to have the officers sit back, but I mean, hey, look, the sun is out, it's a beautiful day and yes, you can stay behind, but if you have to really go, I can, I'm happy to excuse you. Okay, thank you so much. Let's move into the next agenda. Again, apologies to the members of the public that are here in the meeting today. Slightly bit, well, we are still on time. We're going to move into our main scrutiny review for the year, which is our new built, our new home built in Islington. We have got a draft recommendations that we are going to be going through as members around this and feeding it to the bit before I do that, I would ask a couple of the members of the public that are here to that we had, I believe we had joined last week that was just spoke to us last week. So I'm actually going to, this is, I'm going to go to the members of, because I think this might be quite helpful before we go to our final drafting of this document. So I will take our members and be open to probably take on one more, depending on, I see someone raising another, that's not actually on my agenda, but I would ask is Catherine here, Catherine, Catherine? Okay, great. Sorry, who is the power for you? No, that would wait because you were here last week. Then Jenny, Jenny, please, I'm still chairing the meeting. I would ask for Catherine, Jacqueline, to start first. Coming back to the time, I might give you a moment to be able to just refresh us because we heard what you said last week. Do you? Okay, that's fine. So, yes, you will be allowed to speak as well. So, TRA. Okay, great. How many of you want to speak? How many of the members of the public want to speak? One, two, three, four, five. And you're all from part of you. I know there's two groups. Okay, right. So, in that case, I'll let the power view resident work out two of you that can speak, and then I will go with the other residents. Well, you also want to speak. Okay, great. Which, which are you? Are you? Okay, we have an officer there for that. Great. So, can I start with the residents not from part view to speak? I'll give you three minutes and then we, I'll come back with if members have any questions that will ask you. Please just turn on the mic when you want to speak and then turn off afterwards. Thank you. Okay, hi, everyone. So, I'm the Jack Rogers. I'm chair of the Have a Sage Court, TRA. So, yeah, I've just got a few things to note regarding the new build project that's associated with our block. So, this new build project was given the go ahead in 2019. So, that's five years ago. And that was for new homes to be built behind, on the green space behind our building. And as of yet, no meaningful work has started on that. As a consequence, it's meant that a significantly sized communal play area and basketball court has been closed for nearly 10 years, whilst the council has been deciding what to do with this site. So, that amounts to a whole generation of children who haven't had access to that meanity, which is really significant. My partner and I have lived at Have a Sage since 2016. We worked with the TRA and we tried to work productively with the council over that period to help plan the building project for everyone's benefit. Over many public meetings and hundreds of emails, we negotiated improvements to our block that would be made as part of the new build scheme and designs were made and we were consulted, but nothing has come of that. In the meantime, there's been mature trees that have been chopped down on the site and a Victorian brick boundary wall, which has been knocked down and hasn't been rebuilt. And all of this, as I understand, has been a huge cost, you know, from the council's perspective and it's only had negative results for the residents. On top of this, a temporary heating system and a shipping container has been installed at the front of our block. This was supposed to be connected to the new build houses, which haven't been built. So, we've been living with this substandard temporary heating system for many years now, with no sense when that's going to get connected up. So, throughout this process, there's been a huge turnover of council staff and basic information hasn't been passed on. It's become obvious that the offices involved with managing these projects don't have the required skills to deliver them. Trust has been lost and the mental toll that this uncertainty has had in residence has been attested to by our local GP. So, the kind of long short of it is that from us, you know, our TRA perspective, you know, initially, you'd had our support for the new build homes and really, you know, ultimately, that's been eroded and now, you know, we're more towards a position that we just like our green space back. We'd like our bus group caught back and we'd like to stop wasting time really negotiating with the council, working with the council, paying huge amounts of unpaid hours into trying to make these, you know, good outcomes. And it's a shame because I think in our TRA, there's a lot of intelligence and experience and interest. And unfortunately, in our case, you know, we're getting to the point where we just, you know, walk away and spend another cycle of these, you know, they're going to process of trying to make things happen. So, I'll just leave it at that, really, but that's our perspective from Habisage Court. Thank you. Thank you so much. Does any member have anything to clarify from? I'm happy to open that. And also, I, we have the exec member here for housing. I'm in new build. That could, if you wanted to speak that, I cannot, but you don't have to, but I will first of all start with a member. If you want any clarification, we're not, they're not there for us to question, as officers, but if you want clarification, please go ahead. Well, I think one clarification that I would like is probably from the executive member to let us know if that scheme is going ahead and has the residence been told if it's gone ahead. Is this clarification? Yeah. And just before I ask the question, just really sorry for your experience as a residence. Just want clarification in terms of how many, I guess, face-to-face meetings there's been, because I'm obviously taking into account the pandemic, but also letters. I just want to know specific, you know, whether it's hybrid, whether, you know, just a list of all of that, please. Thanks. We have Alice is here, one of their officers. Can you try and give any clarification as a to those two clarifications, questions? So firstly, thank you for coming along. Always great to see residents who are willing to give up, yet more time. I've heard how you've kind of explained how long this has been going on in some of the frustrations around the process. Certainly an unfortunate kind of situation. From a council's perspective as well, we did have a scheme there that we desperately wanted to take forward and worked quite hard with the residents and the TRA there, but just couldn't afford to make it work. And that's caused a lag and a prolongation in terms of the impact of a scheme that wasn't able to be taken forward. And I know that certainly kind of more recently we've picked up those conversations again with the TRA more actively. One of our project managers, Sward, has been, I believe, quite hands-on, trying to kind of repair some of those kind of relationships that were really important to us. I can't commit to an actual answer to the council's question. Will that scheme proceed? We're working very hard to simplify a scheme, make sure that there is a scheme that works there, finding other investment to improve some of the areas across the estate. And we are also looking at how we can improve that kind of resident engagement as well, which we have recognised, even through this forum chair, that actually one of our recommendations that we'll pick up later is actually when things slow down in terms of process internally, it's the residents that often feel the impact of that because development is complex, there are lots of decisions to be made, lots of things that sometimes need to be moving parts that need to be organised to try and get a scheme to work. And one of our lessons learned is definitely that we don't always keep the residents informed as to what's going on, and we need to get better at that. And that's one of the recommendations that we're going to put forward tonight is how we can strengthen our resident engagement skills and resource so that we can be more open, be more transparent, be more present with residents. So don't want to take away the negativity of the kind of experience that you've shared with us, we are working hard to bring forward a scheme that will work, we want to kind of see those additional improvements, kind of undertaken in and around the areas that you live, we want to bring if there are amenities spaces that aren't being used, well that's a loss for the residents, it's also a loss for the council. So I'll take away some, you know, all the notes that I can around the feedback that you've given, I'll pick that up with the team and expect kind of further updates as soon as we can to be honest. Thank you, just your mic, thank you. Right, just a question to, not a question, just a clarification to the TRA representative here. Can you just tell me when was the last time you've actually, your TRA actually got any sort of comms or communication from the council? Do you mean from, like directly to the TRA, from the council representative to the TRA? Well, we, well I think it's we've been in touch with council to reopen the ball court and the playground, which has been closed for over a decade. We so we've been in touch about getting that done very quickly, because we don't want to wait for the new build program to go ahead or not go ahead, and that was six months ago. And we want a quick action, you know, in time for summer, and I think it might have been a longer time of going that we first brought this up, but so the responses have been inadequate, it's just we're going to look into this, we're going to look into this, if that's a response to do nothing, or to say that you're going to do something, then maybe it's been a month ago, perhaps, that we heard something about looking into it. Okay, thank you. I just wanted to know if there was a channel that was open in terms of conversation. If you don't just mind turning your mic off for me a second, thank you. Right, is this a clarification? Yes, yes, I would take questions as well. Right, so if this question is not going ahead. So, clarification is, as the residents quite rightly said, we had a scheme, a project that was planning consented back into 2019, and we attempted, I believe, on... No, just, yes or no, I don't need a political answer. Is this scheme going ahead? Yes or no? Okay, clarification, we are working on a new scheme to replace one that wasn't able to go ahead. I can't commit to a yes or no answer, there is... Okay, I think the office has made this position clear on that, so as much as I know you'd like to push further on that, we'll leave that go. Rose? I feel sorrow for the people that live in these conditions and I'd want that noted. I also want to ask for clarification on what can be done as a direct commitment today to bring back the facilities, that is the play areas and so forth that cannot be used at the moment, because having a build is one thing, but having facilities that you can't use and that adds to the frustration of tenants on the site and also built, we need to learn to do more with comms, we need to learn to communicate more. Most of the frustration is day by day people going on and not having any communication whatsoever. Now, when you asked your question to the resident around hearing from the council, she reported back that they've been contacting the council, so obviously there's been none, so we need to work out what we can do now as a commitment to make that work, because we have to learn from this, we have to learn from this, otherwise we'll be coming back month after month with problems. Let's see what we can do, is there anything that we can do to reinstate at least some of the play facilities and reinstate the comms and then take it from there. You say you're working on something, you need to let the tenants know, even if you can't let them know everything, something around what you're doing, because if they don't know, then there's frustration. Let's try and eliminate that. Thank you. Thank you. I see, I would actually at some point come to give any member of the public an opportunity to speak or to ask a question, but I see councilor Ward has raised hand to maybe reference to your direct question, so I don't know what you want to take down, thank you. Thank you Chair, and thank you for your point Rose, and thank you for coming along tonight. The first thing I want to say is that I am truly sorry for the experience that you've gone through. Now I could sit here and talk about how difficult it's been, how difficult it is to build council homes. I'm not going to, because this has gone on for far too long. You guys haven't had answers to your questions, and I could talk about how difficult the new build market is, this is pointless, because as the executive member with new build in my brief, the box stops here, right here, and I am truly sorry for the experience you've had. Rose has asked me what we can be committed to this evening, where Joel from Parkview came along to our scrutiny committee last time, and we immediately committed to come to the estate with the, myself as executive member, and Stephen Biggs as our corporate director in charge of new build, and we have that visit last Tuesday. What I can commit to you today is if you would have us for myself as the executive member and Stephen Biggs as corporate director to visit your estate with you as soon as possible, and look it away forward, if you would like to let us. Thank you. Thank you. I, Councillor, do you want to, this sounds like something you want to do? It's just really small, just to make a clarification, but from one stand that was 2019, so this is before COVID, this is before the inflationary pressures, it's been five years, so I know that the situation is difficult now, but where will we be for? Sure, and I think that's a very fair point, I think, I think with some great recommendations in the scrutiny report that we have before us today, and one of the lessons we have to learn is capacity, and having the right team in place, and communication, as you say, and this is, this is not just about the fact that new build is really hard, you know, like I could talk about that as for hours, as I'm sure you've heard me talking about that, Councillor, but I'm not going to do that because it's been gone on since 2019, and we do, in this Linkedin, because of the nature of this Linkedin, we've tended to go for small infills on estates because we don't have vast tracts of land, and I think one of the issue is having those lots and lots of small infills in play at once is that you need grip and pace and communication, and I think there's some really good recommendations in the scrutiny tonight. Thank you. I'm mindful that there are members of the, if the other members of the committee can just hold on to them, because remember we have to do the recommendation, hence why we wanted to hear from the residents, this might change things, I mean at the starting of record you wanted to move things, you might add things, but either way this does allow us to be a little bit more, our job as a screen is really about the resident, that's the most important thing, and as much as the running, so it was really important to kind of hear this before we finalise this part. Now I'm going to ask that, I'm going to ask that the members in the audience just ask, if anyone has a question, if you really have a question that you want to ask or you want to make a short statement, please just introduce yourself, speak and ask your question but that's all in three minutes. I'm Sarah Brakes and I live on part for your state, I'm chair of the TRA. I just wanted to ask Dermot, it was the same with us when John came to the last meeting, it's taken for us to come here before you come and visit the estate, why haven't you already been to have a stage court, like their story brings completely true with our story, slightly different with different timelines or whatever, but ours has been gone since 2017, you live across the road from us, like you can see what we go through on a daily basis, so why haven't you been already, that's my question. Thanks for your question Sarah, I have been to most of the new builds in the borough, we do have new builds on site Ross across the borough, but I fully accept I have not been to other stage and maybe there is a lesson for me here, because I tend to visit new build projects where we're actually on site and what's awful about the story of other stage quarters, we've never managed to get on site and that's just not acceptable, what you've been through. Just going forward, any questions that you have has to be addressed to myself and then I would, I have a signal, the exact member to take it on and who I think is appropriate to answer your question, okay great, thank you. I take it, can I finish? Sure, you can, sure. I was just going to say I do want to make this right and we all as a council and me personally as well, we want to learn lessons from this, so I can't change what's happened but I can't commit to coming to this state as soon as possible. Right, can I have someone else? Bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop. I know that tenants on have a stage court have given up after 10 years of fighting but I was actually started on 2017 and we didn't go to the press, we've really tried to work really hard with the council, we really have done our best, we've had meetings, we've started up a new TRA and I feel like Islington have really let us, the whole apart through down as residents, we have lived through some awful situations, we still are, we keep just being told that oh it'll be finished soon, that's not the point. The reciprocal work hasn't been done, maintenance hasn't been done, we've got major works coming on because these things haven't been done, we have been let down and there's nothing for us, like there's no kind of compensation, what I've lived through personally is horrific and I think people need to come when I'm not at work, like I need to be looking, like talking to people on my state when I'm at work, when I'm not at work and I really feel like we've all been let down and it's not just like Mulalees are just the ones that are building, it's the council that have let us down, they don't think of us as residents, you just said we're here for residents, I don't feel that way and I feel a lot of us on our estate do not feel that way, I feel like the council have really let us down in a big way and we're paying rent for what we don't even know anymore, we've got no estate left, we've had to fight to keep our ball court open and even then it got shut down anyway, we've got nowhere for our kids to play, it's all been, we've fenced off everywhere and I just want to know what you're going to do for us as residents. Thank you, I think you did raise the question, again we are sorry to hear about this, as a scrutiny committee this is our job to bring these things to life, so the council does work in some element because this is why this is inconsistent and I'm sure that a member of these committees will be recommending bearing in mind your experiences but you shouldn't have gone through any of this in the first place, so again we apologise for that, thank you. Can I give you two minutes please, thank you. So my name is OJ Weller, I'm a resident of part fear and have been for 21 years, I want to talk about what it's like to undergo a new bill consultation as a disabled resident, unknown MMB, I warn other people in the dire situation I found myself in to have a home and if that means being in convenience to some extent I can live with it, but to some extent does not come close to what we've gone through, our lives have been materially worsened in every way you can imagine psychologically, financially, physically, financially, mostly unnecessarily and the council's consultation processes and support for existence, existing residents is worse than useless, the council consulted us to death about the type of apple tree, the colour of a grass, the material of the benches but the things that really mattered to us we were ignored on, the contractors liaison officers have been a joke, they've been entirely ineffective and rather than being a conduit for information so problems could be resolved, when we've raised issues we access for emergency services, deliveries, service people and medical people, the contractor has said their success when I've got clear evidence that that was not the case, we've been having, I'm disabled as you can see I have mobility difficulties, we've had diversions put in place with absolutely no notice that take an extra six minutes which doesn't sound a lot to you but with a mobility difficulty let me tell you it's agony walking that extra distance especially when you don't know and you could have got a bus, this has resulted in loads of complaints out to outside bodies which has linked and council has then had to spend time and money responding to, the council's failure to show consideration for existing residents means you've lost our goodwill and this will make projects more difficult in the future, it should be embarrassed that the unnecessary pain and suffering it's caused when this could have been a textbook example of how to work with residents and a TRA, initially we were told there would be benefits for us, new storage sheds, gardens for ground floor flats, communal growing spaces, meeting areas, let me be clear we were told that these things would be happening, they were not suggestions, they weren't architects impressions, they were solid commitments until they weren't, when we were then gaslit and told these things had never been said and minutes weren't available as evidence, the council paid for offices to attend meetings often on social hours but for what, you didn't work with us, you ignored us and at best and deliberately gaslit us at worst, so my question is the part few new bill demonstrates that currently residents are not equal partners despite the council's policy that this should always be the case, how do you intend to revise your resident new bill consultation process and support for residents during these projects? Thank you. Does anyone want to clarify this? No answer the question, please. So again I don't want to just offer lip service here is quite distressing really to hear all the catalogue of issues that you've just kind of set out for us there, nor am I going to pretend to know every single detail to provide a response to each and every one of those items, I do know that particularly in response to Joel's attendance in the meeting the week before last it highlighted again through this forum, we shouldn't have had to have been the approach taken, some of the issues, a follow-up meeting was had, we've been exerting some pressure on the contractor to sort themselves out where they are obviously failing in terms of communication, so they've recently again, I'm not going to gloss over some of the kind of fundamental issues that you've kind of raised there and it merits absolutely kind of full of proper investigation to ensure that the recommendations that we're going to discuss here are adequate in terms of making sure that those mistakes and issues aren't repeated elsewhere, you know we have delivered a number of successful schemes and I don't quite fully understand why part view seems to be kind of undergoing some of the kind of issues that we haven't materialised elsewhere for similar projects, so there is a lot that we can do both now which is you know that is being actioned as far as I'm aware I will look into it again tomorrow, I know a newsletter is being produced that's going to provide some communications to try and kind of address some of the outstanding issues, I'm not saying that's the answer, it's going to hopefully provide some clarity on certain things that are outstanding, particularly around when the works are due to complete, which is within the next few weeks, we want to be able to celebrate with you when the work's complete, it sounds as though we've got some fixing to do before that can happen, so we want to kind of get that relationship back on where it needs to be both for part view residents but also making sure that those mistakes and issues aren't making all now for residents elsewhere. Thank you, Councillor Cuchew. So yeah I just want to express this at this stage, I've never heard anything like this so I do, I'm taken aback and this is quite shocking but I also want to thank the Chair for giving members the platform to do this because I wouldn't know otherwise and what I do want to say is considering our commitment to house people who are in desperate need on the waiting list, I am mortified that this has been your experience and actually has come to a point where you've been let down so badly that the people who are on the waiting list are missing out because I completely understand why you don't want to deal with a new build project again, so I think the biggest takeaway for me is that here, it shouldn't be the case and it shouldn't be at your expense and also I just want to add to before we move on, sorry Chair, that if we are going to give the facilities back, the play facilities for children, I wouldn't under any circumstances want them to be taken back, if we're going to reinstate them, I do want it to be a point that we don't reinstate it for a couple of years just to take it back because I think that would be actually quite horrible for the children who accessed that. Thank you, this is a strong point, is that a short point you want to make, I think I'll go one more and that's, that's a very short point, the council need to mobilise now and look at what is needed as Dermot said he's going to go or he's been there and he's going to go meet these people again, let's get a checkpoint list that these people need for their estate and work through how we're going to do this bit by bit with proper, not well you know we could or we might or definite checkpoint list, work through those checkpoint lists and mobilise, so people have a clear understanding of what their needs are going to be met and when they're going to be met and how they're going to be met, they need to see people from the council on the estate taking notice of what the experience of those residents are and bringing it back and let's do something about it. I don't want to hear anything other than oh well you know maybe and this is a learning lesson, it is a learning lesson but let's also mobilise and do something about it now. We've heard two weeks ago what from Joel and now we've come back again we should have had a clear plan by now of what needs to be done, we should have a clear plan of how we should move forward and we should have a clear plan of what these people, they wouldn't be here if we've done that, they wouldn't, would you be here? Right, thank you, that's my point. Yeah just to clarify, some of the members of the audience that I hear were expecting to have them at the last meeting as well. Look I made a decision as a chair to make sure we are committed hearing this resident because again I repeat the residences are the heart of what we do here as a committee. I'm sure officers, I'm sure exec members are aware of this and doing whatever work that needs to be done behind the scene. It is now that we as a committee that are aware of this information and like from the sources our residents that we're able to hold everyone accountable to what happens next. Up to this point some of this information was not really made known to us but that's not the case anymore so at least we can be a little bit more sort of precise in our questioning and what we would like to see and there's no reason why we can't even go and see for ourselves as well. Based on time I'm gonna take one more from there and I know you have a question but it's not directly with this but I would give you an opportunity to do so. Two minutes? Yeah thank you. Hi my name is LaChia Chapman, I'm a resident at Parkview. On the 8th of April my son Alfie who has autism and ADHD got caught on a piece of broken fencing on the estate and which through it tore through his shirt and punctured his skin. The same fencing in which that we had raised with Stephen Nash in January. We only had to meet in the first time we met a senior new build council officer after the council officer that a counselor Kay had dragged him there to see and so basically since then this was in January and then my son got injured in April yeah. I told my lales my school alley up you was there the other day I had a conversation with you. Allie then they then rang me and told me not to make a complaint in which I did. I still haven't heard back from the council on almost a month or the new build team I still not have responded even though I've seen you we saw you on this date when we did the walk round. I've had no response from any of you. I've had this nearly been for a month now this isn't perfect. It's a perfect example of what you've agreed and told us and then not followed through with right. Promises are always made and they're never kept. You need you need a total change of leadership. We need to be we need to be helped and none of you you can keep saying you're going to do this and that but I'm not seeing any change and now my son's been injured as a result and I saw you face the face Cedric, Robert Cedric told me he read my email but hasn't responded so what's going to happen? Thank you. You've raised quite a number of stuff there that I don't think it is necessarily for anyone directly here to give you all the answers because there's no one's respond however I would ask that the officers can send us an email directly to answer some of this question especially this one. I think that should be circulated to us as a committee member and I would ask that that is done before the 25th to this committee. That's what we would ask for and that is because for whatever reason I think we are still able to have to be able to get some clear answers. Clarification? Sorry, I didn't get your name. Who told you not to comply? Melanie. Who's who? They asked the officer, she called me and I said that an apology overfiring and this is the thing you guys keep passing the buck. You're saying it's not a useful. I pay my rent to isn't. Is it a council need to give me some response or something? I spoke to you guys face the face and it's not like an end as well. Okay, thank you. A lot more, this sounds a lot more like they said a lot there to unpack and they said like I said it is all for us right now. We're looking at the reason why you're in the rooms because we're talking about new build as a committee and this is all part of just gathering evidence so we know what the right recommendations are from some of these shared experiences. Some of this sounds like live cases itself and I'm sure there are processes there for them to be addressed but now that we're where we could ask further questions I could ask maybe as a councilor not as a committee but maybe as on our individual cases, councils do take on case work to say what's going on on those topics. So as much as I know that there are not nice experiences from what we can hear so far however we cannot really go into the details of those live cases if they're ongoing unless it really touches on to what we're doing as a recommendation right now. Joel as much as I would love to come to you just bear me a second. I would like to give the she has spoken please if you there's a mic if you could just introduce yourself and you can just ask the question. Thank you. Yeah thank you. Thank you so much. I would like to ask the question about addressing the mold really because on the ring cross state is the situation when I have difficulty of the breathing and I have like heart condition and I have problem even to take a bath because the ventilation isn't working and that is the reason the mode and condensation is absolutely horrible there. So what is the provision to look after and maintain existing ventilation please? Okay if you can just turn the mic off for us. Thank you although even though we're not dealing with more than them as a review topic because of your patience and the fact that you're here and their office is here as well. Exact member is here as well for that I would please if you can answer that question thank you. You did say the ring cross state. Yeah the ring cross state is high but councillors have highlighted this with me this week from I don't know they've been out door looking in case work so Hyde is your landlord responsible but we are in who's here tonight we've got meeting in the diary with the Chief Executive Hyde because people raised it so we will advocate on your behalf if you want to give me your details after because I'm not sure if it's yeah but they have you know two councillors have raised Hyde with us so if you give me your address I'll make sure your case as well is raised and I will get hired to directly respond and copy me in. Thank you so much we'll take that on. What is the provision for maintaining the ventilation across the incident if you could tell me in your program? So each so each landlord like people declaring they're responsible for their repairs their ventilation because it was stopped transferred so it isn't actually cancelled property but we can we can ask those I can ask any question if you like I can come outside and get some details. I understand if you could think about that it would be ugly and I have like my personal question because that is what I need to do. Sorry I'm really mindful of time right I did state that we are on currently looking at new bill and you've raised questions which I was happy to oblige in terms of to deal with mode and that which I have a and the council officer has raised to support. If your next question is directly to do with new bill I'm happy to take you know that it's not I would. You're always welcome to speak to us off after the meeting or maybe even come to the next meeting we always want members to come I mean residents to come thank you so much. So what was your name did we get a name from Angelica Angelica thank you very much Angelica right um I think we've had enough Joe are you at that last week is this 30 seconds for you because you were here last week please. Right and it's um it's just picking up on a couple of things that were in the minutes and the second the second draft document um there was some mention of the movement on the council regarding um overhaul of new bill comes which we're very keen on and the establishment of residents charter which also sounds like a good idea um there's also mention of um there was some understanding of things that were wrong with how this was delivered at part view um and it was mentioned that whilst those some of those reasons were understood they would they could be shared with the committee at a future meeting we'd just like to know when that meeting will be and hopefully that we can get involved with that meeting. Right um I have to be very clear I've raised my hand well enough and I'm not totally sure right so what I'm going to do I will get back and I'll make sure I leave is um with the team and the officers and I will personally reply to you and make sure we sure we we've got Joe's email yes we do and I will reply to you directly regarding that question that you've asked and if there's anything you want to add after that then we can do that. Great thank you very very much. Right um we have another member I'm in another um resident in the chamber she just happens to be a counselor too but I'm happy to give her two minutes um please go ahead. Okay just to be clear I'm here as a counselor as the counselor of all of the residents who have spoken um I just wanted to pick up one thing that happened after Joel came um last time there was a commitment to share with part few residents what the actual plans for the estate were after officers and counselors confirmed that block D was no longer going ahead my understanding is that still hasn't happened please can that happen I mean I feel ludicrous coming here and asking for things like this well all of this there is nothing that these residents have said that has not been put down in writing on multiple occasions I totally appreciate what counselor Osmir has said I think if I was in your place I would be very shocked but I think I counted up 176 emails about half the stage from myself we've had 16 meetings like something has to give it's not a question of no meetings or people not getting involved it is just I don't know I don't know what it is but this is this is not how I normally conduct myself I've been a counselor for 10 years it is crazy to me that I'm here I'm like I feel like I'm in you know the twilight zone you know supporting these residents to come here and share these things with you but being totally incapable right on this through my own efforts so thank you chair for your consideration and for allowing them to share their stories I really hope something's going to change because I believe in social housing so much it was the one thing I wanted to get done as a counselor and so far in 10 years in mild may ward one house has been built seven schemes have gone nowhere or been paused Parkview will complete we inherited that from hybrid we're not building any three bedrooms or four bedroom houses there that is what we need we all know that's what we need thank you thank you council okay um right we've heard enough again I want to say thank you very much to all the residents that are here again I I can I see that some of the stories that you've shared I've lived experience some of it are I don't think any of us members of this community we're just thinking no that's not acceptable look the council as much as complex the spaces with a lot of workforce there are still great and amazing people in here that are still doing their best to make sure we deliver services we are going to keep ensuring and keep making sure that this platform also does the part that needs to do to make sure that things are done differently going forward and we will make the right recommendations and again I just want to say thank you um the housing screening committee meetings are always open to residents to turn up depending on their gender we can take on question it was a very short agenda so that's why we're able to come in there all of you and look we appreciate you thank you for coming you're taking your time out to come here and I'm sure their offices and I'm sure the exact members and their community members are very very much in total um understanding of the fact that this shouldn't have happened and that will change thank you members we have a recommendation to make right um you could say you could go if you want to um and we're just going to go through this um can I ask um the officer to just go through them one by one we have 10 drafted one here we could amend we can add I would take feed from the co-op members as well um Rose you're still here with us thank you that's fine that's that's okay that that option is open to you and then so we need to look at this what I would say is no matter if if we come to a point during these recommendations that we'd really like to take you off to kind of look further into it I'm happy to do so but as much as the members will give me the um the authority to go ahead and do the finalizing part because that whatever happens we need to have this recommendation um signed off at the next meeting um I have to put that to members here um right so why we go ahead just before the officer stop on the very first draft recommendations are up there yeah I I it has been met known to me it has been met known to me I've got I've got a speech for this one uh-huh here we go um it has been met known to me that the responsibility for the staffing structure raised um rest with the chief executives the exec um which our recommendation goes to is that I'm already in the right one just explain this basically um as a committee you cannot make the setting recommendation you can make your recommendations are going to the executive not the not the chief and not the it's going to the next so your your recommendations must be in line with what you're supposed to do so for this particular one the first one which is about structure of the development of new homes which is basically the team you're basically kind of saying you want the restructuring to go there that is not the remit of their executive it's the remit of the uh chip exec so you can't do it so what we are going to do we're going to amend that uh recommendation one in such a way that it will just kind of advise and say you're not happy with the staffing or whatever that cannot stop but that is between the chair and the sorry going yeah oh it's just going to suggest chair and could it for example be the age with the chief executive to to review the structure or something along those lines yeah but it will be as we have conscious customers yeah yeah that that that's that's a possible wording um i would i would open to members um so i i think that clarification um dedicated to you councilor uno thank you um i i think um we've kind of got what we're dealing with that in terms of what we could who this can go to know it doesn't mean our messaging does um in terms of the recommendation shouldn't advise or strongly recommend that that is taken and again like councilor um water just raised in terms of um you know liaison either way i think that the general statement around that is still something that i think even after the record after the evidence today that we're probably going to feel a lot more to make sure that that is sort of worded or at least inclined to kind of let the um the executive to know that that's what we recommend is a um as a committee i'm happy to take questions on this first one actually do you want to officially read out the first one and then i'll go to the members please wait chair do you want me to read it all out word by word or just the first one all right we're going to do it one by one so first i was just going to add this is a commitment so as i think councilor has uh suggested rather than taking it as a recommendation the recommendation could be that we provide you with the outcome of the committed uh review of the structure and the capacity of the team so so can i reflect on for clarification this is a commitment this is happening so this is going to happen okay so then we're going to go with the housing scrutiny committee recommend it okay so in that case we're going to be a bit more smarter with our recommendation that we're going to put some timeline on it okay thank you um you can read it out and then we can go we can ask questions or add a little bit more is there no thanks chair um anissa thank you so much um i guess it's just about the culture then because um in terms of housing housing doesn't really partner up with say the planning side of things if that makes sense but we want to kind of have that merge a little bit more together so i guess going forward so we can avoid what we've even heard in the chamber this evening to kind of look at changing the culture so whereby we would only say for example work with certain i don't know like Higgins or whoever it is that is doing the new bills that work really well whatever it is to follow through a plan um so that things that don't collapse in terms of communication the workforce so let's look at the culture does that kind of make sense so are you are you trying to make a like an amendment what we have from the first one what what you've mentioned whatever remember this is going to exact this is not and there's actually a commitment on this now so we can reward all of this okay i'll let Rose come in i know we can go on Rose thank you i'm sure that disabilities could fit in with a lot of the different uh recommendations but the reason why i'm saying it at the first one is where it says on the third dot of the first thing um to ensure that specialist teams are available and we should make sure that somebody with disabilities experience is there because we heard a lady i think his name is Jojo talk about her her issues with disability and having nobody contact them and i think that that should be made specific and clear within the recommendation and not just thinking that could be read into another recommendation disabilities to liaise with disabled tenants on the site and so forth and so on so their needs are met okay thank you i'm just your mic just so that we can um thank you um did we capture that and um i can't go so i think she's I think what you're saying is based on the lady that Gabe mentioned about uh deserves some consulted and all the access issues and that you would want us on that third bill of point to amend it to incorporate the specialist kind of make sure that and the work just specialist was in between general you want it is specifically mentioned in disabled persons to be involved i would be surprised if that's not the council's policy generally i don't i would be surprised but thank you you know i am i am 100% sure it's a council policy but delivery is a different conversation you were going to clarify that i'm pretty sure it's a hundred percent yeah okay that lady was trying to say someone with disability issues for social homes that she had to put up with a lot but that every resident we would be breaking our own policies we have to take whether you got disability or not okay councilor i think the actual point the councilor bushman course she's getting at is actually contract contract liaison which is actually the point that the lady was making that the the contract liaison officers wouldn't keep them in forward of changes of path and things like that so i suspect that will form part of the recommendations anyway sorry but council bosma mentioned certain contractors Higgins and but we can't just say yes we know we can't be naming people in our country thank you so much sorry i i simply not i say i sympathize without it it is not been dismissed it is council policy and just and i would also i would also like to ask no no no thank you i would also just like to say that at this point of the meeting as much as i welcome having you know members of the public in the committee chamber um we would really appreciate that we can just go through this as because we have to come up with a recommendation at the end of this i appreciate that there was time given for that i know and and thank you so much thank you did you capture any of that a list of thanks chair um obviously there is an equality's impact requirement and as difficult as development is particularly the type of projects where we are you know inconveniencing residents on their estate by building new homes and in fact often it's it's it's not the construction of the new homes that's the most impactful it's the the additional improvements that come as part of the the kind of package if you like of improvement so i think the experience of part view there's no one here now but it's all the landscaping improvements it's the it which is spread kind of almost entirely across the whole estate and i have seen that in terms of contractors struggling to do that in the in the right way that minimizes inconvenience that provides the right notice of when areas are going to be dug up and you know diversions around the estate there is absolutely something that we we can capture in there around ensuring contractors meet their contractual obligations i'm just i think there was a resident engagement piece to that absolutely which i think is picked up under item three around inclusive accessible fit-for-purpose resident engagement this one's bit more specific to contractor performance which i'm not entirely sure that we've we've picked up so i'm happy to recommend that we know you can't do another recommendation you can't recommend a committee can take that board and recommend thank you but you're going to capture everything we say um i i do take down board actually yes that needs to come in um it's definitely there it sounds like from what we've heard so far from the evidence so far that there are over third parties that are delivering work for us that are not necessary up to standard or like you said contract tool you know okay first an example yeah sorry chair yeah okay that's fine i know i'll just take um is this on the number one please and then i will come to you then thank you thank you um just going back what was mentioned about um giving timelines because i think the first bullet point is almost been um and i think we need to talk about what it means it says council cylinder 15 new homes well i think it's actually to get these started so i think that needs to be rephrased so that it's actually clear and transparent what is meant by that bullet point i think we need a timeline of when this is going to be built by as well and i am mindful that this is essentially to empower the communication that happens between the chief executive and the executive member but just show that we need this to be urgent and then with regard to actually the point that was raised about the disabilities i'm talking about the first point the first bullet point yeah so just so just to um just to clarify i when i when i looked at well and when i was talking about in terms of timeline i was looking more in terms of the timeline that would be associated with a commitment that is now being made known to us around you know the team itself the structure around thing not specifically on the homes there are numbers of home i must say just to i mean that that that wouldn't be yeah it it wouldn't be a smart recommendation in my opinion i because we still need to get a feedback and about this but however in terms of the actual structuring that can be a timeline i'm sorry um yeah did i make no i can i just look right so just going back about what a smart target is but it's part of that recommendation i think the wording that says deliver the council 750 new homes for social rent i think that bit needs clarification and transparency what that actually means um so and as part of that um there's a commitment from the manifesto from this administration of what the timeline is and i think this space and that bullet point where that can be made very transparent and very clear and again as i understand the first recommendation is all about supporting the discussion with the executive um so essentially we're empowering and showing the urgency that this needed for this right size team to be i'm taking our ball we can go further into the conversation on around this um how yes but i know we're in time is it yeah just just just to kind of i guess i guess to clarify because i think i understand what council nester is um eluding to but i think it's specific about when we do projects now so instead of it being 750 it's about for each particular project we do the timeline in terms of how you know from engagements with residents to then you know what is the what is the the i guess the journey of how we get to where we're getting to before it actually comes to that role you know like closing parks or okay putting scaffolding up and etc i'm i'm mindful of timing now and i want to i want i want the recognition of conversation to be a little bit more sort of um you know narrow than targeted a little bit um haven't looked at the recommendation i will and kind of encourage members to look at the bolded part of the recommendation model that the bullet points are it's given us a lot more deeper clarity on it and i mean we can have hundreds of those right but i want that sort of the bold part worded to be quite strong enough to be able to realize or even touch on what you've raised the bullet points are more sort of there's a lot of back and forth questions where we would need to ask or to get the answers for in other for us to recommend because we couldn't really um some some of those are positioning that might be political and we're not doing that in the committee we're just recommending so i i i couldn't i i think i will not be doing it any justice to be able to you know go into that area so um so with that i still think we're not coming to some sort of um because this is a round number one wedding no one we already been told that we can't be asking for restructuring directly but we are now going to be saying something along the line that was actually raised by the team that might be to liaise with um the chief executive in reviewing the structure of the development new home team to ensure consider that right it's entirely within the executive skips to liaise with the chief executive okay great and what i was going to ask the um members of the committee to put a timeline to that the liaison timeline um sorry chief sure most recommendations we don't actually put timelines to that because uh it's a difficult you can't you can't thank you very much members of it please please you can't do that okay great so in that case um i will look further into that and if i am able to i will circulate something to members and then we could go further because of time let's go to the second one thank you right um the second one um do you yeah so review alternative funding into delivery models uh edspv and consider whether direct delivery by the council is the most effective and valued for money model now this um basically emerged out of the the witness evidence that was provided by b first a council owned company operating for barkin and dagenham and they they sold themselves very well and their model very well and so that's something that we want to have a closer look at um i don't know if we really yeah i would that members go true um but i would say um what we're doing we're really trying to eliminate that options or know if it's viable or not but i let members come in um i think it's good to be on there go for it i've got huge concerns about this um and i kind of disagree about not the wording in the bullet points not being important because the devil is in the detail and the bullet points exemplify what's written involved um my big concern is hearing today about residents um not having great correspondence with the council um and then essentially creating an independent development company even though potentially being the shareholders of it that's passing the buck so um for me as a minimal i would like to get the wording of council on development company removed but actually review or i think it is far deeper um understanding of what the options are for the whole world of that bullet point uh potentially even given the restrictions of what should be looked at that was valid point any other can i just come in a bit about that um this is just no it's i what i'm just trying to say council owned companies sometimes for when we go out to get money so you know like our ta accommodations we're buying back i just think that that i'm not saying we should do it but i think it that way i've read it is you're looking at it you're just looking at it is not saying thank you i'm saying thank you i'm in we i don't think we've actually said to um we've not actually said um from even what was written that we want them to jump on it we we do want it eliminated but um the member is quite right to also raise based on what we've heard to make sure that maybe we'll look at it in a different um the wording so i'm happy to consider that position um but i would do you want to give us the right wording i'd rather not the right wording but also just to raise that um isn't a council is recently or the executive could executive have closed the independent company of isn't and that did exist um i go uh from my understanding that wasn't so um there's um council owner please don't please go on you are member you're not to speak yes just to say uh they they've uh they closed it so i think there's a track record of not necessarily having the right skill set um to have an independent company as part of this london council i think um that's a point to echo exactly why in the wording um again we can we can go back and we've taken down note that we've listened to what you said and i would suggest for the wording again because we will reseculate this and i will probably do it over email from member to just say yes if you really feel contested about it i'm happy to take what you said on board i actually think you've made some good points there so we do need to kind of look at the wording correctly and especially with the examples that you set out as well okay thank you um can i can we move to the third one please thank you review and improve resident engagement to ensure it is inclusive accessible and fit for purpose yes please um just from feedback today from um residents and also my own personal experience um just with this i think the biggest issue that came was the issues with the contractor and if it seemed like a lot of the responsibility was for members to kind of liaise with a contractor without a council officer accountable so i would say i would recommend that there is an allocated council officer who liaises with residents and then they can liaise with the contractors instead of leaving that with residents because that's really stressful and again it's a council project so i feel like if the contractors aren't performing the council should be held accountable are the performance indicators for counselors i mean this goes this isn't within my expertise but are there legal clauses that if a contractor isn't delivering there are fines penalties like yeah so i feel like the council needs to be accountable for that okay thank you and that's taken and i think that should be reflected i'm sorry then i should have called you too it's okay to refer us back to the other team if you have to go for it um i believe we do have liaison we did this before in this we have liaison officers so why do we need another officer all this seems to be cost piling up for what we've just read there's something missing there's something big someone's there's a very bad expression in the building game but i won't use it but someone's got to be accountable for all of this and it's like we haven't got a wishing well and the money's going out at the back door it's an expression that i believe all members feel and we're still trying to maybe partly why number one recommendation was there because maybe that's where we will find out what exactly going um cancel award i was just going to say that there is of course a system of contract liaison resident liaison but i think the committee's point is that some of the things we've heard maybe that system isn't working as well as it should so i think there's no there wouldn't be an issue i think with just we could tweak it slightly and say review the system of of contract liaison or something along those lines that if that's what that was satisfied dean's point something's got to be outside the counts someone's got to stand there not working for the council not working for the contractor and stand there and put you to write this is late if we do this in the private sector we get up to 50 to 150 thousand pound fine a week for being late you know there's loads of things that were not good thank you i do believe that the officer did raise this um earlier on about the contractor part as well and i think this is what is echoed again do you want to come back in i think it comes back to previous council's point as well as there there is a culture and so there are there are many things that overlap here so contract to performance would include their communications their resident liaison um from what we've heard from part of you uh especially there is it there seems to be a gap or maybe an over alliance from council officers on the contractor um to to do that messaging uh and kind of engagement with the residents um and if the contractor isn't performing then we know that that's not going to work so it's tying up the this this is to review what's broken within that um that chain and and looking at how we can provide that accountability so resident's charter commitment there is is actually a way of setting out this is this is what the council commits to before we even kind of put a spade in in in the ground there and we can help be held to account to it so that's that's why that's kind of part of that recommendation um but some overlap with the contractor performance okay thank you again things have been captured i can't wait to see the next regulator one again around this um i all right i moved to four i moved to four um well sorry councilor yes um are you speaking as a resident or are you speaking as a councilor well you did bring quite a lot of evidence i'm more than happy to actually hear your your view on this thank you um so i'm i'm seeking to the point above um as dean has said there is already a person responsible for this and that is the project manager and i should say that um i dealt with ten different project managers in ten years on various projects and many of them have been very good they are the most junior offices within the new build team and it is about supporting the ones who are doing that role well there is no need to create extra roles and most importantly i think the first point and i think that because of a conversation that i had with a senior new build officer on this topic seems to suggest that there needs to be high level engagement support from outside a lot of the time and a lot of other boroughs there are consultants that are hired to do that engagement support my view is that doesn't help it doesn't help with accountability it obviously doesn't help with expense it is a cultural issue if there was a clear responsibility from the top to give say monthly reports about all of the problems raised in a state and how they have been dealt with i really think we would have solved a lot of these issues by now because in the case of parfue it is not the case that malaliz is a bad contractor i actually think they're in very difficult circumstances quite good in that the person who leads on site you know gives out his number to everyone and deals with things that really aren't for him to deal with most of the problems that i've seen have been on the council side and they have been a question of accountability so let's not suggest that we need to go elsewhere we've got a lot of what we need in house we just need a really different culture in the way that we deliver things thank you so much council okay i think that was well put yeah and was captured yeah okay looking at the recommendation we have to for i think there's some one of the recommend one of the recommending point that i think what council okay just said would probably meant that we have to play around with so let's go to number four yeah i think four is covered is anybody anyone else speak on them four directly okay fine this was this point then this we've had this quite true the review and i think it would be justice for us to express that let's go higher okay i think that's done six now um face i haven't heard um and also looking at the timeline some of the conversation that's been raised number six um i i strongly feel that it should be um looked at because if we're gonna approach it that's gonna go for so long and if they're timeline to actually build stuff we're a little bit um faster why not it's never we've never looked at it i saw i would love to know that there we've done all the work around to know if this is viable these are the some of the conversation that's going forward um if we were to get at those lines or if we were to move at pace this is partly some of our solutions so this is why i feel about number six um i think we are of age to allow um to really look into this even on a pilot scale go for it thank you um and it's because you're from the council office of the team it's not just um i guess for my own observation um looking at barnet schemes they've got a lot of new builds and developments i'm not saying they're better than us so you know i'm just why i've noted in terms of when they've done something that we've tried to do or we've done actually and is there something that we can look at where other councils are for example i just feel because we heard from the resident's experience i just feel we can't ignore that now and the fact that i know there's been other projects that we've tried to do in addition to that haven't gone forward but not as detailed sorry as bad as that when i've gone switch if i just quickly finish um i just want i know you don't want to commit to timelines i understand why because there's a process and you guys will know that because that's what job you can recommend and it's not to the offices to decide yeah so there's a site that's um in barnet and i've seen it they've been to build that and secure i guess i want to support you that information to say that it got built in a year okay thank thank you um you can send that i mean obviously some the conversation we have in about every recommendation is based on what we've heard in this room um especially on the evidence gathering and things like that i think from what i can pick up from what councilor um postman questions trying to say is that number six should be looked at strongly and that's how we feel about that we want pace we want time fast and having heard some of these things um if we're looking at these options maybe if these projects were a bit faster maybe we will not find out some of these issues and and hearing about you know people losing their playground and things like that so it's almost like people could have carried on how i mean having their playground and this thing could have just been put out there once we were ready to make it happen and that's why i think it's really worth looking at prefabs things like that in my view um and we've heard that mentioned by i think one of the other councilors as well i don't want to dwell on this unless anyone really object to number six but i think you should just stay and maybe work better yeah thank you not still we're still not um we're no more doing uh review we're recommending so please thank you number seven um number seven um commit to delivering yes let's go forward yes anyone object objecting additions yeah okay please go for it okay um i think um there doesn't need to be an emphasis on uh low energy and passive house standards because i think there's nothing explicitly currently in the first bullet point um and i appreciate that it's part of uh climate resident housing but i think that would be quite useful if that's mentioned um and um also based on the last meeting that we had i think there was um a mention of that in the future isn't the potential we'll have 95 percent uh homes heated by um a heating network um and then i think there's a question to be asked about uh boilers um or moving away from that as well and i'm not not entirely sure about the wording but um i think it'd be good to see where we're heading where we currently are um and how we can move quicker okay um yeah i mean it's a lot it's more sort of like data but i think if we can capture the the wider i'm happy to return of some words i'm sure i'm happy to perhaps sit down okay go and just i guess to piggyback um off that point he's just about somewhere in there where um it talks about the recyclable kind of element in terms of when we've had projects maybe not go ahead we've had things taken away and how we utilize that material because i think that's something that's really important for us to use as well if we can just word it in there yeah thank you i think um that's captured that's not sure okay great um where am i number eight um right so now number eight was around um when we're looking at this was around the fact that um a lot of the thing that came up with viability viability viability for us to build in this to be viable and for most of the time the viability conversation is around a number of these um projects having areas that probably sold off as um you know shared housing or whatever that might be um i think for us looking at the fact that we start from the number of people that are in islington that are not affordable there's a lot of conversation around unaffordable for people that islington resident we looked at issues around numbers of families that are probably can never be so what we were looking at this recommendation was part of our viability should be tied into keeping islington families here in islington if it means they have to buy that's fine but we're keeping islington families in islington because it cuts through a much bigger um area of conversation um we want um offices and you know exact members to kind of look deeper into this around how do we um if we're going to be viable how do we use a viability vehicle as part of keeping families in islington because on average um family in islington could not possibly be able to afford to buy anything in islington and if we're building as a council and we are trying to be viable let the viability be targeted to islington resident not external that was what their recommendation was about um please go ahead bear with me i'm a little bit excited about this one um i i will start with uh suggesting if there could be a working group for this um i feel like because there is so many opportunities um to kind of explore what could be done um so just from the top of my head um i know it says um those who don't meet the criteria for traditional social housing and obviously i would want the private rented sectors to be involved in that because i know that you know with the price of rent is just completely unaffordable but i was also thinking about council tenants who have applied for right to buy and given them an opportunity to purchase the new builds so we can free up so that council home is not bought and that obviously frees up a council home for those on the waiting list um and if the same discount could be applied that would be applied for them and secure and funding for that that's just one suggestion or to explore um and also obviously creating a register um for eligibility what the eligibility would look like and such as living in islington for the past five years and being a council tenant etc and lastly um similarly to the local plan that not the local plan but if you live close to an estate you get kind of priority that should be applied for potentially buying it and i think we could secure funding if it is you know covering the cost of the deposit or a discount so a working group would be great i i totally work on that um councilor i mean i work on the principle of let's explore absolutely everything so i'd be really happy to explore this i mean from what i don't understand this is about maybe trying to sell some of the private homes that we built at a discounted rate to existing residents who wouldn't necessarily apply for social housing but nevertheless cannot afford to buy or rent in the in the borough absolutely yeah that the way the viability for most of our project should also be targeting to a resident because we need to keep families in this thing too yeah i agree and that should be but also i feel like in terms of viability we pay so much for temporary accommodation as you would know and if we threw up a council house we could use that for temporary accommodation so it would still be a saving in that context as well can i just make one tiny point chair sorry the only i think it's well worth exploring the only point that would make is it's always a trade-off if there's something that goes into helping someone buy a private home that's something that we can't use to but to build a council home but i do take the point and we should explore everything yeah i mean i like the way that you mentioned the working group i think that is actually a good way to the to wider of the conversation why this is being reviewed and looked at right um i think they say unless anyone strongly feel um opposition to that number i can move forward to the next one no okay right what's the next one on my agenda um number nine right right this was just about building jobs and opportunity i can't really see anything wrong with that it's a recommendation we can move on that's fine cool okay sure thanks chair no i like the recommendation no i like it but i just sorry chair and i just think sometimes we look we look at things too far away and i i get why we might do that but i think i'd low the the the time that says over the last five years or my reading is wrong contracts oh yeah i just want a timeline so like to review it every so maybe this makes sense like maybe one year two year one and a half because i think with um because they're living and you know it's like keeping families here and initiatives for like um i think the the brief of council of bradford i think that'd be a nice tie-in with the housing i believe um council of bradford's brief is to do what commercials i'm right we think so that might be different they do have a lot of other you know ways of hitting this part i think what we're trying to do was to also include that in you know residential new bill council-led projects so it's slightly that's a slight difference so i'm but knowing that it all fits into one directory i mean there's a wider conversation to have around them sure go on absolutely um it's part of the council's progressive procurement approach it's inclusive economy it all has to kind of overlap so creating social value but what does social value mean well actually it means employment opportunities and training and giving giving residents a chance and if we can do that very local to where we're impacting residents through construction um then we should try and be more targeted and strategic around them thank you right number ten hmm i think that's pretty straightforward we need to know what we are doing what do we have or have we built any objection no i think that was quite um do members have any i mean ten is always a good number do we have anything we would like to add as go for it go for it um i don't know if it was explored at the last meeting but um lifetime homes um just looking at kind of when we are building new builds just making them like lifetime homes for those who have mobility issues if it's a fraction a portion of the number of homes but i think that should be kind of part of our recommendation apparently everything we recommend we have to have i'm trying to evidence on it wait i'm just trying to work that out so when you get a tendency do you want me to be clamped by yeah just know that i'm clear in mind no it's just when it's new builds just making it um long-term accessible so even though there are future yeah future proof yeah so yeah yes i think you've you've raised this yourself when you were talking about some of the early projects very early on um we set out uh in fact everything that we build it meets what used to be called lifetime home standard it's now been kind of absorbed into building regulations so that's a minimum standard that we have to achieve um and then we go beyond that to provide adaptable or accessible in a wheelchair housing so we could they're planning requirements around that but something again that sets a minimum standard so where possible we should we should always look to improve on the minimum standard so i'm happy to take a recommendation on can we improve the number of accessible housing to meet you know kind of specific specific housing demand I think that could fit in at number three oh it's no the accessibility and feature purpose i don't know because how small president engage yeah but because of resident engagement so maybe not but yeah number seven yes i think i still i'm trying to keep it ten okay okay thank thank you okay um we'll do it that way now um just to if not uh mindful of time and thank you so much so i'll delegate the wording to the officer and myself and vice chair and i will come back to the committee as well um but just to say that we we definitely need to get the recommendations signed off at our next meeting right yeah so um any sort of whatever draft that one has now would put them across to you you feed in whatever that is if there's not directly feeding um if you feed in and there's a response um and there's any true objection please try and get any another member to echo the same thing you've said if to second it if not um if it's just not enough people to object to and then i will just be assuming that everything is fine speaker no no no that's the next one no that's that yeah that's another one um their information i did request that was um that that will be coming before yeah it will get to us there was a reason for that date just sure sorry just uh can you clarify the the date of the next committee just 13th yeah 13th okay um just to okay so um if not um i would just say thank you everyone i think it was a new interesting meeting i think having residents here was it's quite impactful and in a way um uncomfortable even for myself but it's needed and then i'm and i appreciate all of you for taking that on and i'm sure you take that on as even case what you did be i appreciate everyone thank you [BLANK_AUDIO]

Transcript

• No, no, no. I'm perfectly fine over here. (laughs) Good evening, everyone. My name is Councillor Jason Jackson, and welcome to the House of Scrutiny Committee meeting. First of all, apologies for the let's start. This is very unusual not to have a Quarit members. We need to have a minimum three Councillors, four Councillors for us to be able to go ahead with the meeting officially, but we can have this meeting as an informal meeting, however, going forward. But any decision-making cannot be made for at this meeting unless we're a Quarit. Am I right? You're referencing that. Okay, so with that, I would ask the members that are here, and also the residents and the co-members is what to introduce themselves and the officers starting from the right.
• Hi, I'm Councillor Gortchen, I was the main member for Tacknell Park.
• Councillor Nesters to go over Sam Strongfall Highbury.
• Rosewood Donald, a PFI observer. Dean Donigay Co-op, team resident observer.
• Councillor Dermot Ward, executive member for finance planning and performance.
• Okay, Councillor Uno, Halloran, ex-eckman, fountains and communities.
• My name's Ian Swift, director of housing operations at hisington council. Jedd Young, acting couple of director of hams and neighbours at the council.
• Alice DeGail, currently acting assistant director of the Nubil team, hisington council.
• We do have members of, I can see quite a few members of the public, and more than normal, that we'll have on the committee, it's a shame, we didn't have a full-quality meeting for that. However, we're happy to always have residents here in the chamber. If need be, I will give opportunities to members, I mean, sorry, the audience to be able to feed into some of the conversations we're gonna be having, which is informal now. So maybe you could even say more. However, this meeting has been webcast, and also, at any point that a meeting becomes quiet, we might be able to start making decisions. However, just some housekeeping. If there is any fire alarm go-self, please do follow my instruction, 'cause we're not expecting any fire alarm tests today. We clearly have apologies from the Vice Chair, Councillor Chico Uno.
• Graham. - And Graham.
• And Graham. - I'll make go-gun.
• I make go-gun. I think for lateness, we do have Councillor Bosman. For the members that are here, do you wanna declare any interest? Okay. Right. I don't have any report outside of we ongoing work around the draft recommendations. Informally, I would like to go into the first point in the agenda, and that was an agenda point that was moved from our last meeting. Just to ask which of the officers would like to introduce this, or is it the member who's doing this? Go ahead.
• Apologies, sorry. This is the report we've bought last time, yeah. I'm happy to, all the committee's read it and just take any questions from the last meeting.
• Do members of the committee have any direct question? Lots. Go ahead, you have a free floor.
• Thank you, Chair. I think I'll probably just take it one at a time. And then obviously, 'cause you and please do interrupt. So, just with regards to the report, I think you're open up by mentioning that we've had a positive housing ombudsman report, and I think it is worthwhile to reflect on that word because I think the initial report, I wouldn't describe as positive. Obviously, the developments since then have been positive, and I think what we've come to be good to update, I don't know if it's official yet or not.
• Yeah, just before I hand over to Jade, when I said it's a positive, if I said that a lot, you know, I'm not excusing that we were in front of their housing ombudsman, and I was, 'til the day I have housing, we'll apologise to anyone we've done for mold, and we do need to do better. Only if in a council flat, you know, we've got to look after our residents, so I'm gonna put on record again for anyone out there, apologies. I'm not saying, Hey, look at us, it's positive. The outcomes, we worked very well with the ombudsman. We were the first council to have an open forum with the ombudsman in here, where residents on screen, in the audience, got to grill us all, so I'm gonna pass to Jade now.
• Yeah, so just specifically to answer your question, we've had formal confirmation that the ombudsman satisfied that the council's implemented actions against each of their recommendations, so they've discharged their monitoring period, so we have had that formal now.
• Yeah.
• Yeah?
• You have a free floor?
• Oh, okay, next one there, in the report you mentioned about reducing car parking base and garage voids by 55%, and I know that as part of the new build, we're actually looking at converting garages, so I just wonder if there's a conflict involved there, what the garages, is that part of that process of converting them to housing, how we managed to achieve a 55% decrease.
• So I'm gonna end up picking up on the first instance, so primarily that's just by improving our management procedures, and providing a better and more responsive service to people who need parking allocated to them or wish to have parking allocated to them. There is a balancing act for the council, so obviously we have a large and wide climate commitment to try and reduce vehicle ownership generally, as a matter of course, lots of measures have been taken across the organisation, try and reduce people's need to have motor vehicles, and there is a balancing act for us as a landlord, as well, with opportunities that may come through things like the new build programme, as I think you've seen in previous meetings, where we have converted some garages into additional accommodation. When we rent out garages for storage or vehicle use, they're rented under licence, so if the council were to find a successful conversion scheme to deliver additional accommodation, we could reallocate those spaces. But yes, there is a balance in all uses and priorities.
• Jack, thank you, Chair. Next question is with regard to the 100 remote sensors that I think have been installed out of 1,000, so we're looking at 10%, which is not a great take up. I just wonder whether that figure has changed, is there anything else that we can do?
• Is this in relation to the environmental monitoring of capital? Yeah, so it's part of a pilot program. We're going to be using these things more, so having connected technology within our building gives us more information, and in many cases, we'll remove the need for residents to tell us as a problem because the equipment will report itself, will report faults. So that's certainly the case where I live for renewal. With the damp and environmental monitoring sensors, we're testing it, and it's very much in consultation with and with the agreement of individual residents, so I've been quite surprised at the limited take up of it. We'll continue to kind of offer and promote it. It might be that as they've been in place for time and people get to learn a bit more about it, it isn't about us, they just reported on humidity and temperatures over time effectively, and given us information of humidity rises above a level which could then generate a damp and mild. But yeah, so there's been a level to take up. What we'll be doing, and I think slightly later on in the next committee cycle, we'll be bringing in the changes coming through the repairs, the new repairs policy and some of the changes the services are working on. What we expect to be able to do over time is to have, both as in the case of lifts, with other elements of buildings which are able to report on their condition or their performance, residents won't then have to tell us as a need to repair. Those devices will trigger an automatic appointment being made and there will be a contact made that way. So it is the first step in a series of steps. I think with this is something we've just started out using this year. It's provided us with some specific examples that have been effective. It's fair to say, yeah, either we're not communicating the benefits of it well enough to residents, or those people kind of just trying to mull up whether or not they want to allow this technology to be used within their homes. So the take up hasn't been as high as we'd have thought it might have been. We'll kind of continue to kind of monitor that and seek to improve the way we communicate, how we plan to use them and the benefits they provide. There is a very low energy consumption of those devices, so it isn't going to change people's kind of right cost, cost of occupation. But I think some of those things just take a bit of time for people to get used to, it's my sense.
• And just to add to that, some London Councils, I've put sensors in with that, you know, like where their voids are. They're just putting them in as a matter of we're actually asking people. So, and I think I'm talking to London Councils all the time. I can't get it if you've got a void and you put them in a property. I can see the benefits, but like Jed said, it's about testing trial. And then we, you know, down the line, if it's giving you information, this would give us readings and give families, you know, and it's all about trying to make it easier, trying to get ahead of damper mold and humidity, so.
• Right, can I just follow up a question and I'll come to other members. The data that is currently collected from this, is this directly fed straight into a system that we have? Or is there instead of any hands-on, someone having to go and read it or anything?
• Yeah, so it is a smart system. So, it reports directly, goes onto a dashboard that feeds into repair service. So, the technology is the same system we're installing for our new fire safety installation. So, the same thing happens there. So, they will automatically test themselves and they'll notify us if there's any fault. So, we can respond to faults. It's effectively doing the same thing, but it's doing environmental monitoring. So, it does temperature and humidity over time. The data just feeds into a dashboard. If the humidity goes above, I believe it's 55%, a threshold level, then it kind of, it traffic lights those properties. So, kind of highlights that there's an issue. But it's still relatively new, and I think it's still a kind of developing area.
• And they're just still out to that. So, is this the reading of the data, how is that analyzed itself? It's what tools are being used. Is this some AI tools, or it's just used sort of the same system that we have?
• Yeah, so currently we don't use any predictive AI algorithms. And I am aware that there are some people piloting the use of algorithms to try and predict and search for potential areas for repair. So, this one in a sense works at preset levels. So, we've set a humidity level that if that, so those 100 properties, in fact, actually there is somebody periodically looking at the list. But if any of those 100 get a humidity level above 55%, that property gets kind of lit up and is an alert for it. And the more, I think as more information gets built into buildings and the systems get more complex, we might have sensors installed in new roof installations or in rainwater goods or other aspects. If we end up with a lot of data, but I think those kind of algorithms that help us sort it and find problems will become sort of increasingly useful. But at the moment, we don't make use of any AI algorithms looking for predictive stuff. Something personally, I'll be very keen for the council to do. There is a work stream, there's a colleague in our digital services department who is looking for areas of automation and use of deploying those kind of low level AI tools to kind of algorithm sorting tools. We're pitching to be in their kind of first, or the early tranche of how the council might use that, but it's still a little way off.
• Just to find one of that, I think as we all know as a council, we sit on historic data. There's probably more likely there's a pattern that develops in terms of data that we sit on, in terms of the number of people that lives in a particular home. And those data you're getting from the systems itself is more likely the more than them develop much faster if the number of people in the home was a lot more. So there are data that we sit on that at least we need to be able to cross match those data in order for us effectively. So yes, it's good to know you're bidding for that 'cause I think in law and honesty, having those data are not being maximized with the ones that we already have in-house. In my view, we're missing something there. So I would encourage that the team look further into that 'cause that would be quite useful in terms of dealing with this issue.
• Yeah, thanks, Chair. I think that's a really sensible recommendation. So what we have done to kind of overlay those data sets is I think we shared an example of it with damper mold specifically is we have overlaid data sets and use tools that the council has at the moment. So Power BI is the tool that the council's got available. So we can overlay overcrowding and any other kind of vulnerabilities and historic reports of damper mold and use that. But it's not quite manual, but it is work done by a data analyst manually, if you like. So it does take some time to build and to use. So you're absolutely happy to take that recommendation back and use it to support our pitch. We'll say we've got a clear recommendation.
• Okay, thank you. Yes, Dean, I'll take a question for you.
• I remember you was getting a team together for this damper mold and things like that. Did we work on anything about the pre-maintenance to avoid the damper in the first place?
• You seem to be making smart houses, but smart houses don't make smart decisions. The fans I asked for to be replaced, these little cheap fans that you've got, Dagenham Council have these great booster fans in their toilets and bathrooms and kitchens, which make a massive difference. And to educate people as well a bit further because just a leaflet or something would help a lot more because people with fish tanks and lots of garden stuff in the house and things like are actually adding to it. And what I have heard is people cleaning it with bleach, which is actually doing the opposite effect. So what happens to that team? More education, please. And when are we going to see results where this team is going to cause an effect because you've got so many flats and houses in, each one you cure would bring it down, wouldn't it? When are we going to see them sort of a result?
• Yeah, there's a number of things in there, Dean, but if I just start, I think of the, so communication, so we have renewed the information we provide on the website. We've kind of refreshed it. I think it's easier to read and is more helpful as a result of that. And that's part of partly based on the feedback we've had from discussions at this meeting and so many engagement we've done. There is a permanent increase in staff resource and there's a kind of still a above establishment level of investment that the council made. So there's a permanent additional provision of a million pounds a year for investment to reduce, alleviate the impacts and reduce the likelihood of damper mold. But we spent 2.7 million in the first year, so we didn't kind of limit it to that additional budget. And we just took it as a funding pressure in order to be able to respond to the level that we needed to. So while Matt's now has more diagnostic surveyors and more people out there, you can do a damper mold wash down safely. And they are increasing the amount they invest per dwelling. So if they need to, rather than just repair the defect that they identify, they can fit additional ventilation. I think we bought some information a few months ago, but we could always ask Matt to bring updates on it that show the difference between the amount of ventilation they were installing, you know, sort of three years ago, compared to what they've installed in the last year. So they are, you know, as they need to, they can increase those things. So as you say, if households are, you know, if they are overcrowded, the reality is they will produce more moisture. So in effect, the only solution to that is to give people housing the right size, which we'd love to do. But frankly, we can't always, or to increase the ventilation. So yeah, so we are making like humidus that systems and increase kind of ventilation. Also, they, the gain they can, if they wish to identify, like they're identifying a cold bridging or any areas of cold spots. What used to happen is they've repaired the leak on the defect, but they wouldn't carry out upgrades to insulation. So they wouldn't be providing additional thermal upgrades as a repair. And now they can do that as well. So our spend per dwelling is up, and the hope is that that will start to reduce the prevalence of damper mold through that kind of responsive activity. You asked a question about whether we've put on some things to kind of other things we've done to try and reduce it. You know, being present within the stock. And the other one which sort of, you know, comes to mind, I think was just sensible to put back in, was having a moved and got a program that runs through the summer and autumn. And sort of, you know, clears gatters and gets leaves out, and things that otherwise were creating problems. It was saved out a few years ago as lots of plan maintenance unfortunately was, that, you know, my view as a false economy. So we've reinstated that. So that should also provide some improvement.
• Okay, thank you. Unless there was a really burning question or anything that our officers would like to add. And thank you so much. I know this meant to be on our last week as a gender. And thank you for coming back to follow it up. If not, I'm happy to move on to next, a really burning one. You have three questions, go for it.
• It's not supposed to be a fun, but this is a question it's about the fire call outs. I think there was 650 to communal areas last year. That's almost two per day. Is this normal for a borough or?
• Can we have a straight one minute question answer to that? (silence)
• We have a lot of fire safety and FRA data, but I don't have those data sets with me. So we might need to send out a written response to you on that. If I ask for that over the last three years and give you a picture of it, it's okay.
• Okay, thank you. So we get that for the next one. Council Congressman, do you want to introduce yourself? Is your light for the meeting? And just ask your quick question, please.
• Thanks, Chair. Councilor Bosmond-Kwashi Valerie from the Bonhoea Ward. I guess it's just a supplementary to Councilor Anister's question, Chair Chame. Chair, just going back to looking at, I guess people that are in private occupations at our private tenants or those that are having to rent, that because we have different housing providers, et cetera, I can't remember all the names, but how much support are they getting in terms of having the dam, mold, et cetera, because I've been at something that should always be something to bring forward. So whether yourself or Councilor Una can give us just some updates or because for the next time, I just think it's important to keep them in the conversation as well, thanks.
• Thank you for that question. We do have a partner's agreement with most of the landlords, Peabody, Clarion, on housing. We meet them. A lot of them are quite far behind in the dam per mold. They're regulators and things are just going in there. So we've had three different hides coming, come to us asking us how to do it, how to go through it. They'll be in the same problem. So just this weekend, I've been on the primary green estate. Lots of dam per mold there. Similar issues of, and they do have bigger fans in their properties, but there's still problems with dam per mold. So it is going to be, but we will give whatever advice. We will share anything, best practices. We're on to London Councils all the time, like it's not about, we might end up because there is a lack of surveyors and everything, and it's how we move forward to make every resident, whether you're renting privately, whether you're housing association, some of the private renters are probably in the worst conditions because they're not reporting it. You know, when there are people renting and think, if I go to my landlord, I'll be sorry for that. So we're on this all the time.
• And just to add, in terms of the private rent itself, specifically, the Council has a licensing scheme operating in some parts of the borough and has done for a number of years. That's been expanded to include a further three wards this year, and we're just developing an evidence base after Councillors have directed us to seek the maximum coverage we can provide evidence to support, which we're expecting to report on later on this summer with proposals to expand it as far as we can. That effectively requires landlords to register where they have property and meet certain standards, and A, there's a charge for registration. That enables us to employ environmental health and other offices to carry out inspections, and therefore provide a better service to those tenants, and where landlords fail to comply with those conditions, they can be served with enforcement notices and fines, and that does happen in the existing scheme.
• Thanks, Chair, because it's just reassuring for our residents to know that you are doing all you can, and it's not always the sort of pass the buck, 'cause I'm sure you can all incur that as Councillors. We get a lot of case working. Sometimes the buck is passed quite a lot, so thank you for that, Chair, and Councillor interjecting.
• Can I just add also that MPs meet regularly with that, so if people write to their MPs, it's not us as a landlord, they sit there in, I often meet with residents and the other landlords just to keep an eye, 'cause you are a resident. If you live in this bar of private, whatever you are a resident.
• Thank you so much, Team, and thanks to the officers as well. With that, it would be nice to have the officers sit back, but I mean, hey, look, the sun is out, it's a beautiful day, and yes, you can stay behind, but if you have to really go, I'm happy to excuse you. Okay, thank you so much. Let's move into the next agenda. Again, apologies to the members of the public that are here in the meeting today. Slightly, well, we are still on time. We're gonna move into our main scrutiny review for the year, which is our new home built in Islington. We have got a draft recommendations that we are going to be going through as members around this and feeding into it. The bit before I do that, I would ask a couple of the members of the public that are here to, that we had, I believe we had joined last week. That was just spoke to us last week. So I'm actually going to, this is, I'm gonna go to the members of, 'cause I think this might be quite helpful before we go to our final drafting of this document. So I will take on members and I'll be open to probably take on one more, depending on, I see someone raising another, that's not actually on my agenda, but I would ask is Catherine here, Jackie, Catherine, Catherine. Okay, great.
• Sorry, I think I'll be one of the best.
• Who, sorry, who is the power for you? No, that would wait because you were here last week. Then, Jenny, please, I'm still chairing the meeting. I would ask for Catherine directly to start first. Coming back to time, I might give you a moment to be able to just refresh us, 'cause we heard what you said last week. Do you?
• Hi, I'm from here. I've been here to be in my son's been injured and been involved with the new film, so I would like to speak.
• Okay, that's fine. So, yes, you'll be allowed to speak as well. So.
• I'm such a TRA.
• TRA.
• And I can break it whilst I'm able to speak.
• Okay, great.
• I really like to speak.
• How many of you want to speak? How many of the members of the public want to speak?
• One, two, three, four, five.
• One, two, three, four, five.
• And you're all from par-viewed, I know there's two groups.
• Okay, right. So, in that case, I'll let the par-view resident work out two of you that can speak, and then I will go with the other resident as well. You also want to speak.
• Okay, great, which are you from-- (indistinct)
• Okay, we have an officer there for that, great. So, can I start with the residents, not from par-view, to speak? I'll give you three minutes, and then I'll come back with, if members have any questions that will ask you. Please just turn on the mic when you want to speak, and then turn off afterwards, thank you.
• Okay, hi, everyone. So, I'm Jack Rogers, I'm chair of the haversage court, TRA. So, yeah, I've just got a few things to know regarding the new build project that's associated with our block. So, this new build project was given the go-ahead in 2019, so that's five years ago. And that was for new homes to be built behind the green space, behind our building. And as of yet, no meaningful work has started on that. As a consequence, it's meant that a significantly-sized communal play area and basketball court has been closed for nearly 10 years, whilst the council has been deciding what to do with this site. So, that amounts to a whole generation of children who haven't had access to that meanity. It's really significant. My partner and I have lived at Haversage since 2016. We worked with the TRA, and we tried to work productively with the council over that period to help plan the building project for everyone's benefit. Over many public meetings and hundreds of emails, we negotiated improvements to our block that would be made as part of the new build scheme and designs were made and we were consulted, but nothing has come of that. In the meantime, there's been mature trees that have been chopped down on the site, and a Victorian brick boundary wall which has been knocked down and hasn't been rebuilt. And all of this, as I understand, has been a huge cost from the council's perspective, and it's only had negative results for the residents. On top of this, a temporary heating system and a shipping container has been installed at the front of our block. This was supposed to be connected to the new build houses, which haven't been built. So we've been living with a substandard temporary heating system for many years now with no sense when that's gonna get connected up. So throughout this process, there's been a huge turnover of council staff and basic information hasn't been passed on. It's become obvious that the offices involved with managing these projects don't have the required skills to deliver them. Trust has been lost and the mental toll that this uncertainty has had in residence has been attested to by our local GP. So the kind of long short of it is that from us, you know, our TRA perspective, you know, initially you'd had our support for the new build homes. And really, you know, ultimately that's been eroded. And now, you know, we're more towards a position that we just like our green space back, we'd like our bus will cut back. And we'd like to stop wasting time really negotiating with the council, working with the council, paying huge amounts of unpaid hours into trying to make these, you know, good outcomes. And it's a shame because I think in our TRA, there's a lot of intelligence and experience and interest. And unfortunately, in our case, you know, we're getting to the point where we just soon walk away and spend another cycle of these, you know, of gonna process of trying to make things happen. So I'll just leave it at that, really, that's our perspective from Habisage Corps.
• Thank you, thank you so much. Does any member have anything to clarify from? I'm happy to open that. And also, we have the exec member here for housing. I'm in new build. That could, if you wanted to speak that, I cannot, but you don't have to. But I will first of all start with a member. If you want any clarification, they're not there for us to question as officers, but if you want clarification, please go ahead.
• But I think one clarification that I would like is probably from the executive member too. Let us know if that scheme is going ahead and has Verizon been told if it's going ahead? Is this clarification?
• Yeah, and just before I ask the question, I'm just really sorry for your experience as a residence. Just want clarification in terms of how many, I guess face-to-face meetings there's been, 'cause I'm obviously taking into account the pandemic, but also letters I just want to know specific, whether it's hybrid or whatever, just a list of all of that, please. Thanks.
• We have, our list is here, one of the officers. Can you try and give any clarification as a to list of clarifications questions?
• So firstly, thank you for coming along. Always great to see residents who are willing to give up, yet more time. I've heard how you've kind of explained how long this has been going on and some of the frustrations around the process. Certainly an unfortunate kind of situation from a council's perspective as well. We did have a scheme there that we desperately wanted to take forward and worked. Quite hard with the residents and the TRA there, but just couldn't afford to make it work. And that's caused a lag and a prolongation in terms of the impact of a scheme that wasn't able to be taken forward. And I know that certainly kind of more recently we've picked up those conversations again with the TRA more actively. One of our project managers, Sward, had been, I believe quite hands-on, trying to kind of repair some of those kind of relationships that were really important to us. I can't commit to an actual answer to the council's question, will that scheme proceed? We're working very hard to simplify a scheme, make sure that there is a scheme that works there, finding other investment to improve some of the areas across the estate. And we are also looking at how we can improve that kind of resident engagement as well, which we have recognized even through this forum chair that actually one of our recommendations that we'll pick up later is, actually when things slow down in terms of process internally, it's the residents that often feel the impact of that because development is complex, there are lots of decisions to be made, lots of things that sometimes need to be moving parts that need to be kind of organized, to try and get a scheme to work. And one of our lessons learned is definitely that we don't always keep the residents informed as to what's going on and we need to get better at that. And that's one of the recommendations that we're going to put in forward tonight, is how we can strengthen our resident engagement skills and resource so that we can be more open, be more transparent, be more present with residents. So don't want to take away the kind of the negativity of the kind of experience that you've kind of shared with us. We are working hard to bring forward a scheme that will work. We want to kind of see those additional improvements and have undertaken in and around the areas that you live. We want to bring, you know, if there are immunity spaces that aren't being used, well, that's a loss for the residents. It's also a loss for the council. So I'll take away some of, you know, all the notes that I can around the feedback that you've given. I'll pick that up with the team and expect kind of further updates as soon as we can, to be honest.
• Thank you, just your mic, thank you. Right. Just a question to, not a question, just a clarification to the TRA rep representative here. Can you just tell me when was the last time you've actually, your TRA actually got any sort of comms or communication from the council?
• Do you do mean from like directly to the TRA, from the council representative to the TRA? Do you know enough?
• Well, we, well, I think we've been in touch with council to reopen the, the ball court and the playground. We've just been closed for over a decade. We've been in touch about getting that down very quickly because we don't want to wait for the new bill program to go ahead or not go ahead and that was six months ago. And we want a quick action, you know, in time for summer, and I think it might have been a longer time ago that we first brought this up, but so the responses have been inadequate. It's just we're going to look into this, we're going to look into this. That's a response to do nothing or to say that you're going to do something. Then maybe it's, it's been a month ago perhaps that we heard something about looking into it.
• Okay. - Okay.
• Thank you. I just wanted to know if there was a channel that's what was open in terms of conversation. If you don't just mind turning your mic off for me a second. Thank you. Right, is this a clarification? I'm sorry? Yes, yes, I would take questions as well. Right, so if this question is a clarification.
• This bill is not going ahead.
• So clarification is as the residents quite rightly said, we had a scheme, a project that was planning consented back into 2019 and we attempted, I believe on.
• No, it's just a yes or no, I don't need a political answer. Is this scheme going ahead, yes or no?
• Okay, clarification. We are working on a new scheme to replace one that wasn't able to go ahead. I can't commit to a yes or no answer. There is.
• Okay, I think the office has made this position clear on that. So as much as I know you'd like to push further on that, we'll leave that, girls.
• I feel sorrow for the people that live in these conditions and I'd want that noted. I also want to ask for clarification on what can be done as a direct commitment today to bring back the facilities that is the play areas and so forth that cannot be used at the moment. Because having a build is one thing but having facilities that you can't use and that adds to the frustration of tenants on the site. And also, we need to learn to do more with comms. We need to learn to communicate more. Most of the frustration is day by day people going on and not having any communication whatsoever. Now, when you asked your question to the resident around hearing from the council, she reported back that they've been contacting the council. So obviously there's been none. So we need to work out what we can do now as a commitment to make that work because we have to learn from this. We have to learn from this. Otherwise we'll be coming back, you know, month after month with problems. Let's see what we can do. Is there anything that we can do to reinstate at least some of the play facilities and reinstate the comms and then take it from there? You say you're working on something, you need to let the tenants know. Even if you can't let them know everything, something around what you're doing. Because if they don't know, then there's frustration. Let's try and eliminate that. Thank you.
• Thank you. I would actually at some point come to give any member of the public an opportunity to speak or to ask a question. So I, but I see councilor Ward has raised hand to maybe reference to your direct question. So I don't know what you want to take down, thank you.
• Thank you, Chair, and thank you for your point, Rose. Thank you for coming along tonight. The first thing I want to say is that I am truly sorry for the experience that you've gone through. Now I could sit here and talk about how difficult it's been, how difficult it is to build council homes. I'm not going to because this has gone on for far too long. You guys haven't had answers to your questions and I could talk about how difficult the new build market is. There's pointless because as the executive member with new build in my brief, the box stops here, right here. And I am truly sorry for the experience you've had. Rose has asked me what we can be committed to this evening. And where Joel from Parkview came along to our scrutiny committee last time. And we immediately committed to come to the estate with the self as executive member and Stephen Biggs as our corporate director in charge of new build. And we have that visit last Tuesday. What I can commit to you today is if you would have us for myself as the executive member and Stephen Biggs as corporate director to visit your estate with you as soon as possible. And look it away forward if you would like to know this. Thank you.
• Thank you. Council, do you want to, this sounds like something you want to share with us?
• It's just really small. Just again, we have a clarification but from one stand that was 2019. So this is before COVID. This is before the inflationary pressures. It's been five years. So I know that the situation is difficult now but where will we be for?
• Sure. And I think that's a very fair point. I think there's some great recommendations in the scrutiny report that we have before us today. And one of the lessons we have to learn is capacity and having the right team in place and communication as you say. And this is not just about the fact that new build's really hard. You know, I could talk about that as for hours as I'm sure you've heard me talking about that, Councillor, but I'm not going to do that because it's been gone on since 2019. And we do in Islington because of the nature of Islington. We've tended to go for small infills on estates because we don't have vast tracts of land. And I think one of the issue is having those lots and lots of small infills in play at once is that you need grip and pace and communication. And I think there's some really good recommendations in the scrutiny.
• Thank you. I'm mindful that there are members of the public. If the other members of the committee can just hold onto them because remember, we have to do the recommendation. Hence why we wanted to hear from the residents. This might change things. I mean, at the starting of record, you wanted to move things. You might add things. But either way, this does allow us to be a little bit more. Our job, yes, is really about the resident. That's the most important thing. And as much as the running. So it was really important to kind of hear this before we finalize this part. Now, I'm going to ask that, I'm going to ask the members in the audience just ask, if anyone has a question, if you really have a question that you want to ask or you want to make a short statement.
• I'm going to do like a really short statement, but I also want to ask them.
• Sure.
• Okay, sure. Okay, I'll come to you soon.
• Please just introduce yourself.
• Yes.
• Speak and ask your question, but that's all in three minutes. Be up, sure.
• I'm Sarah Breaks, and I live on part for your state. I'm the chair of the TRA. I just wanted to ask that, it was the same with us when John came to the last meeting. It's taken for us to come here before you come and visit the estate. Why haven't you already been to have a stage court? Like, oh, their story brings completely true with our story. Slightly different with different timelines or whatever, but ours has been gone since 2017. You live across the road from us. Like, you could anytime, like you can see what we go through on a daily basis. So why haven't you been already? That's my question.
• Thanks for your question, Sarah. I have been to most of the new builds in the borough. We do have new builds on site. Ross, right across the borough. But I will, I fully accept, I have not been to other stage. And maybe there is a lesson for me here because I tend to visit new build projects where we're actually on site. And what's awful about the story of other stage court so you've never managed to get on site. And that's not, and that's just not acceptable. What you've been through?
• Right, just going forward, any questions that you have has to be addressed to myself. And then I would, I would signal the exact member to take it on and who I think is appropriate to answer your question. Okay, great, thank you. I take it, that's, can I finish?
• Sure, you can, sure. I was just going to say, I do want to make this right. And we all, as a council and me personally as well, we want to learn lessons from this. So I can't change what's happened, but I can't commit to coming to this date as soon as possible.
• Right. Can I have someone else? (mumbles)
• I know that tenants on have a stage court have given up after 10 years of fighting, but I was actually started on 2017. And we didn't go to the press. We've really tried to work really hard with the council. We really have done our best. We've had meetings. We've started up a new TRA. And I feel like Islington have really let us, the whole apart through down as residents. We have lived through some awful situations. We still are. We keep just being told that it will be finished soon. That's not the point. The decyclical works hasn't been done. Maintenance hasn't been done. We've got major works coming on because these things haven't been done. We have been let down and there's nothing for us. Like there's no kind of compensation. What I've lived through personally is horrific. And I think people need to come when I'm not at work. Like I need to be looking like talking to people on my state when I'm not at work. And I really feel like we've all been let down. And it's not just like Mulally's are just the ones that are building, it's the council that have let us down. They don't think of us as residents. You just said, we're here for residents. I don't feel that way. And I feel a lot of us on our estate do not feel that way. I feel like the council have really let us down in a big way. And we're paying rent for what we don't even know anymore. We've got no estate left. We've had to fight to keep our ball court open. And even then it got shut down anyway. We've got nowhere for our kids to play. It's all being, we've fenced off everywhere. And I just want to know what you're going to do for us as residents.
• Thank you. I think you did raise the question. Again, we are sorry to hear about this. As a scrutiny committee, this is our job to bring these things to life. So the council does work in some element because this is why this is inconsistent. And I'm sure that a member of these committees will be recommending bearing in mind your experiences. But you shouldn't have gone through any of this in the first place. So again, we apologise for that. Thank you. Can I give you two minutes, please? Thank you.
• So my name's OJ Weller. I'm a resident of Park View and have been for 21 years. I want to talk about what it's like to undergo a new bill consultation as a disabled resident. Unknown them be. I warn other people in the dire situation I found myself in to have a home. And if that means being in convenience, to some extent, I can live with it. But to some extent does not come close to what we've gone through. Our lives have been materially worsened in every way you can imagine. Psychologically, financially, physically, financially, mostly unnecessarily. And the council's consultation processes and support for existing residents is worse than useless. The council consulted us to death about the type of apple tree, the colour of a grass, the material of the benches, but the things that really mattered to us, we were ignored on. The contractors liaison officers have been a joke. They've been entirely ineffective. And rather than being a conduit for information so problems could be resolved. When we've raised issues with access for emergency services, deliveries, service people and medical people, the contractor has said there's access. When I've got clear evidence that that was not the case, we've been having, I'm disabled, as you can see, I have mobility difficulties. We've had diversions put in place with absolutely no notice that take an extra six minutes, which doesn't sound a lot to you, but with a mobility difficulty. Let me tell you, it's agony walking that extra distance, especially when you don't know and you could have got a bus. This has resulted in loads of complaints to outside bodies, which as LinkedIn Council has then had to spend time and money responding to. The Council's failure to show consideration for existing residents means you've lost our goodwill. And this will make projects more difficult in the future. It should be embarrassed that the unnecessary pain and suffering it's caused when this could have been a textbook example of how to work with residents and a TRA. Initially we were told there would be benefits for us, new storage sheds, gardens for ground floor flats, communal growing spaces, meeting areas. Let me be clear, we were told that these things would be happening. They were not suggestions, they weren't architects' impressions, they were solid commitments, until they weren't. When we were then gas lit and told these things had never been said and minutes weren't available as evidence. The Council paid for offices to attend meetings, often unsociable hours, but for what? You didn't work with us, you ignored us at best and deliberately gas lit us at worst. So my question is the part few new bill demonstrates that currently residents are not equal partners despite the Council's policy, that this should always be the case. How do you intend to revise your resident new bill consultation process and support for residents during these projects?
• Thank you.
• Okay, this, does anyone want to clarify this? No answer the question, please.
• So again, I don't wanna just offer lip service here is quite distressing really to hear all the catalog of issues that you've just kind of set out for us there. I'm not, am I gonna pretend to know every single detail to provide a response to each and every one of those items? I do know that particularly in response to Joel's attendance at the meeting the week before last, it highlighted again through this forum, we shouldn't have had to have been the approach taken some of the issues. A follow-up meeting was had. We've been exerting some pressure on the contractor to sort themselves out where they are, obviously failing in terms of communication. So they've recently, again, I'm not gonna gloss over some of the kind of fundamental issues that you've kind of raised there and it merits absolutely kind of full of proper investigation to ensure that the recommendations that we're gonna discuss here are adequate in terms of making sure those mistakes and issues aren't repeated elsewhere. We have delivered a number of successful schemes and I don't quite fully understand why part few seems to be kind of undergoing some of the kind of issues that we haven't materialised elsewhere for similar projects. So there is a lot that we can do both now, which is being actioned as far as I'm aware, I will look into it again tomorrow. I know a newsletter is being produced that's gonna provide some communications to try and kind of address some of the outstanding issues. I'm not saying that's the answer. It's gonna hopefully provide some clarity on certain things that are outstanding, particularly around when the works are due to complete, which is within the next few weeks, we wanna be able to celebrate with you when the works complete. It sounds as though we've got some fixing to do before that can happen. So we wanna get that relationship back on where it needs to be, both for part few residents, but also making sure that those mistakes and issues aren't made all now for residents elsewhere.
• Thank you, Councillor Colchine.
• Sorry, yeah, I just wanna express this at this stage. I've never heard anything like this, so I'm taken aback and this is quite shocking, but I also wanna thank the Chair for giving members the platform to do this, 'cause I wouldn't know otherwise. What I do wanna say is considering our commitment to house people who are in desperate need on the waiting list, I am mortified that this has been your experience and actually has come to a point where you've been let down so badly that the people who are on the waiting list are missing out because I completely understand why you don't wanna deal with a new build project again. So I think the biggest takeaway for me is that here, it shouldn't be the case and it shouldn't be at your expense. And also I just wanna add before we move on, sorry Chair, that if we are gonna give the facilities back, the play facilities for children, I wouldn't under any circumstances want them to be taken back. If we're gonna reinstate them, I do want it to be a point that we don't reinstate it for a couple of years just to take it back, 'cause I think that would be actually quite horrible for the children who accessed that.
• Thank you. Just a strong point there. Is it a short point you wanna make? I think I'll go one more and that's...
• It's a very short point.
• Yep, sure.
• The council need to mobilize now and look at what is needed. As Dermot said, he's gonna go or he's been there and he's gonna go and meet these people again. Let's get a checkpoint list that these people need for their estate and work through how we're gonna do this bit by bit. With proper, not well, we could or we might, or definite checkpoint list, work through those checkpoint lists and mobilize. So people have a clear understanding of what their needs are gonna be met and when they're gonna be met and how they're gonna be met. They need to see... People from the council on the estate take in notice of what the experience of those residents are and bringing it back and let's do something about it. I don't wanna hear anything other than, oh well, you know, maybe and this is a learning lesson. It is a learning lesson, but let's also mobilize and do something about it now. We've heard two weeks ago what from Joel and now we've come back again. We should have had a clear plan by now of what needs to be done. We should have a clear plan of how we should move forward and we should have a clear plan of what these people, they wouldn't be here if we'd done that. They would, would you be here? Right, thank you. That's my point.
• Yeah, just to clarify, that some of the members of the audience that I hear were expecting to have them at the last meeting as well. Look, I made a decision as a chair to make sure we have committed hearing this resident because again, I repeat, the residences are the heart of what we do here as a committee. I'm sure officers, I'm sure exact members are aware of this and doing whatever work that needs to be done behind the scene. It is now that we as a committee that are aware of this information and like from the sources, our resident, that we're able to hold everyone accountable to what happens next. Up to this point, some of this information was not really made known to us, but that's not the case anymore. So at least we can be a little bit more sort of precise in our questioning and what we would like to see. And there's no reason why we can't even go see for ourselves as well. Based on time, I'm just gonna take one more from there. And I know you have a question, but it's not directly with this, but I would give you an opportunity to do so. Two minutes?
• Yeah.
• Thank you.
• Hi, my name's LaChai Chapman. I'm a resident at Parkview. On the 8th of April, my son Alfie, who has autism and ADHD, got caught on a piece of broken fencing on the estate and which through it tore through his shirt and punctured his skin. The same fencing in which that we had raised was Steven Nash in January. We only had to meet in the first time, we met a senior new build council officer. After the council officer that a council art, Kay had dragged him there to see. And so basically, since then, this was in January and then my son got injured in April, yeah? I told my lales, my schooled alley up. You was there the other day, I had a conversation with you. Allie then, they then rang me and told me not to make a complaint in which I did. I still haven't heard back from the council on almost a month, or the new build team, I still not have responded, even though I've seen you, we saw you on this date when we did the walk round. I've had no response from any of you. I've had, this has nearly been for a month now. This isn't perfect. This is a perfect example of what you've agreed and told us and then not followed through with, right? Promises are always made and they're never kept. You need a total change of leadership. We need to be helped. And none of you, you can keep saying you're gonna do this and that, but I'm not seeing any change. And now my son's been injured as a result and I saw you face to face. Cedric, Robert Cedric told me he read my email that hasn't responded. So, what's gonna happen?
• Thank you, you've raised quite a number of stuff that I don't think it is necessarily for anyone directly here to give you all the answers 'cause there's no one's response. However, I would ask that the officers can send us an email directly to answer some of this question, especially this one. I think that should be circulated to us as a committee member and I would ask that that is done before the 25th to this committee. That's what we would ask for. And that is because for whatever reason, I think we are still able to have to be able to get some clear answers. Clarification?
• Sorry, I didn't get your name, but who told you not to comply?
• Melanie.
• Who's he?
• Yes, I was actually people. She called me in a motorist. The rest of the group is, and I said that an apology over phone and this is the thing that you guys keep asking about. You're saying it's not a useful, I pay my rent to isn't it? Council, isn't it comfortable? Need to give me some response or something. I spoke to you guys face to face and I still like the panel as well.
• Okay, thank you. A lot more, this sounds a lot more like they said a lot there to unpack and they said, like I said, it is all, for us right now, we're looking at the reason why you're in the rooms because we're talking about new build as a committee and this is all part of just gathering evidence. So we know what the right recommendations are from some of these shared experiences. Some of this sounds like live cases itself and I'm sure there are processes there for them to be addressed. But now that we're where we could ask further questions, I could ask, maybe as a councilor, not as a committee, but maybe as on individual cases, councils do take on case work to say, look, what's going on on those topics. So as much as I know that they're not nice experiences from what we can hear so far, however, we cannot really go into the details of those live cases if they're ongoing unless it really touches on to what we're doing as a recommendation right now. Joel, as much as I would love to come to you, just bear me a second, I would like to give that she has spoken, please, if you, there's a mic, if you could just introduce yourself and you can just ask the question, thank you.
• Yeah, thank you. - Thank you so much. I would like to ask the question about addressing the mall, truly, because on the rinkross state is the situation when I have difficulty of the breathing and I have like heart condition and I have problem even to take a bath because the ventilation isn't working and that is the reason the mode and condensation is absolutely horrible there. So, what is the provision to look after and maintain existing ventilation, please?
• Okay, if you can just turn the mic off for us. Thank you, although, even though we're not dealing with more than them as a review topic, because of your patience and the fact that you're here and their offices here as well, exec member is here as well for that, I would, please, if you can answer that question, thank you.
• You did say the rinkross state.
• Yeah, the rinkross state is high, but cancelers have highlighted this with me this week from, I don't know, they've been out door locking in case work. So, hide is your landlord responsible, but we are in who's here tonight. We've got meeting in the diary with the chief exec of hide because people raised it. So, we will advocate on your behalf. If you wanna give me your details after, 'cause I'm not sure if it's, yeah, but they have, you know, two counselors have raised hide with us. So, if you give me your address, I'll make sure your case as well is raised. And I will get hired to directly respond to copy me in.
• Thank you so much. We'll take that on.
• Like for the, what is the provision for the maintaining the ventilation across the incident if you could tell me in your program?
• So, each landlord, like people declaring, they're responsible for their repairs, their ventilation, 'cause it was stopped transferred, so it isn't actually canceled property. But we can ask those, I can ask any question. If you like, I can come outside and get some details.
• No worries, I understand. If you could think about that, it will be ugly. And I have, like, my personal question.
• Okay, sorry, I'm really mindful of time, right? I did state that we are on currently looking at new bill. And you've raised questions, which I was happy to oblige in terms of to deal with mode, and that which I have a little, and the council officer has raised to support. If your next question is directly to do with new build, I'm happy to take it on, but it's not, I would, I would.
• That's my first question. I was welcome to speak to us off after the meeting, or maybe even come to the next meeting. We always want members to come. I'm in residence to come. Thank you so much. So what was your name? Did we get a name from that?
• Angelica.
• Angelica, thank you very much Angelica. Right, I think we've had enough. Joe, are you at that last week? Is this 30 seconds for you, because you were here last week, please. - Right, and it's just picking up on a couple of things that were in the minutes, and the second draft document. There was some mention of the movement on the council regarding overhaul of new build comms, which we're very keen on, and the establishment of residence charter, which also sounds like a good idea. There was also mention of there was some understanding of things that were wrong with how this was delivered at part view. And it was mentioned that whilst some of those reasons were understood, they could be shared with the committee at a future meeting. We'd just like to know when that meeting will be, and hopefully that we can get involved with that meeting.
• Right, I have to be very clear. I've raised my hand well enough, and I'm not totally sure, right? So what I'm going to do, I will get back, and I'll make sure I liaise with the team, and the officers, and I will personally reply to you, and make sure we show, we've got Joe's email.
• Yes, we do.
• And I will reply to you directly regarding that question that you've asked. And if there's anything you want to add after that, then we can do that. Great, thank you very much.
• Thank you very much.
• Right, we have another member. I'm in another resident in the chamber. She just happens to be a councillor, too. But I'm happy to give her two minutes. Please go ahead.
• Okay, just to be clear, I'm here as a councillor, as the councillor of all of the residents who have spoken. I just wanted to pick up one thing that happened after Joel came last time. There was a commitment to share with part few residents what the actual plans for the estate were after officers and councillors confirmed that Block D was no longer going ahead. My understanding is that still hasn't happened. Please, can that happen? I mean, I feel ludicrous coming here and asking for things like this, all of this. There is nothing that these residents have said that has not been put down in writing on multiple occasions. I totally appreciate what councillor Ozdermeer has said. I think if I was in your place, I would be very shocked. But I think I counted up 176 emails about half the stage from myself. We've had 16 meetings, like something has to give. It's not a question of no meetings or people not getting involved. It is just, I don't know, I don't know what it is, but this is not how I normally conduct myself. I've been a councillor for 10 years. It is crazy to me that I'm here. I feel like I'm in the twilight zone, supporting these residents to come here and share these things with you, but being totally incapable on this through my own efforts. So thank you, chair, for your consideration and for allowing them to share their stories. I really hope something's going to change because I believe in social housing so much. It was the one thing I wanted to get done as a councillor. And so far, in 10 years in mild May Ward, one house has been built. Seven schemes have gone nowhere or been paused. Parkview will complete. We inherited that from Highbury. We're not building any three bedrooms or four bedroom houses there. That is what we need. We all know that's what we need.
• Thank you. - Thanks.
• Thank you, councillor K.
• Right, we've heard enough again. I want to say thank you very much to all the residents that are here. Again, I see that some of the stories that you've shared, a lived experience, some of it are, I don't think any of us and members of this committee, we're just thinking, no, that's not acceptable. Look, the council, as much as complex, the spaces with a lot of workforce, there are still great and amazing people in here that are still doing their best to make sure we deliver services. We are going to keep ensuring and keep making sure that this platform also does the part that it needs to do to make sure that things are done differently going forward. And we will make the right recommendations. And again, I just want to say thank you. The House of Screening Committee meetings are always open to residents to turn up. Depending on their agenda, we can't take on question. It was a very short agenda. So that's why we're able to accommodate all of you. And look, we appreciate you. Thank you for coming. You're taking your time out to come here. And I'm sure the officers and I'm sure the exec members and the community members are very, very much in total understanding of the fact that this shouldn't have happened. And that will change. Thank you. Members, we have a recommendation to make. Right. You could say you could go if you want to. We're just going to go through this. Can I ask the officer to just go through them one by one? We have 10 drafted one here. We could amend. We can add. I would take feed from the co-op members as well. Rose. You're still here with us. Thank you. Just suggest that they might not say this to organizations. That's fine. That's OK, Fred. That option is open to you. And then so we need to look at this. What I would say is no matter-- if we come to a point during these recommendations that we'd really like to take off to kind of look further into it, I'm happy to do so. But as much as the members will give me the authority to go ahead and do the finalizing part, because whatever happens, we need to have this recommendation signed off at the next meeting. I have to put that to members here. Right. So why would we go ahead, just before the officers stop, on the very first draft recommendations are up there? I-- it has been met known to me. It has been met known to me. I've got to speak for this one. Aha, there we go. It has been met known to me that the responsibility for the staffing structure rests with the chief executives, the exec, which our recommendation goes to-- [INAUDIBLE] Is that-- am I reading the right one? [INAUDIBLE] I just explained this, basically, as a committee, you cannot make-- the second recommendation you can make, your recommendations are going to the executive. Not the chief-- not the-- it's going to the executive. So your recommendations must be in line with what you're supposed to do. So for this particular one, the first one, which is about structure of the development of new homes, which is basically the team, you're basically kind of saying you want the restructuring to go there. That is not the remit of their executive. It's the remit of the-- [INAUDIBLE] Chipperzec. So you can't do it. So what we are going to do, we're going to amend that recommendation one in such a way that it will just kind of advise and say, you're not happy with the staffing or whatever. That cannot stop. But that is between the chair and the-- sorry, go on. [INAUDIBLE] Oh, it's just going to suggest chair. Could it, for example, be the age with the chief executive to review the structure or something along those lines? [INAUDIBLE] Yeah, that's a possible wording. I will open to members. So I think that clarification-- Did I get into you? Councillor Uno? Thank you. I think we've kind of got what we're dealing with that in terms of what we could-- who this can go to now. It doesn't mean our messaging, in terms of the recommendation, shouldn't advise or strongly recommend that that is taken, and again, like Councillor-- water just raised in terms of liars. Either way, I think the general statement around that is still something that I think even after the evidence today that we're probably going to feel a lot more to make sure that that is sort of worded or at least inclined to kind of let the executive to know that that's what we recommend as a committee. I'm happy to take questions on this first one. Actually, do you want to officially read out the first one, and then I'll go to the members. Please wait. Chair, do you want me to read it all out, web I word, or-- No, just the first one. We're going to deal with it one by one. Thank you. First, I was just going to add, this is a commitment. So as I think Councillor Wall has suggested, rather than taking it as a recommendation, the recommendation could be that we provide you with the outcome of the committed review of the structure and the capacity of the team. So can I verify for clarification? This is a commitment. This is happening. So this is going to happen. OK, so then we're going to-- The Housing Scrutiny Committee recommend it. OK, so in that case, we're going to be a bit more smarter with our recommendation. And we're going to put some timeline on it. OK, thank you. You can read it out, and then we can go-- we can ask questions, or add a little bit more. Is there? No? Clerk? Thanks, Chair. Anissa, thank you so much. I guess it's just about the culture then, because in terms of housing, housing doesn't really partner up with, say, the planning side of things, if that makes sense. But we want to have that merge a little bit more together. So I guess going forward so we can avoid what we've even heard in the Chamber this evening to look at changing the culture. So whereby we would only say, for example, work with certain, I don't know, like Higgins, or whoever it is that is doing the new bills that work really well, whether it is to follow through a plan so that things that don't collapse in terms of communication, the workforce, so it's like, look at the culture. Does that kind of make sense? Are you trying to make a man what we have from the first one? You've mentioned whatever. Remember, this is going to-- exactly, this is not-- and there's actually a commitment on this now, so we can reward all of this. [INAUDIBLE] OK, I'll let Rose come in, and then we can go on Rose. Thank you. I'm sure that disabilities could fit in with a lot of the different recommendations. But the reason why I'm saying it at the first one is where it says on the third dot of the first thing to ensure that specialist teams are available. And we should make sure that somebody with disabilities experience is there, because we heard a lady-- I think his name is Jojo-- talk about her issues with disability and having nobody contact them. And I think that that should be made specific and clear within the recommendation, and not just thinking that could be read into another recommendation. Do disabilities, to liaise with disabled tenants on the site, and so forth and so on, so their needs are met? OK, thank you. I'm just your mic, just so that we can-- thank you. Did we capture that? And I can't-- I think she's-- [AUDIO OUT] I think what you're saying is based on the lady that Gabe mentioned about disability was consulted and all the access issues that you would want us on that third bill of point to amend it to incorporate the specialist. Kind of make sure that the work just specialist was in between general. You wanted it specifically mentioned in disabled persons to be involved. I would be surprised if that's not the council's policy generally. I would be surprised, but-- Thank you. Yeah, I am 100% sure it's a council policy. But delivery is a difficult message. I would be surprised if I'm not sure. You were going to clarify that. I'm pretty sure it's 100%. Yeah. OK. [INAUDIBLE] That lady was trying to say someone with disability issue is for social homes that she had to put up with a lot. But that every resident, we would be breaking our own policies. We have to take whether you've got disability or not. OK, Councilor Wood? I think the actual point that Councillor Bussman, of course, she's getting the act is actually contractor liaison, which is actually the point that the lady was making, that the contract liaison officers wouldn't keep them in the forward of changes of path and things like that. So I suspect that will form part of the recommendations anyway. Sorry, but Councillor Bussman mentioned certain contractors, Higgins, but we can't just say-- Councillor, yes, we know they can. We can't be naming people in our contract. Thank you so much. [LAUGHTER] Can I always know that I know I can't talk to everybody, because I come to work more with businesses themselves. Yes. [INAUDIBLE] Sorry, I sympathize without-- it has not been dismissed. It is council policy. And just-- I would also like to ask-- [INAUDIBLE] [INAUDIBLE] No. No. [INAUDIBLE] No. Thank you. I would also just like to say that at this point of the meeting, as much as I welcome having members of the public in the committee chamber, we would really appreciate that we can just go through this as-- because we have to come up with a recommendation at the end of this. I appreciate that there was time given for that. I know-- and thank you so much. Thank you. [INAUDIBLE] Did you capture any of that, Alistair? Thanks, Chair. Obviously, there is an equality's impact requirement. And as difficult as development is, particularly the type of projects where we are inconveniencing residents on their estate by building new homes. And in fact, often, it's not the construction of the new homes that's the most impactful. It's the additional improvements that come as part of the package, if you like, of improvement. So I think the experience of part view-- there's no one here now-- but it's all the landscaping improvements, which is spread almost entirely across the whole estate. And I have seen that, in terms of contractors, struggling to do that in the right way that minimizes inconvenience, that provides the right notice of when areas are going to be dug up and diversions around the estate. There is absolutely something that we can capture in there around ensuring contractors meet their contractual obligations. I'm just-- I think there was a resident engagement piece to that, absolutely, which I think is picked up under item three, around inclusive, accessible, fit-for-purpose resident engagement. This one's a bit more specific to contractor performance, which I'm not entirely sure that we've picked up. So I'm happy to recommend that we-- No, you can't do another recommendation. You can't recommend a committee. You can take that board and recommend. Thank you. But you're going to capture everything we say. I do take that board, actually. Yes, that needs to come in. It's definitely there. It sounds like, from what we've heard so far, from the evidence so far, that there are other third parties that are delivering work for us, that are not necessarily up to standard, or, like you said, contract tool, you know. I think we've heard an example. Yeah, sorry, Chair. OK. That's fine. I-- no, I'll just take-- is this on the number one, please? And then I will come to you then. Thank you. Thank you. Just going back, what was mentioned about giving timelines, because I think the first bullet point is almost spin. And I think we need to talk about what it means-- it says Council's 750 new homes. Well, I think it's actually to get these started. So I think that needs to be rephrased, so that it's actually clear and transparent what is meant by that bullet point. I think we need a timeline of when this is going to be built by, as well. And I am mindful that this is, essentially, to empower the communication that happens between the chief and executive and the executive member, but to show that we need this to be urgent. And then, with regards to actually the point that was raised about the disabilities-- It needs to be clear. We have to show which one of you-- I'm talking about the first point, the first bullet point. Make sure that the team decides that hopefully, does that not? Yeah. Just to clarify, when I looked at-- when I was talking about in terms of timeline, I was looking more in terms of the timeline that will be associated with a commitment that is now to be made known to us around the team itself, the structure around team, not specifically on the numbers of home. I must say, just to-- I mean, that wouldn't be-- Yeah, it wouldn't be a smart recommendation, in my opinion, because we still need to get a feedback about this. But however, in terms of the actual structuring, there can be a timeline. I'm sorry. Yeah, did that make the note? I couldn't even come back. No, I just looked back. So just going back to what a smart target is. But as part of that recommendation, I think the wording that says, deliver the council 750 new homes for social rent. I think that bit, needs clarification and transparency, what that actually means. And as part of that, there's a commitment from the manifesto, from this administration, of what the timeline is. And I think this space in that bullet point where that can be made very transparent and very clear. And again, as I understand, the first recommendation is all about supporting the discussion with the executive. So essentially, we're empowering and showing the urgency that this needed for this right-sized team to be. I'm taking that ball. We can go further into the conversation around this. How-- yes, but I know we're in time. Is it? Yeah, just to kind of, I guess, the clarify. Because I think I understand what councilor Nester is alluding to. But I think it's specific about when we do projects now. So instead of it being 750, it's about for each particular project we do the timeline in terms of how, you know, from engagements with residents to then, you know, what is the, I guess, the journey of how we get to, where we're getting to before it actually comes to that draw, you know, like closing parks or putting scaffolding up and et cetera. I'm mindful of timing now. And I want the recognition of conversation to be a little bit more narrow than targeted a little bit. Having looked at the recommendation, I would kind of encourage members to look at the bolded part of the recommendation model. The bullet points are it's given us a lot more deeper clarity on it. And I mean, we can have hundreds of those, right? But I want that sort of the bold part worded to be quite strong enough to be able to realize or even touch on what you've raised. The bullet points are more sort of, there's a lot of back and forth questions where we would need to ask or to get the answers for it and other for us to recommend because we couldn't really, some of those positioning that might be political and we're not doing that in the committee. We're just recommending. So I think I will not be doing it any justice to be able to, you know, go into those areas. So with that, I still think we're not coming to some sort of, 'cause this is around number one wedding, knowing we already been told that we can't be asking for a restructuring directly, but we're now gonna be saying something along the line that was actually raised by the team that might be, to liaise with the chief executive in reviewing the structure of the development new home team to ensure considered it up, right?
• It's entirely what the executive skips to liaise with the chief executive. - Okay, great. And what I was gonna ask members of the committee to put a timeline to that.
• The liaison timeline, sorry, Jeff.
• Sure. - Most recommendations, we don't actually put timelines to that.
• Yeah, there was a little bit of an interview.
• It's a difficult, it's too good a second to you. You can't. - Sorry.
• Thank you very much members of the team.
• It's good to you, you can't do that.
• Okay, great. - Yeah.
• So in that case, I will look further into that. And if I am able to, I will second let something to members, and then we could go further. Because of time, let's go to the second one.
• Thank you. Right. The second one, do you?
• Yeah.
• So review alternative funding in delivery models. EGSPV and consider whether direct delivery by the council is the most effective and value for money model. Now this basically emerged out of the witness evidence that was provided by B first, a council owned company operating for bulk in Dagenham. And they sold themselves very well. And their model very well. So that's something that we want to have a closer look at.
• I don't know if we really. Yeah, I would let members go through, but I would say what we're doing, we're really trying to eliminate that options or know if it's viable or not. But I let members come in. I think it's good to be on there. Go for it.
• I've got huge concerns about this. And I kind of disagree about not the wording in the bullet points not being important because the devil is in the detail and the bullet points exemplify what's written involved. My big concern is hearing today about residents not having great correspondence with the council. And then essentially creating an independent development company, even though potentially being the shareholders of it, that's passing the buck. So for me, as a minimal, I would like to get the wording of council owned development company removed, but actually review or I think it needs far deeper understanding of what the options are for the whole world of that bullet point. Potentially even given the restrictions of what should be looked at.
• Foundry point?
• Any other?
• Can I just come in a bit about that? This is just, no, it's, what I'm just trying to say, council owned companies, sometimes for when we go out to get money, so you know, like our TA accommodations we're buying back. I just think that that, I'm not saying we should do it, but I think that way I've read it is you're looking at it, you're just looking at it is not.
• Same, same, that's what I'm saying.
• Thank you. I mean, we, I don't think we've actually said to, we've not actually said from even what was written that we want them to jump on it. We do want it eliminated, but the member is quite right to also raise based on what we've heard to make sure that maybe we'll look at it in the wording. So I'm happy to consider that position, but I would, do you wanna give us the right wording?
• Not the right wording, but also just to raise that, isn't a councilor has recently, or the executive have closed the independent company of isn't on that, did exist. Aiko, from my understanding, that wasn't.
• So, Councillor Uno, please, don't, please, go on. You're a member, you're not to speak.
• Yes, just to say that they've closed it, so I think there's a track record of not necessarily having the right skill set to have an independent company as part of this London Council.
• I think that's a point to Aiko exactly why the wording. Again, we can go back and we've taken down note but we've listened to what you said, and I will suggest for the wording again, 'cause we will reseculate this, and I will probably do it over email from members to just say yes, if you really feel contested about it. I'm happy to take what you said on board. I actually think you've made some good points there, so we do need to kind of look at the wording correctly, and especially with examples that you set out as well. Okay, thank you. Can we move to the third one, please?
• Thanks, Chair. Review and improve resident engagement to ensure it is inclusive, accessible, and fit for purpose.
• Yes, please. Just from feedback today from residents and also my own personal experience. Just with this, I think the biggest issue that came was the issues with the contractor, and it seemed like a lot of the responsibility was for members to kind of liaise with a contractor without a council officer accountable. So I would say, I would recommend that there is an allocated council officer who liaises with residents, and then they can liaise with the contractors instead of leaving that with residents, 'cause that's really stressful. And again, it's a council project, so I feel like if the contractors aren't performing, the council should be held accountable. Are the performance indicators for councilors? I mean, this goes, this isn't within my expertise, but are there legal clauses that if a contractor isn't delivering, there are fines, penalties? Like, yeah, so I feel like the council needs to be accountable for that.
• Okay, thank you, that's taken, and I think that should be reflected. Sorry, Dean, I should have called you to, it's okay to refer us back to the other team if you have to go for it.
• I believe we do have liaison. We did this before in this, we have liaison officers, so why do we need another officer? All this seems to be cospiling up for what we've just read. There's something missing, there's something big, someone's, there's a very bad expression in the building game, but I won't use it, but someone's got to be accountable for all of this, and it's like, we haven't got a wishing well, and the money's going out the back door.
• It's an expression that I believe all members feel, and we're still trying to, maybe, partly why number one recommendation was there, because maybe that's where we will find out what exactly goes.
• Councillor Ward.
• I was just gonna say that there is, of course, a system of contract liaison, resident liaison, but I think the committee's point is that some of the things we've heard, maybe that system isn't working as well as it should, so I think there's no, there wouldn't be an issue, I think, we could tweak it slightly and say, review the system of contract liaison, or something along those lines, if that was satisfied, Dean's point.
• Something's got to be outside the accounts, someone's got to stand there, not working for the council, not working for the contractor, and stand there and put you to write, this is late, if we do this in a private sector, so we get up to 50 to 150,000 pound fine a week for being late, you know, there's loads of things that were not good. - Thank you. I do believe that the officer did raise this earlier and about the contractor part as well, and I think this is what is echoed again, do you want to come back in?
• I think it all comes back to previous council's point as well as there is a culture, so there are many things that overlap here, so contract to performance would include their communications, their resident liaison, from what we've heard from part of you, especially, there seems to be a gap, or maybe an over-alliance from council officers on the contractor to do that messaging and kind of engagement with the residents, and if the contractor isn't performing, then we know that that's not going to work, so it's tying up this is to review what's broken within that chain and looking at how we can provide that accountability, so resident charter commitment there is actually a way of setting out, this is what the council commits to before we even kind of put a spade in the ground there, and we can be held to account to it, so that's why that's kind of part of that recommendation, but some overlap with the contractor performance.
• Okay, thank you. Again, things have been captured, I can't wait to see the next circulated one again around this. All right, I'll move to four, I'll move to four.
• Oh, sorry, councilor, councilor.
• Yes, are you speaking as a resident, or are you speaking as a councilor? Well, you did bring quite a lot of evidence, I'm more than happy to actually hear your view on this.
• Thank you. So I'm speaking to the point above. As Dean has said, there is already a person responsible for this, and that is the project manager, and I should say that I've dealt with 10 different project managers in 10 years on various projects, and many of them have been very good. They are the most junior officers within the new build team, and it is about supporting the ones who are doing that role well. There is no need to create extra roles, and most importantly, I think the first point, and I think that because of a conversation that I had with a senior new build officer on this topic, seems to suggest that there needs to be high-level engagement support from outside. A lot of the time, and a lot of other boroughs, there are consultants that are hired to do that engagement support. My view is that doesn't help. It doesn't help with accountability. It obviously doesn't help with expense. It is a cultural issue. If there was a clear responsibility from the top to give, say, monthly reports about all of the problems raised in a state and how they have been dealt with, I really think we would have solved a lot of these issues by now, because in the case of Parkview, it is not the case that Malali's is a bad contractor. I actually think they're in very difficult circumstances, quite good, in that the person who leads on site, you know, gives out his number to everyone, and deals with things that really aren't for him to deal with. Most of the problems that I've seen have been on the council side, and they have been a question of accountability. So, let's not suggest that we need to go elsewhere. We've got a lot of what we need in-house. We just need a really different culture in the way that we deliver things.
• Thank you so much, council, okay. I think that was well put and was captured.
• Yeah.
• Okay. Looking at the recommendation, we move to four. I think there's one of the recommended point that I think what councilor Kej just said would probably meant that we have to play around with. So, let's go to number four.
• Let's move forward.
• Yeah. I think four is covered. Is there anybody, anyone else speak on number four directly? Okay. Fine. (paper rustling)
• This one.
• This was?
• This one.
• 10. This, we've heard this quite through the review, and I think it would be justice for us to express that. Let's go higher.
• Okay.
• I think that's done six. Now, face, I haven't heard, and also looking at the timeline, some of the conversation that has been raised. Number six, I strongly feel that it should be looked at, 'cause if we're gonna approach it, that's gonna go on for so long. And if the timeline to actually build up we're a little bit faster, why not? It's never, we've never looked at it. I saw, I would love to know that we've done all the work around to know if this is viable, these are the some of the conversation that's going forward. If we were to get at those lines, or if we were to move at pace, this is partly some of our solutions. So this is why I feel all about number six. I think we are of age to allow to really look into this even on a pilot skill, go for it.
• Thanks, Chair. Alice, because you're from the Council Office of the Team, I'm just sort of just, I guess, from my own observation, looking at Barnet schemes, they've got a lot of new builds and developments. I'm not saying they're better than I, so, you know, I'm just wide-noted in terms of when they've done something that we've tried to do, or we've done, actually. And is there something that we can look at where other councils are, for example, I just feel, because we heard the residents' experience, I just feel we can't ignore that now. And the fact that I know there's been other projects that we've tried to do in Islington that haven't gone forward, but not as detailed, sort of as bad as that when I've gone. So, Chair, if I just quickly finish. I know you don't want to commit to timelines. I understand why, because there's a process, and you guys will know that, because that's a job.
• Councillor, you can recommend.
• And it's up to the offices to decide.
• Yeah. So, there's a site that's in Barnet, and I've seen it there being to build that in security. I guess I want to support that information to say that it got built in a year.
• Okay, thank you.
• Thank you. You can send that. I mean, obviously, the conversation we have in about every recommendation is based on what we've heard in this room, especially on the evidence gathering and things like that. I think, from what I can pick up from what Councillor Postman questions trying to say, is that number six should be looked at strongly, and that's how we feel about that. We want pace, we want time fast, and haven't heard some of these things. If we're looking at these options, maybe if these projects were a bit faster, maybe we will not find out some of these issues. And hearing about people losing their playground and things like that. So, it's almost like people could have carried on, I mean, having their playground, and this thing could have just been put out there once we were ready to make it happen. And that's why I think it's really worth looking at prefabs, things like that, in my view. And we've heard that mentioned by, I think, one of the other Councillors as well. I don't want to dwell on this, unless anyone really objects to number six, but I think you should just stay, and maybe work better. Yeah? Thank you. We're not still, we're still not, we're not more doing a review, we're recommending. So, please, thank you. Number seven. Number seven. Commit to delivering, yes, let's go forward, yes. Anyone object? Objecting?
• Additions, yeah.
• One.
• Okay, please go for it.
• Okay. I think there doesn't need to be an emphasis on low energy and passive house standards, 'cause I think there's nothing explicitly currently in the first bullet point, and I appreciate that it's part of climate resilient housing, but I think that would be quite useful if that's mentioned. And also, based on the last meeting that we had, I think there was a mention of that in the future, it isn't the potential to have 95% homeless heated by a heating network. And then I think there's a question to be asked about, boilers, or moving away from that as well. And I'm not entirely sure about the wording, but I think it'd be good to see what we're heading, what we currently are, and how we can move quicker.
• Okay, yeah, I mean, it's a lot, it's more sort of like data, but I think if we can capture the wider view--
• I'm happy to return of some words.
• I'm sure, I'm happy to perhaps sit down. Okay, go on.
• And just, I guess, to piggyback off that point, he's just about somewhere in there where it talks about the recyclable kind of element in terms of when we've had projects, maybe not go ahead and we've had things taken away, and how we reutilized that material, 'cause I think that's something that's really important for us to use as well, if we can just word it in there.
• Yep, thank you. I think that's captured.
• That's not sure.
• Okay, great. Where am I? Number eight. Right, so now, number eight was around, when we're looking at this was around the fact that a lot of the thing that came up with viability, viability, viability. For us to build, it needs to be viable, and for most of the time, the viability conversation is around a number of these projects having areas that are probably sold off as, you know, shared housing or whatever that might be. I think for us, looking at the fact that we start from the number of people that are in Islington that are not affordable, there's a lot of conversation around unaffordable for people that Islington resident, we looked at issues around numbers of families that probably can never be. So what we were looking at this recommendation was, part of our viability should be tied into keeping Islington families here in Islington. If it means they have to buy, that's fine, but we're keeping Islington families in Islington because it cuts through a much bigger area of conversation. We won offices and, you know, exact members to kind of look deeper into this around how do we, if we're gonna be viable, how do we use a viability vehicle as part of keeping families in Islington? Because an average family in Islington could not possibly be able to afford to buy anything in Islington. And if we're building as a council and we are trying to be viable, let the viability be targeted to Islington resident, not external. That was what their recommendation was about. Please go ahead.
• Bear with me, I'm a little bit excited about this one. I will start with suggesting, if there could be a working group for this. I feel like because there is so many opportunities to kind of explore what could be done. So just from the top of my head, I know it says those who don't meet the criteria for traditional social housing, and obviously I would want the private rented sectors to be involved in that, 'cause I know that, you know, where the price of rent is just completely unaffordable, but I was also thinking about council tenants who have applied for right to buy and given them an opportunity to purchase the new bills so we can free up so that council homes not bought and that obviously frees up a council home for those on the waiting list. And if the same discount could be applied, that would be applied for them and secure and funding for that. That's just one suggestion or to explore. And also obviously creating a register for eligibility, what the eligibility would look like and such as living in Islington for the past five years and being a council tenant, et cetera. And lastly, similarly to the local plan that, not the local plan, but if you live close to an estate, you get kind of priority, that should be applied for potentially buying it. And I think we could secure funding if it is, you know, covering the cost of a deposit or a discount. So a working group would be great.
• I totally work on the council award.
• No, I mean, I work on the principle of let's explore absolutely everything. So I'd be really happy to explore this. I mean, from what I don't understand, this is about maybe trying to sell some of the private homes that we built at a discounted rate to existing residents who wouldn't necessarily apply for social housing, but nevertheless cannot afford to buy or rent in the borough.
• Absolutely.
• Yeah, the viability for most of our project should also be targeting to a resident 'cause we need to keep families in Islington.
• Yeah. I agree, and that should be, but also I feel like in terms of viability, we pay so much for temporary accommodation, as you would know. And if we free up a council house, we could use that for temporary accommodation. So it would still be a saving in that context as well.
• Can I just make one tiny point, Chair? Sorry, I think it's well worth exploring. The only point I would make is it's always a trade off. If there's something that goes into having someone buy a private home, that's something that we can't use about to build a council home. But I do take the point and we should explore everything.
• Yeah, I mean, I like that you mentioned the working group. I think that is actually a good way to why the conversation, why this is being reviewed and looked at. Right, I think they say unless anyone strongly feel opposition to that number, I can move forward to the next one. No? Okay, right. What's the next one on my agenda? Number nine, right. Right, this was just about building jobs and opportunity. I can't really see anything wrong with that. It's a recommendation, we can move on, that's fine. Cool. Okay, sure.
• Thanks, Chair. - I don't like the recommendation.
• No, I like it, but I just, sorry, Chair, I just think sometimes we look at things too far away and I get why we might do that but I think I'd load the time that says over the last five years or my reading is from contracts. Oh dear, I just want to timeline. So like to review it every so maybe, does it make sense like maybe one year, two year, or one and a half because I think with the cost of living and you know, it's like keeping families here and initiatives for like, I think the brief council of Bradford, I think that'd be a nice tie in with the housing.
• I believe council of Bradford's brief is to do what commerce shows. I'm right, I'm thinking so. So that might be different. They do have a lot of ways of hitting this part. I think what we're trying to do was to also include that in, you know, residential, new people, council-led projects. So it's slightly, that's a slight difference. But knowing that it all fits into one directory, I mean, there's a wider conversation to have around them.
• Sure, go on.
• Absolutely. It's part of the council's progressive procurement approach. It's inclusive economy. It all has to kind of overlap. So, being in social value, but what does social value mean? Well, actually it means employment opportunities and training and giving, giving residents a chance. And if we can do that very local to where we're impacting residents through construction, then we should try and be more targeted and strategic around them.
• Thank you. Right. Number 10, I think that's pretty straightforward. We need to know what we are doing. What do we have or have we built any objection? No, I think that was quite. Do members have any, I mean, 10 is always a good number. Do we have anything we would like to add as, go for it, go for it, go for it.
• I don't know if it was explored at the last meeting, but lifetime homes, just looking at kind of, when we are building new builds, just making them like lifetime homes for those who have mobility issues. If it's a fraction, a portion of the number of homes, but I think that should be kind of part of our recommendation.
• Apparently everything we recommend we have to have
• I'm trying to.
• evidence on it.
• I do.
• Thank you.
• Thank you.
• Wait, I'm just trying to work that out. So when you get a tenancy.
• Do you want me to be clamped by?
• Yeah, do you still have a clear reminder?
• It's just, when it's new builds, just making it long-term accessible. So even though there are future, yeah, future-proof, yeah. So, yeah.
• Yes, I think you've raised this yourself when you were talking about some of the early projects.
• Very early on, we set out, in fact, everything that we build meets what used to be called lifetime home standards. It's now been kind of absorbed into building regulations. So that's a minimum standard that we have to achieve. And then we go beyond that to provide adaptable or accessible in a wheelchair housing. So we could, they're planning requirements around that. But something, again, that sets a minimum standard. So where possible, we should always look to improve on the minimum standards. So I'm happy to take a recommendation on, can we improve the number of accessible housing to make no kind of specific housing demand?
• I think that could fit in number three.
• Oh, it's no. The accessibility of 50% proposed, I don't know.
• How small president engaged in that?
• Yeah, because of resident engagement, so maybe no.
• But yeah, number seven, I'm trying to keep it 10. Okay, okay, thank you, okay, we'll do it that way. Now, just to ignore my full of time, and thank you so much, so I'll delegate the wording to the officer, and myself. And vice chair, and I will come back to the committee as well. But just to say that we definitely need to get the recommendations signed off at our next meeting, right? So any sort of, whatever draft that one has now, we'll put them across to you. You feed in whatever that is. If there's not directly feeding, if you feed in and there's a response, and there's any true objection, please try and get another member to echo the same thing you've said to second it. If not, if it's just not enough people to object to it, then I will just be assuming that everything is fine.
• Speaking.
• No, no, no, that's the next one.
• No, yeah, that's another one. The information I did request, that will be coming before, yeah, it will get to us. There was a reason for that date.
• Sure.
• Sorry, can you clarify the date of the next committee, just sort of 13 to make.
• Yeah, 13 to make, yeah, 13 to make. Okay. Just to. Okay, so if not, I would just say thank you, everyone. I think it was an interesting meeting. I think having residents here was, it's quite impactful and in a way uncomfortable, even for myself, but it's needed. And then I appreciate all of you for taking that on, and I'm sure you take that on as even case of what you did be. I appreciate everyone, thank you. Thanks, Drew. [BLANK_AUDIO]