Transcript

before moving on to eight and nine. Can I have your agreement to that? Great, Chair. Okay. We have a very busy agenda this evening, three substantive items, and I'm going to be trying my best to get through all of this. So as I always say in previous meetings, we have to keep our answers to be succinct and to the point. They might have to intervene at times when the answers have been thrown along. And to my colleagues on the scrutiny benches, we need to keep our question in. So avoid the preamble where we can, but sometimes I know you need to set context and get straight to the questions as quickly as possible. With regards to meeting etiquette, I shall invite all participating in the meeting to introduce themselves. When you're speaking for the first time, minutes of the concert present in the chamber, please come and ask that you indicate your wishes by raising your hands. This meeting of the Ousmane Regeneration Committee is now called to order. First item on the agenda is apologies. Do we have any apologies? The clerk will note that there is no apologies for this evening's meeting. Next item, declaration of interest. Are there any members wishing to declare an interest as they are on the charter? Just to follow up on the interests of caution, I'm a trustee of the London Emergencies Trust, which gave emergency funding to those affected during the grape and were still custodians of some of the grass. I really note that. So that's a non-pecuniary interest, I take it. Okay. The next item on the agenda is the minutes. I move that the minutes of the meeting of the Ousmane and Resident Experience Commission other than the 26th of March, be agreed as a correct record. Can I have someone, the second item? Thank you. Our next item is the item five, which is the Community World Building Paper. We can find this on our agenda tab, page seven to 18. For the general public and members present, the purpose of this report is to provide the Ousmane and Regeneration Scrutiny Committee with the confidence that residents are consulting and feedback is routinely gathered and acted on and that our new money aligns to meet directorate and corporate objective in addressing new residents' financial security. Also to that, the commission look forward to receive information on the return on investment in addition to the direct and indirect outcome provided by Newham Council. Our new money service as part of the community building. I would like to thank officers for the report. And it's a comprehensive report and thank you for the work that you have done in providing this report. For this evening, we have an expert weakness. Our name is Laura Austins-Kroff, the director of population held at East London, Foundation Trust. And I will invite Laura at this stage to introduce herself. She online yet. No one's joined online yet, Chair. (indistinct) Can you hear us, Laura? She's not online, okay. I suppose she would be here in the fullness of time. One thing I forget to do and pardon me for not introducing myself on my commission. And this is just for the review in public because all of us here tend to know each other. I am Councillor Anthony McCormick, member for the ward and chair of overview and scrutiny as well as this commission. And on my left, we have Councillor...

• Councillor Joshua Garza, Councillor for Stratford Ward.
• Councillor James Speckles, Custom House.
• Councillor Susan Milsters, Councillor for East Ham, Councillor for East Ham South and also chair of health and adult social care, scrutiny.
• I'm Councillor Terry Paul, Stratford Ward Councillor and chair of the crime environment and transport improvement committee (indistinct)
• Councillor Rachel Forestine, North Ward.
• Councillor Reichelder, Canton, North.
• Councillor (indistinct)
• And Lewis Humphrey, Green Street.
• Okay, thank you. And the other officers who are too numerous to count. When you speak for the first time, can I ask that you introduce yourselves? Okay, thank you.
• Laura has joined online now, chair.
• Okay, thank you very much. Hello, Laura, are you online now? Can you hear us?
• I can, I'm just getting my camera working, thank you.
• Okay, so why is you getting your camera working? I just make some brief remarks. At some point, Mayor, I would be asking you just to contextualize the service that is being provided. And that would be no more than two minutes or so just to set the scene. And because Laura is our expert weakness, I would ask her to introduce herself. And there's a few bits of information we will be expecting to hear from her in terms of our experience of work with within the barrier sector. So as soon as she's ready, I would address her in terms of what we expect in Laura to provide for this evening.
• Thank you, Councillor McAlmond. I'm ready, I can, I'm very happy to share my experience.
• Okay, right, so I just outline what it is we're expecting as a commission from yourself. So we would like you to highlight your broad experience, what you have seen in other local authorities, and explain to this commission, your collaboration with the London Bar Referendum, the impact measures benchmarking against other authorities, areas for improvement, how is this aligned with best practice, and how this could shape future policies and what the challenges are to rolling out this kind of work in other local authorities. I know this is a multiple, but I was assured by officers that you've seen this already. So over to you, Laura.
• Thank you very much. I think you've got my background that I work at the East London NHS Foundation Trust. I lead on the population health work at that trust. So looking at what we can do to improve the health of both service users and residents in the areas where we provide services. I've been invited to talk about the partnership work between Our New Money and East London Foundation Trust service, which is based in West Ham Lane, which we call SCIPS, which is a specialist children and young people services. And that specific service provides a wide range of health services for children and young people who are registered with the new MGP, aged up to 18 years old. It includes children and young people experiencing a range of developmental and social communication difficulties, so it's a neuro disability clinic. It's quite hard to think about how we benchmark this against other local authorities, because the pilot that started in this partnership, where we'd seen models of practice like this before, it's called Healthier Wealthier Families, was in Scotland, Sweden and Australia. So bringing together the model, which I'll describe, in a way was the first time in a setting such as Newham in the sense of urban, multilingual and ethnically diverse setting. So it was seen, and this was brought together to East London Foundation Trust through a pediatrician consultant called Dr. Michelle Hayes, who also is an academic. So she was aware of what international practice was going on and wanted to test it out at Newham Council. And how the conversation started was that the East London Foundation Trust had recently had some evidence presented to it from Professor Sir Michael Marmot, looking at how we could do more to reduce health inequalities in the areas where we provide services. And they specifically started talking to Newham Council about how we could think about the early childhood and how we could improve really the life outcomes for children in the borough. And so it's decided to test the model called Healthier Wealthier Families, which is when a financial advisor is co-located in a healthcare setting. So the pilot started in April, 2023, with an advisor from Our New Money, providing onsite support for initially two days a week. And then it's been reduced down to one day a week. The pilot was funded by the East London Foundation Trust and evaluated by the University College London. And we've managed to embed it into its second year with a joint funding through the East London Foundation Trust charity and Newham Council. So in terms of the pilot, which is where I'm gonna talk about where the data outcomes are from, it initially started off where we had to build awareness, start the referrals from clinicians, and they'd be referring to Our New Money through a link through their referral system. And about 14 months later, we've seen 77 families directly supported through this co-location of an advisor in the setting. And because we've had UCL evaluated, we've been able to help quantify it, that it's realized about 460,000 pounds worth of benefits to families who previously were not taking up that benefit because they weren't aware that they were could. So you're looking at benefits around things like disability living allowance, universal credit, carer support, council tax relief. So things that people could access, but they weren't aware that they were available to them. And that equated to an average of around 6,000 per family. And we also had a qualitative evaluation alongside of that, which really saw very positive impacts on family wellbeing. So people reporting less stress, less worry, being able to buy things for their children that they wouldn't otherwise have been able to do, for example, a special push chair for the child's neuro-disability, which they weren't able to previously afford, being able to bulk food and buy, and just certain sort of social participatory activities like being able to celebrate a children's birthday. And the clinicians involved and the partners from Our New Money were also interviewed, and it showed that there was a good reciprocal partnership going on. People providing clinical support felt relief that they could provide, refer well to a service. So some of the key things I think we are learning from it is that Our New Money is a universal service where anyone in the borough can access that support. But sometimes you really need to think about how you target that support to population groups experiencing particularly high financial need. And we know that families with children with disabilities are more likely to be living in poverty. So we feel it's an example of what Michael Marmot calls proportionate universalism when we're really resourcing and delivering universal services at a scale according to need. So very much through this partnership, thinking that we need to take that extra step to really get that support to these families. And we've drawn out, this is through the academic research, three conditions which we think contribute to the success of the partnership. The first attribute is that the advice is high quality. And by that, we mean that there was able to deal with complexities that people might be presenting and there was no specific time specified as saying we can only support the families for 30 minutes. The Our New Money advisors were able to give us much time as their families needed to really think about what they were entitled to, how to provide support and also refer onto other types of support whether it's debt relief or housing support. The second condition was the advice is accessible and responsive. And that was something around which other parts of this evaluation have shown that when you bring into a co-located setting, it provides an additional trust. It helps break down certain aspects of stigma and people felt because they had children that they felt comfortable coming along to the setting. They knew that there was the right facilities for their family and could help access the support. And then also the third condition around partners collaborating or engaged. And I think that's really that strength of that partnership that I think there's a certain sense of seeing what the impact was happening on families, hearing back that made clinicians feel very trusted to be able to refer their families that they were seeing to the support service. So in terms of other local authority work, I know that there is this practice going on in certain primary care practices. So Citi and Hackney have recently sort of done a similar thing about co-locating benefit advisors and primary care. And we know that there's some aspects of secondary mental health care also. So some of this patient services that we provide in Newham, in Tower Hamlets and Citi Hackney also have benefit advisors located in those settings. But this was the first one really focused around children and families. And we're taking this learning to other parts of where East London Foundation does provide services. So I was having a conversation in Luton just this afternoon about how we take forward some of these learnings into settings there. We've been sharing it with national, regional and local partners. So we've shared it with the Department of Health and Social Care with NHS England and the Great London Authority as well to sort of see how this model of practice can help be encouraged through sort of national policy and commissioning models and that things like the advice sector when it's receiving funding can help encourage this kind of integrated way of working, particularly for population groups where we know there's high levels of need. We recognize it's not sustainable for services to co-locate across a wide range of settings, but then there's something about being able to match up where we know there is particular population vulnerability and where this financial support can provide additional strengths. So that was my initial presentation, but I'm very open to further questions.
• Okay, thank you. And thank you for keeping the time and thought. Thank you very much. What before, I know members would want to be asking questions. So before, and once members started to ask questions, I suppose they may then want to direct questions to the executive depends on the responses received. So at this stage, I would invite either the mayor or Councillor Dodger or Darren to do a brief introduction to contextualize and then we go into questioning. But over to whoever, is it you, the mayor or? Okay, Councillor Dodger.
• Thank you very much. Councillor Carolina Dodger, Royal Victoria Ward. I'm also the deputy cabinet for Community Well-Building and Business Enterprise. Okay, I know services provide a range of direct intervention to residents and local businesses, and this has helped to improve and enhance economic security and resilience. As well as new money, we're here to discuss about what we've done. So we've kind of correlate some information in terms of the stats to show the excellent work we've done within the community itself. We're able to help, through our real work, we're able to help 951 people into work this sometime last year. We also help to gain new skills across the long life learning through our new learning and skills. We've had with help over 3,000 residents. We've also provided support to the local businesses through our new businesses and enterprise. We've helped towards earning total almost 1,681 businesses in Newham to have support through range of services, including guidance, business advice, startup assistance, subsidizing sort of business membership and so on. We also reported highlight of works that our new money has actually provided housing of helping residents accordingly. So depending on what their individual needs are, you know, we're estimated to have used over 5.3 million to support our residents within the borough itself. And also, we've also secured the benefits and why the local economy has money spent locally, as the money we've spent locally to support businesses as well as residents that are in need. We welcome the opportunity to discuss the content of the reports with you this evening. Okay. Thank you very much, Councilor Darda. Now, I am looking towards the scrutiny benches and you're now inviting to put questions to Laura in terms of what she said to us and also to the cabinet member concerned scrutiny. And next, Councilor George Carpini and Councilor, and I'm charter and question. Thank you, Chair. I'll keep the question brief for the attention of ensuring the answer is equally as brief. If the household support fund is due to end, I'm curious as to what your assessment is of the impacts on families that have come to rely on that benefit. Are you anticipating an increased burden on the council's finances because people who previously received it will not from September? Yeah, you want me to come in on that? I think over the past two years, the household support fund has provided obviously a significant boost to the council's ability to provide those emergency payments. If that is withdrawn in September, and it has been extended I think three times now, it would definitely impact on our ability to get back in the first line events support because the council doesn't have the budget available to replace what's seen over the years. We are concerned that it could lead to additional pressures on statutory services because the crisis is then not managed and it escalates into other problems for people. So certainly from our perspective, it will be quite important to keep the pressure on national government to keep that fund available in some form. Can you quantify the impact? Can you quantify the impact? Well, I suppose we will be able to do an analysis of the groups who have received the support so far and the characteristics of the support fund. The characteristics of those groups would keep all of that data. So yeah, it's certainly a task we could do. But I think across the board, what we would see would be more people going into crisis and that would affect anyone who's vulnerable in the community really. We've been administering the fund. So I would have thought that would be a headline figure. We would have quantified because it's something that's coming down the track. More need that we know will come and people that we know we've delivered those funds to and the funds may not exist in six weeks time. Just to suggest that I reckon quantifying it would be a good idea for us as a council.
• If I may, Chair, just on a broader point, the task of the Arnhem Service and the constituent parts of the Arnhem Service is also fundamentally in response to what we have identified and know are structural inequities that have been longstanding features of this borough leading to financial insecurity for so many households is to actually strengthen the financial resilience of households. So over time, the integrated work of the Arnhem Service, including the work of Arnhem Money is also intended to shift people out of that space whereby they are habitually continuously reliant on measures and interventions like household support fund monies, albeit we recognise how far a borough like Newham, given the longstanding features of poverty and inequality we have to go.
• So I'm going to just follow up on that. How do you intend to shift from that space of that position of dependency? Because to do so, sometimes it's easier said than done. So what plans have you got to do that?
• Yeah, and before you do, Darren, I appreciate that in our political cultural context in this country, there's an amplification of a vocabulary anchored in dependency culture, which has very negative connotations. And what I would hope we can think about is a systemic structural issue that has held people back and how we want to create an enabling environment. So I wouldn't actually use terminology like dependency culture, 'cause I think it has connotations which can be quite denigrating to groups and cohorts of our residents, including those with disabilities, when we know that those with disabilities, by virtue of structural inequality in the labour market, can be differential between those without disabilities and those with disabilities is quite stark. So I just wanted to make that point.
• Yeah, I mean, enabling our residents is always a good thing. And I just wanted to give them the confidence, are we going to enable them?
• Yes, I think about that. And I think there is at times in people's lives, there are prices points, and that is not always to do the right thing to be beyond that, because this person needs it differently than they want to deal with. But because the R&U and service is organised under one banner, one head of service beforehand is sat next to me, we do have links between the different teams, different functions, and where we organise in the management, so it's more between the different strands. That conversation with somebody in the crisis moment could be picked up six months from that, ask them about their job, how they work, their aspirations, their training needs, and we've got groups directly provided amongst other providers. And in addition to that, there's quite a lot of centrally funded, central government funded support programmes for specific groups, separate groups who are further away from the labour market, or for those who might have disabilities, help people into at the right times.
• Thank you very much. Nancy, Charlie.
• Sorry, I may have missed something here completely, but I think the household group for support plan had been extended. It was announced on the 2nd of September.
• It's extended until April.
• So it is extended. So, sorry, that was a different answer that you gave then to Chancellor Garfield. Okay, thank you. So obviously that will help regardless as well. Can I just ask you about the budget? And this could be me reading it completely wrong, 9.1 on the paper. So we've got the general fund, which makes up the bulk of the focus of the costs for that. Is the small support fund, it's an in and out mechanism, is because it just gives out grants as soon as they come in, so to speak. Okay, fine, thank you. Can I just ask a question then? And I will say, I think this provides extraordinary value for money. But so, you know, well done on that. In terms of the credit union, what's our relationship with London Community Credit Union? How robust is it? (indistinct)
• (indistinct) So we've got a (indistinct) with the credit union at the moment. So residents can access affordable credit, but we don't have where we refer residents on to if they require (indistinct) but we don't have anything outside of that apart from just a partnership arrangements where residents can access. So we don't want to support them or have any equity in them.
• We haven't had in the past, yes. (indistinct)
• I think if I may just add, there is a history with the credit union and Newham Council. And there was a enhanced relationship by virtue of the loan product that was developed. And as a consequence of COVID-19, the credit union got itself into a really dire financial state and was seeking a bailout from the principal authorities that it had entered into original agreements with. And on balance, when we looked at the risk exposure to the council, it was deemed too risky for us to bail them out. And in the context of the work that we were doing locally, it wasn't deemed to be a effective and appropriate use of public money.
• So we've got no investment, if that's all I wanted to be very short of.
• Someone to the back of each other's question. In the past, we loaned the credit union quite a large amount of money in terms of loans. Had those loans been paid off or had those loans been crystallized with the credit union?
• So we'd have to, if I may, through the chair, thank you for the question. I would have to get a precise, accurate, written response to you, because I know that that was an area of diligence, but it was a few years ago. It was at the height of COVID-19. And it was one of the reasons why we made the eventual determination not to bail them out because it was too risky. But I know that the finance and resources team will be able to provide.
• Okay, can I just return to the officer's question? The question was, we don't see a financial, what is the nature of our relationship asked from the credit union? Based on your answer, chair, mayor, there might still be a financial relationship and we are looking at two and you are going to clarify what that relationship is. But at this moment, the officer is unable to provide a complete answer to each other.
• So my understanding is that there are a series of loans that were originally taken out by our residents when the relationship with the credit union was established. And those remain, and we've been very mindful about not, you know, it's a, we've not invested any more money beyond that initial sum that the council previously had invested into the credit union.
• So that means you gave an initial loan to the credit union a long time ago. - Yeah.
• Where I'm able tonight to establish whether that loan is paid off or crystallised or written off, correct?
• Right, we're not able to establish it this evening, but the information will be available and we're more than happy to provide you a written response. - Thank you.
• Yeah. - I'll try to get a complete answer to that question.
• Thank you very much, Councillor Hall. Can I just come up on that? The reason why I'm raising it is because lots of us as councillors have been contacted by another credit union making claims about this credit union. I don't want to go into it on camera. Would it be possible to get a full briefing on what the situation is around the credit union position whether we have scope and capacity to actually partner with another credit union or I don't know, anything, that that will actually help and support the financial situation of our staff?
• Yes. - Yeah.
• But there are serious concerns about property service there as well. And I think we can draw any kind of even informal hardship or even if we're referring people on, we carry a vicarious liability by endorsing what the quality of that is. We'll add that to the, if we do a comprehensive briefing based on the two main principal points that have been raised. Thank you. - Thank you.
• Thank you very much. Now, the next person here is going to be Susan, then Rachel, Louis and Terry. Can I say, colleagues, because we have a very tight agenda this evening, the PAC agenda, I'm looking at the time and I'm hoping to conclude this item before eight o'clock. So we'd like to be cooperative with each other so that we all can speak 'cause I'm going to guillotine it before eight o'clock. Okay, and don't forget, we have Laura online who has given up her time to be here this evening. So any question you want to direct to her. So the next person here is Susan, then Rachel.
• So firstly, I'd like to thank Laura for giving up her time and coming to talk to us about what's obviously been a very successful collaboration between the NHS and our new money. And it shows the value of outreach. I think that's the thing. I don't think I've got any questions to Laura purely because it's so clearly worked in this case, but obviously we want to reach the greatest numbers possible. So I'm just wondering whether there's any other outreach that we've done that's been successful. I'm also wondering in terms of the OSSO Winter Fuel Allowance, whether we're tracking that with our residents and looking at whether using our new money to look at whether they are entitled to either pensioner credit or other benefits to kind of fill that gap. And finally, I remember the days when our new money and our new work existed as organisations without being involved in this community wealth building structure. So I'm just wondering, given that those two organisations existed quite well in their own sphere, and actually I think we're better at hitting their work targets in those days, what else we're gaining from having this community wealth building structure outside of our new money, outside of our new work, because if I understand it, the work on the London Living Wage has been done.
• We need to get to a question.
• Yeah, that is my question. That's three.
• Okay, so I just want to clarify all the community wealth building division within Inclusive Economy. So community wealth building has two aspects. There's community wealth building in place, which is about the physical regeneration, traditionally understood as regeneration in other local authorities. And then there's the community wealth building people, which is the economic regeneration. And we bring those two arenas of intervention and activity under the banner of community wealth building, because it conforms to our philosophy and purpose as a politically led organisation that is driving towards building a fair annuum. So I just wanted to clarify that. And the reason why we have looked as part of a review and a diagnostic back in May, 2018 onwards, as we were developing the inclusive growth strategy and community wealth building strategy, we did a diagnostic of our new work and our money, and that informed a redesign of the, its intentions towards addressing systemic and structural inequality and low pay and financial insecurity that is a major feature facing people in this borough, given the relative, well, the average incomes that are woefully behind the London average. And then I'm going to pass over to Darren to explain further.
• Yes, given that we don't have the luxury of time, can you make your answer as short as possible, but to the point, so Council Master get your answer.
• Well, I would say about that integration point is, and some of the part about low numbers, which of Council Masters is the focus of the services shifted more towards the harder to reach, the longer term, the more economically insecure, if you like. Whereas I think in the past, there was more of a, you know, 'cause it was every different model, more focused on the job brokerage side than it is now. Although that's exists. And I can pass over to Berhan to talk a bit about some of the target that work will be doing as well.
• I'm sorry, we don't have the, what we'd have to do going forward is to see that the person's best able to answer, because we've taken up a lot of time. I'm looking here.
• Submit my question in writing, and then I can get an answer outside of the meeting.
• Yes. So is what we, thank you. Is what we call the bottom passing, because you'll be then the toward person to answer the question and it's taken up a lot of time 'cause I have more members wanting to speak. So thank you Council Masters for your participation and thank you Mayor and Darren for your response. I then move on to Rachel who's been waiting for some time.
• My first question actually follows on from what you were starting to say. I was interested to see in the paper that we talk about demand for outstripping capacity, but then also talk about the need for targeting the service that we're offering and about doing more outreach. And I was just keen to know what that really meant in terms of the service we were offering. Does it mean in effect, we're doing kind of triage focusing on the service to the people who we think really need it and kind of offloading other people onto other forms of support? And the other question that I have is about our relationship with the voluntary sector in Newham. I know that the other local authorities have been doing sort of benefits for and income maximization stuff for that long time. In lots of places that work is effectively commissioned out to voluntary sector partners and done either by them in partnership with them. And I wondered whether that was something that we'd explored more about.
• So in terms of the outreach, we are mentioned around the voluntary sector organization. So one part of it is getting some of the grants that they're willing to do a wider distribution network. So working with over 30 voluntary sector organization ensuring things like the house for support fund is reached out to spread out to geographical across the bar. And as part of our wider transformation happening over the last couple of months, it's about how we integrate with the community and ensuring that we take our services out, to things like family hubs and housing hubs, and as well as fucking from community centers. So we've been doing that successfully for the last couple of months now. And the wider corporate transformation allows us to ensure that we're working with our voluntary sector, including how we distribute funds and working with the wider voluntary sector organization and training our frontline staff through our social welfare alliance programs. So we are able to provide training on health around information maximization that we've get more volunteers and champions to help our residents. So there's a lot more work around happening around how we integrate into communities.
• Can I just come back quickly?
• Briefly, brief supplementary and then-
• Which is a really good one. And obviously that's made in the paper. I guess my question is how that really works in a situation where we're already saying that demand outstrips supply in terms of what the service can do.
• Certainly. So I would just say that it comes back to the point about where we are with resources to target as effectively as possible. So we think that it's worth investing some of the resources in this outreach work. It will catch some of those people who would otherwise walk through the door. But I do think there is a risk that people will end up needing to access the services if we haven't got the resources and, you know, it's complicated by sector organizations.
• Could I just say that your point about working with partnership in the voluntary sector is obviously really valuable. And I know that the kind of local champions kind of volunteer model is one that's worked really effectively elsewhere. It's not quite the same as what I was asking about whether we've thought about commissioning voluntary sector partners to do what we're doing.
• If I may, so we're actively looking at ways in which as part of a revived better whole council approach to our voluntary community and faith sector, including the ways in which we appropriate effective commissioning models to help build capacity of the voluntary community and faith sector, that's underway and that will encompass different service areas and where we can help maximize our work and collaborations going forward. And not least because of the scenario that's merging with council, what we can credibly do and do within high fiscal climate.
• Thank you. And Lewis.
• Thank you very much.
• Darren, I'm looking at appendix one and appendix two in the document with Gilgus, which is the old operating model and the new operating model. Is there a difference between those models?
• Yes. I mean, I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but broadly speaking now, the two models compared, there's more people now in our newer money, there's about 20 in our newer money now, that's higher than it was partly because of the household support fund bringing in that new income. And there's fewer workers in our newer work. So as I've explained, models move more towards this longer term support and less from that job brokerage approach.
• Okay, and obviously difficult situation with finances in the country and in the council. How do you see those changes progressing? It's always struck me that the job brokerage service that we offer is something that is almost kind of duplicated by JCP. So are there other efficiencies that you see going forward?
• So on the job brokerage service, I would say we get developer contributions that come through planning and that pays for the bulk of it, plus grants from DWP for some of that and also from the health service. So there isn't a general fund contribution from the council for that. So what we're doing is reframing that to be more about this sort of long-term relationships with people. I think the challenge for us is for our newer money and it's set out in the paper, relies on general fund. There are no grants, there are no section 106 contributions to the our newer money service. So that is one that's under more pressure given the council's budget challenges.
• Okay, thank you, that's really useful. And just very quickly, chair, if you'll allow me. Laura, thank you for your presentation. I was wondering what you need from these guys to sort of scale up some of the amazing work that you've been doing. I noticed that you were talking about kind of the way it might expand, but how do you need the relationship to be with some of the people we have in the room for you to be able to do that? (mouse clicking)
• So I think it is keeping that dialogue open for when we see areas of the, where the healthcare system sees areas of its population that need additional support. So an example could be something that came up in a needs assessment we did around adults with learning disabilities. So I guess I'm thinking specifically about population groups that we know may have maybe as the message structurally disadvantaged in certain ways and not be able to access the same level of support. And I do know this from attending the wonderful barbecue for people with learning disabilities at the enabled living center this summer that our new money were there and we were there also talking to some of the residents there about what more we could do in providing that support. So I think it's when we identify a particular population group that we feel there could be strengthened outreach support, having that openness from colleagues that earn your money to be able to talk about what could we do within the constraints. And some of that can be potentially being creative about how we bring to our services together or providing opportunities like I mentioned in community settings. I think so in terms of your question, it is about that openness. As I said, we've had very good partnership and very good data sharing which allows us to continually assess that what we're doing is providing that additional value and support. But that would be my, and I guess also to be able to advocate things that I can help provide to show that value because I am really, I mean, we're also in the NHS that there isn't any additional money right now. So it is about using our alignment the best way that we can.
• Okay, thank you.
• Yeah.
• Thank you, James.
• Thanks. I can see financial resilience throughout the paper a lot and it's good that there's a whole range of collaboration, but I guess the skeptic in me is not wholly convinced about the true financial resilience of our residents and the service can deliver that. And the reason I say that is because we do have a large sum of money which we get from government, we give to people and irrespective of the vernacular about dependency culture, how are we tracking that our residents, once the payments stop, once they're getting this money, that they're actually able to build up savings, build up true financial resilience, get a better job. Are we linking in with other organisations, not just within the third sector, but within the private sector? You know, before this meeting, I did a bit of reading into Camden's Community Wealth Fund and their mission orientated work. And what they've done, I mean, maybe 'cause it's Camden and they have, you know, Google, Meta in their surroundings, they're able to tap into the private sector and they're tapping into those funds there and that knowledge and that resource. But you read this paper and it sounds like we're doing the bulk of the work, we're spending the bulk of the work. Our residents are, yes, receiving a lot of support, but how are we making them sufficient? If, dare I say, self-sufficient, that once the funds end, that they will be able to take care of themselves, what's the quantifiable measure that we measure that? You know, are we looking at savings? Are we looking at health improvements as it is, as health is involved? Are we looking at other quantifiable, like school, children? And how do we bring in more private sector? We've got Westfield, we've got development, we talk a lot about the place side of community wealth building, but how's that linking in with actual, I guess, the financial resilience, the true financial resilience of our residents, which seems a bit woolly at the moment. And it just, maybe I need to see more numbers, maybe I need to be a bit more convinced, but my second question is about comparable borrowers. I would rather us compare ourselves to good borrowers, like the Candas, like the Hackneys, like the Islington's, who've got published papers that we can all look at, and we can look at ideas about how do we share information? It's more of a comment, but again, my main question is, the quantifiable measure in which we see our residents' lives improved, and actual resilience is built in, that when this funding stops, that they will be okay. And again, there won't be an added, dare I say, burden on us, our residents, our pressure to us, but it is a financial burden that we have-
• You're on that good question.
• Yeah, that we have to shoulder.
• I think it's amazing, but put it already, yes. Who's going to take it?
• I mean, I'm gonna say, and I appreciate your mind response, we're, of course, you'll say that, we actually are a good borrower on all those points you've raised, and our new money is one aspect. It's not the singular silver bullet to address all those things that you've described. And we may, granted, not have those shiny brochures, but fact, can then look at some of the things that we do, and borrow ideas as part of our exchange with our borrowers that share our desire to lift people out of poverty. And passing through the chair to Darren, he can elaborate on where our new money sits within a wider ecosystem that reflects our ambition for our people to lift them out of poverty and to make them sufficient and to argument locally a economic place where there are opportunities where people can access high skill, high income jobs, and are able to support their families in much, much more stable ways. And I finally just wanted to say, we are in profound ways very different to a place like Camden.
• Well, given the time, five to eight. So, because I have come to the point, I'm sure he doesn't want to be good at it. Okay.
• I can be very brief. I would just say, I think that's a really interesting point you've raised about those longer term measures, like what does success look like? And it's an interesting point for us to take away. But what I would like to give reassurance on is the fact that we do have extensive partnerships with the kind of big business and institutions and the borough big developers. They pay our section 106 contributions I've mentioned before but we're also talking to them about a range of other initiatives. If we do have that dialogue in place and we are looking at that kind of pathway for people.
• Yeah. Thank you. Thanks to Paul. Can it be one question? If you have many, choose your most important one. You're shaking your head. That means you don't have a question. Okay. Josh, and then we move on from there.
• Thank you chair. Given the efficiency of the department and I echo colleagues comments about how much investment you bring to the borough from what it costs. I'm not withstanding your presence this evening. I know that your time isn't as cheap as ours. The efficiency does stand out and what it brings to our residents. So I'm concerned as to how at risk the service is from midterm financial savings given the broader picture of the finances. And I would perhaps search for some assurances that the efficiency of departments and to what it brings to our residents will be factored in and heavily weighted when it comes to looking at the services that we do have to cut because I would hate to see this be reduced and therefore deliver less for our residents while other less efficient services are held on.
• So what assurance I can provide you is the determinations as it relates to re-profiling the in-year budget position and subsequent years reflecting the MTFS will always be driven by our objective of transforming place for our people and building a fair annuum without sounding kind of crass about it. So it's those fundamentals that you talk to and are energized by are central to what we're doing in this vision.
• Efficiency will play a role.
• Sorry?
• So efficiency will play a role.
• Efficiency in what sense? Sorry, just to clarify what you mean by efficiency.
• And what it then brings to the borough.
• So-
• It brings more than it costs, therefore it's highly efficient.
• Efficiency that allows and leads to tangible material, social value for our people and organizational efficiency and financial efficiency given the financial constraints.
• Okay, thank you. Councilor Masters, we are-
• Mr. Wayford.
• We are constrained-
• Contribution.
• We are constrained-
• Up in one minute. Integrated neighborhood teams as a way forward, which brings together the NHS with personalized roles that sort of look at all these kinds of issues working with our council services.
• Thank you, let's note that. And Councilor Masters, if you want a written response, can we note that for a written response? Councilor Masters' suggestion. Laura, thank you very much for attending our meeting this evening and for your input. You do have a good night. You're welcome to stay if you want to, but if not, enjoy the rest of your evening.
• Thank you very much for the inviting me.
• Okay, thank you. Colleagues, what we heard from Laura, she gave a positive report about the collaboration work with the Barra. And for those involved, thank you for that. One of the thing is that we heard, and I'm interested and I know Councilor Becker and another member touched on it, is enabling our residents. Now, if the funding is going to be stopped in April and members are growing dependent and what the mayor said and you said, Darren, this work to enable them, the various means that you have outlined, one of the thing is, I think you should come back to scrutiny at some point, maybe in the autumn of next year, to just give us an update on how that enabling activities are being done to make sure that our residents are really enabled and must be benefit dependent. So to push them into that position of crisis. Thank you, all officers and members who attended this segment. (indistinct) (indistinct) (indistinct) (indistinct)
• I now move to item six and for this item, in the process of the weaknesses, we have Councilor Shabon Mohamed, we have Darren Levy and we have Anna Trevena. Also, can I say the purpose of this particular item is to outline the building safety in the London Borough of Newham, future plans and regulations, particular reference to fire and flood risk in Newham. The reports I realize are Newham, Council is making good progress in ensuring that homes in Newham are safe. Sorry, I move on to the wrong item. Just the wrong item. Perhaps it's not your turn. It's time we supposed to be going on to item seven.
• It is my turn, but I think it's from the...
• No, no, no, I did ask permission to move to another item. I do apologize for that. And so we move on to item seven rather than that item. And it is item six. I'm not trying to find the correct item on my... Here it is. Sorry, right. I was reading from the wrong item. Right. We are moving into the resident experience in the London Borough of Newham. And we would like to hear from the Councilor Shabon, Mohamed, on the report that is presented before us. The report as sets out is setting up the situation with regards to the resident experience of the London Borough of Newham of their services, that enabled us to review your performance. And so Mohamed, do you have...
• Yeah, thank you, Chair. I think when we took this journey on service improvement, I think one of the things that we were looking at and it was repair to maintenance and how we could engage with our residents better. I think 2018, 2019, sorry, we started off with tenant leaseholder forums. From those forums, we implemented housing liaison offices. We were keen to bring back tenants associations. We had issues with a call centre, repairs and maintenance. We moved from a paper-based system to more of an automated system. We started taking data better on experiences to improve the service that has continued. I think we started measuring our KPIs better in terms of that resident journey, that improvements. We moved the call centre into more centralised call centre and realised that obviously the residents were experiencing long call times now and issues with timing. So we've moved the call centre back into RMS, into The Rock. And we're slowly, slowly now starting to get a better improvement of that resident engagement. One of the other things that we did do to improve residents engagement was housing hubs. We currently have two, one in Kainstown and one in Stratford, which have been quite successful in terms of that resident engagement piece, repairs, residents going in there looking at their lettings and housing issues. So these have been some of the things that we've been raising and looking at and looking to improve all the time. And it's an ongoing journey. So we're continuing to develop that. And one of the things, like I said to your tenants association, we still wanna continue building those and getting residents more involved in those as well.
• Okay, thank you. Rita, Ben and Lois.
• It's a long journey, isn't it, Councillor Muhammad? I mean, resident satisfaction, 27%.
• Yeah.
• Please hold a satisfaction of 11%. What are your plans to improve that?
• So you're referring to satisfaction with the plan's management?
• Yes. The way in which we manage complaints has changed corporately within the council. So we're working very closely with the corporate complaints team on improving the systems. We've, in terms of the repairs complaints, we've done a lot of root cause analysis into what's driving those repairs complaints. Last year, we saw an actual reduction in the number of repairs complaints compared to the previous year. What we now need to do is just improve the speed at which we're responding. So we've introduced a number of additional measures such as making sure there's personal contact with residents at stage two in every case. We've put a big focus at the front end within stage one's now on resolution. During the course of last year, when the corporate complaints structure was changed, we saw a huge significant dip in the way that we were responding to complaints within target. We saw a month on month of improvement in that performance. And that was through sort of focusing on front end resolution. And that's the absolute key. We've realigned a number of budgets to give the contact centre and the complaints to a greater resource. So we've got more people managing those complaints at the front end. It is an issue London-wide. Strangely, our satisfaction with complaints is actually sort of better than a lot of local authorities across other Londons. But they still know we're near good enough, still know we're near good enough.
• It's the point that we're concerned about Newham, councillors in this chamber.
• Absolutely, 100%.
• I think the challenge and everything you said, we've read in the report. What's the step change that you need to improve the service? What will make our residents heart seen to say, actually, I'm proud to be a Newham resident?
• So we've targeted the services that people most engage with first, which was why the last couple of years we've really focused in on repairs. Because that's the one service where there's a real personal service, you're into people's properties. That's the one they engage with. That was our front end focus. We're starting to see that the improvements in repairs starting to come out in the KPIs. And we've seen that over the last quarter. That focus on first time fixes, again, that's one of the most sort of key drivers of dissatisfaction with the repair services. So we've targeted that. The housing regulator doesn't require you to do leaseholder satisfaction surveys, but we've done that because we recognise that we've been targeting everything at the tenant-led services. So again, this year will be a real focus on how we can improve leaseholder satisfaction. And that's looking at transparency of service charges, the value for money of service charges. So that really targeted efforts. There's not going to be a silver bullet. It's about slowly targeting the most impactful areas of your service.
• We recently had an inspection. How did the housing regulator view the satisfaction piece and the consumer standards?
• So the regulator will report in the next few weeks. They visited in May, issued a call for a couple of days, met a number of officers across the council. They've been in communication with us around a draft regulatory judgement, if they call it, where a process is dialogue with them and we're actually embargoed by the regulator until they've reached their final conclusion. So actually, until we get to that point, we're not able to discuss it.
• Fair enough.
• We'll certainly be able to discuss it because on the agenda for the next one of these meetings, they have a full and frank review of their judgement in this meeting.
• Chair, can I just ask in terms, can the recommendation from this evening be that when the report comes out, that we have a special housing scrutiny meeting to discuss it, good or bad? Because I think it has implications for budget setting, it has implications across the board for its other issues.
• It's on the agenda for the next one of these meetings in November the 26th or the 27th.
• You can borrow.
• Yeah, but I'll ask.
• Okay, if I'm to give some guidance, I was having some silent consideration about this. When the report does come out, I know overview and scrutiny would have an interest in it. I'm giving a grand feel on all those reports that we have. So I'm considering that this is a meeting can allow without consulting with colleagues and that we do a joint housing and overview committee meeting to consider the report when it comes out.
• Thank you, Chair.
• Yeah. Okay, right. Before, I just want to follow up on a few things that Rita said. Rita started by saying it's been a long draw and the journey never seems to end. And I speak as someone who's been around from the days of new homes in 2005 to now. And we seem to be doing the same thing over and over again. Mar I read in 3.3, but there's been a realignment of complaints, contact center, estate improvement and resident experience function within the outer services and so on. That's what we seem to be doing best. We seem to be reorganizing, realigning, and yet with all of those, we get an 11%, as Councillor Charley said, with residents' satisfaction with the landlord and the leaseholders also. And these are concerning, it's a never-ending journey. When are we going to get there? When?
• So I think it will be a continuous journey and it will continue to what I would point to is, for example, where we've been focusing in on repairs for the last couple of years. If you look at the satisfaction with the overall repair service, we're in the upper medium in terms of comparisons by the local authorities. And that's as a direct result of the work we've been doing with this committee and sort of the wider council to drive that part of the service on. You know, it's gonna be about targeted programs of work to concentrate, but it's gonna be constantly evolving. I don't think that journey of improvement can ever stop. I think you've just got to continually evolve and get better and better.
• But I think if you look at previous years, these figures are declining rather than improving. So I think post COVID, I think it was recognized across all local authorities that there was a massive dip in satisfaction right across the board. And you've had sort of campaigns from the housing ombudsman. You've got things like ARAB's law, which quite rightly has brought sort of housing organizations to account. And I think all of those things have impacted. The 10 satisfaction measures that were introduced by the social housing regulator mean that every local authority and every housing organization is asking exactly the same question at exactly the same point of time every year. So it creates a single line in the sand for comparison. And that's why we brought in that benchmarking. But we are a journey. We're not there yet. We just need to continue sort of targeting improvements. We recognize, and I think this paper sort of brings it together. There are a range of touch points for residents with the council. And I think we've always operated them quite separately. Part of that realignment was to create a single point. So we had somebody who was the kind of the customer champion, if you like, within housing services and engaging with the wider sort of service improvements of the council. So I think it's gonna be an ever evolving sort of pace.
• I'm yet to be persuaded. One of our previous meeting, we spoke about getting updates on reports that goes to the Ombudsman. I can't remember seeing any of those reports. But can I ask you, Aaron, to note that so that we can follow up on that? Because with 11% satisfaction, there's bound to be people going off to the Ombudsman. That would be me. And perhaps if you remember sometime, I think it's in autumn or early this year, we talked about company and that you have some oversight.
• I think what we can look at is, with these KPIs and satisfaction measures, maybe we could put a plan in place where we just update the chair, or update you with an overall plan so you'd get the data as we were checking it. And when I have my can meetings, it might be an idea that we recommended then that you have oversight and you have the figures of the number of contents going to the Ombudsman. Do you get that information on a regular basis?
• We started that now 'cause I've started these, 'cause new regulations that come in changed the way that we have the can meetings. So now I'm having a regular one, a once monthly meeting, me, Paul, and all our service leads to discuss all that. And that's literally minuted and everything else, 'cause of the new regulations that have come in.
• Yeah, so you are seeing what goes to the Ombudsman?
• Jack, just simply on that complaints issue, I think from memory, what we, no, not from memory, from certainty, we asked at the previous meeting, were you seeing sight of all stage one, stage two, and Ombudsman complaints? Now, are you saying that from the scrutiny meeting, which must have been over a year ago now-
• Not quite, but it was a long time ago.
• A long time ago. You're only now just starting to see those?
• During that time, I think the main thing is, you know, again, if it gets to stage two, and I'm alerted, but I think besides the data, I just see the data, I don't actually, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm seeing those, and then I'm also questioning whether they're being dealt with. Yes, I am. Okay.
• All right, because I'm, but you were saying those complaints give you a feel for the temperature out there.
• Yeah, yes.
• Yes.
• No, I completely get that, Jeremy. Like I said to you, I wanna read the service, and we have been on a journey, and I'll continue that journey. Thank you.
• Thanks very much. So there's Rita, Josh, James. Yes, Rita, Josh, James. Yes.
• Since we're on different topics, so if the questions that Josh and James have got are following the funny comments-
• My question is going to be on this side of the chair.
• Okay.
• Okay, so sorry to carry on with me. I'm looking at 5.1, and it's probably to be alluded to. So you've managed to get stage one complaints responding to that KPI at 79%, at 20, 20, 22, 23. Then it drops in 23, 24, because you go through this big restructure, and everybody's kind of confused, and well, not confused, but everybody's having to deal with the new system. And I have so much to agree for you there, honestly, 'cause I think it's such a tough job. But I think what you've said in response to Tony and to Rita is we're constantly gonna have to go through these different revolutions. We're constantly gonna have to make these changes, and I think that's probably right. I think that this sort of medium-term future is restructure, get that sorted, then do another restructure, then get it sorted. Have you got lessons to learn so that when the next restructure comes, you can make sure that there aren't these sort of shortfalls? Transformation is more fluid and fluid.
• Yeah, so in terms of that complaints formed within the last year, if we go to 7.19, there's a graph there that shows where the performance really, really dipped on stage ones in the subsequent two months. And then it improved month for month for month. And in terms of stage ones within housing, just to reflect, we have to respond within 10 days, whereas the wider council responds within 20 days. Now, actually, since we've brought the performance back up, we're performing at the same tilt or better than the rest of the council, even though we're responding to stage one. But the key piece of that, make sure you've got the resources in place well ahead of the change, which sounds, I know, ridiculously silly and stupid and simple, but that's a key piece of learning. Make sure you've got the right level of resourcing in place.
• No, that's not stupid at all, that's a really good answer. And again, you have so much sympathy from, I think, everybody on this committee.
• And I think that's where we got it wrong. We just didn't have the right amount of resources quickly enough in place. When we talked about realignment, we haven't restructured. We've just brought those teams together. So we already had a recent resident involvement team. We already had a complaints team. We already had the improvement team. We've brought them together under a single head of service so we could have a single sort of view of that. And that was really the sort of driving point.
• In which case, apologies, 'cause it does say the restructure of corporate complaints function in autumn. But that's a bit of a namaste.
• That's the wildest thing, yeah.
• I was gonna ask you a question now as a follow-up. What can SHAVs do in this situation where you've got revolution after revolution, what can SHAVs do to provide stability? But I think it's probably unfair to ask you that question here. So instead I'll turn to SHAVs, and I'll stick to SHAVs. How can you provide these guys who work so hard some stability in this current piece?
• I think that my, as Darren just said, it's resourcing, bringing silo working. I mean, we had areas of housing services that were working as silos. It's bringing all those together, resourcing those areas properly, and then driving the change that we need.
• But, and apologies, Terence, I've gone over a bit.
• Yeah, yeah.
• So like- - Standard.
• So like, and again, I think that's part of the situation, but it's always been that. It was that last time we talked about this. And that hasn't delivered the results that we want to see. Is there anything new? Is there any new innovation? Is there any new thinking? Is there any new vision that you can offer us that helps give these guys the stability they need?
• I think, like I said, yeah, again, we've just got to look at resourcing and making sure that everything's in place and drive that change forward. And the other thing is it's about automation. It's all also investing in housing stock. So we've got the capital works programs going on. Once those start developing, we should see a big drop in place as well. 'Cause obviously, again, Dampen Bowl teams are there, building safety teams are there, everything's in place. It's just about driving that change forward.
• I will take more time because I'll be pressing my colleagues to round up, but I just thought of the transformation program. And now this our seeds about the transformation program, feeds in to that, but that's another conversation from other times. So we have Rachel and then James. So we have to, because we have a big item, which is the building safety to go on to. Yes, Rachel.
• Two questions from me. The first was about the mention, which we've heard before, about us encouraging establishment of more tenants and residents associations. Briefly, I'm keen to know what that looks like because it strikes me that actually encouraging those organizations that have existed historically to either reform or new ones to form, actually we take quite a lot of resource and quite a lot of time which we particularly have. So I guess my question is really how meaningfully are we encouraging that to happen? And my other question is about the kind of diverse needs threads of work that goes through this. And I noted the points about a kind of vulnerability strategy and no kind of consistency in terms of delivering what we say to residents in a consistent way. And I wanted to tease that out a little bit more and understand whether that means in effect that we're not meeting our duties under the Disability Discrimination Act and we're not consistently recording the reasonable adjustments that we need to make being in terms of offering information and services to residents in terms of formats. And again, you know, I said without blame, I know there's all sorts of organizations that for example, the box check, someone needs to get all their information in braille. I would be disappointed but not surprised if that's the case for us as a council. But if that is the case, along with lots of other organizations and we're not meeting that duty, it personally, we probably need to be a bit more explicit about that and maybe even put that as well as more explicitly in here on the corporate risk register in other places. Although if we are meeting that duty, I'll be very happy to be corrected.
• I do have the first one to start with. In terms of resident engagement, there's a number of different layers to that. That was really just about getting residents more involved in helping to shape the services that we deliver. And it's also a requirement of the new social health regulation. So there's an element first of all, which was setting up things like area forums, where we take the service out, we get people from a particular geographical area who come in and you know, sometimes we do sort of almost sort of speed dating type scenarios where they can go from service to service to service. We've also got the range of community days which saw the best part of 2000 residents come through those community days. And we had a range of council services at those community days offering sort of advice, assistance and a gateway into those services. We also do targeted panels. So we've got a specific tenants panel set up looking at repairs. And we deliberately recruited some of our most active tenants in terms of our repair service to come in and give us feedback on what we were doing right, what we're doing wrong. So for example, we're looking to introduce a new online portal. We tested that out with those residents in a room to make sure we got that feedback. We're suddenly currently implementing a high rise working group where we're working with residents specifically from high rise blocks. We've got a temporary accommodation working group which is online and gets really large numbers of people joining. We talk about things that we're doing for that particular area. And then you've got the sort of localized residents association groups. And we've, you know, over the past few years, we've set up the first resident social associations for some years in Newham. And that's, you know, we don't force people to set them up. We're trying to create opportunities for people to become involved in managing their local services. So I think it is really important. We've got a small, a very small dedicated team with three or four officers who focus in on that work. But I think it's really important in terms of making sure people feel engaged and we're connecting with the people that we're delivering services to.
• Thanks, I appreciate it. If we could pass to Wanda on the second part.
• Good. And can we be quick and can I say that we have a huge item and we must finish by 9.30, the latest. So we meet, I'm sorry colleagues. I may need to move on to the team by 9.30, right? So can we be brief please?
• Yeah, Anna Trevino, program director. Yeah, so in terms of the qualities and making sure that you're meeting the requirements. In section 10, we've given quite a few examples of how we meet those requirements. And I think important to be meeting to make sure we're measuring that services as well. And so when we're redesigning these processes, for example, carry out the quality impact assessment that's giving some best practices, the allocations policy that was reviewed after the design effect and impact assessment to make sure it actually works. So we need to make sure, obviously, it's the designing services doing that, education. In 10.6, we've got the kind of rates that's been affecting information as frequently as we need to. And I think also in terms of (indistinct) some of that is around asking the right questions so that we can access, so potentially carry out the process. And also around vulnerability, we've got situational vulnerability. So if there is a broken leg, for example, it will take longer to get to the door for a repair. So that might become then a missed appointment. So it's quite a lot of detail we need to consider in terms of delivering (indistinct) And that's the thing that we'll see where we need to speak to residents in detail. And Darren's been saying where we've done that. Testing with residents, we've identified (indistinct) in terms of their ability, like different backgrounds and things.
• Can we wrap up our answers?
• Thank you.
• So can we, I know I've stopped your mystery, so can you provide a detailed response to the question in writing place? Okay, so the recordings will have the question. So we can just go back to the recording and then we'll have the question for you to respond to. Thank you. And then the next person, I think it was James.
• Thanks, John. How many people visit or do you know how many people visit the housing hubs? Those are the numbers. Do you know how many repeat people keep coming back for the same issue? And just on the satisfaction measures, you don't, maybe you don't want to reveal it now, but do you have a figure in your mind, what is good? 'Cause if it's 33% is the overall now, it's not great. What does good look like for the whole service and across all of those measures? Do you have an internal measure? Let's say, we wanna get to 80%. We wanna turn it around. And just, and I think I'm echoing what the chair said about the longstanding nature of problems. I do hope that we're recording what's gone wrong, what the improvements we're making, what's working, but essentially if it's systems and it's people, can we make it better? And as our residents are affected by housing, it's one of the, it's quite pernicious and it needs to be sorted out.
• Okay, can we get a precise answer to that? If I can bring in another member, I will, if not, I would have to go to the team. So can we get a precise answer? And if you're not able to do that, we take it in writing.
• People have already gone ahead of resident engagement. So in terms of the housing hubs, we've got two housing hubs, one in Stratford. So Stratford has an average 400 residents a 10 a month. And that's all due to the location of red classes in the central location. In terms of kind of the time hub, we have between 150, 200 residents a 10. And we are constantly doing ongoing outreach work to inform residents about our services, the housing hubs, and through being all the tools that are dropping and understanding regularly in most active residents. In terms of repeated residents are technically the same issue that happened when we got here. But what I can tell you, we do get the same results coming from different issues, and I'm getting the first issue resolved.
• Thank you very much for that response. I do apologize. What I'm going to do. Colleagues, can you put your question? And I will ask officers to respond in writing. I think that will be a fair way because I'm sure you don't want to stay beyond 9.30. And there's, okay, so Josh, can you put your question?
• I'll put my question, but they both require one sentence responses.
• Officers tend to answer more than one sentence.
• Well, one sentence will suffice. I know that you surveyed, of course, leaseholders and social tenants. Have you surveyed private tenants of leaseholders? Because it strikes me that people who live in social housing as a private tenant of a leaseholder is actually greater number and they are the people paying the most for their accommodation. Have you surveyed their experience?
• No.
• No, okay. That's one answer. And that's an omission that I think we should correct. Second question, regarding the housing fund days, have you ceased bringing diesel engines, which are pollutant to those fund days to power and generate the vans, which you claim residents love so dearly?
• So in regards to your second question, when we first kick-started our housing community fund days, we did have the generators, which obviously we brought to our attention. It's not environmental friendly, so we have encouraged our vendors not to bring the generators on board and we have stopped bringing those diesel generators.
• Okay, so that question will be answered now. We need to move on. Thank you. If yours are going to be a long one, can you read it with us?
• I'll be very quick, Chair. Chair, I heard earlier on lots of technological innovation coming. Can I offer a low-key version? A, can the housing officer just pick up the phone to residents? A lot will be used, a lot cheaper, and I'm slightly fed up of the constant revolution. And the second point is, we live in a very consumeristic society where we're used to getting what we want on demand. Based on my experience of doing my service in Stratford, why isn't the Stratford housing fund open on Saturdays to see residents? Why doesn't it open in the evening? 'Cause it seemed to me, we had developed a survey designed for officers who are not residents. So very low-key, doesn't cost anything. We've got the building, open the door later in the evening, and open the door on Saturday and pick up the phone. And I won't take the fee for innovation award.
• Okay, so that's, I might, and you're not going to the poll. I'm not pleased that I brought you in because it's one thing I talked about. And you're right. You're quite right. It's not always about the officers. And Sharps, that is something that you should take on board. (overlapping chattering)
• Stay there, I've taken it. And I say, I face the same frustrations as Councillor Paul.
• It's your officer.
• Yeah, but again, again. (overlapping chattering) I'll tell you the truth. I constantly call the officers and tell them to ring the resident, which they do.
• Your department, you take control of your department and meet the resident's need. I must move on now. (overlapping chattering)
• It's a really, really quick question. One, when's the-
• Only one, only one. The most important.
• Okay, I'll table the rest as an email. When's East Ham getting its hub? Because we were going to have one and we still don't have one. And it's been over a year. 'Cause the last one fell down. (overlapping chattering)
• The question is when is East Ham getting its hub?
• I don't know, so I don't have a definitive time scale. We've spoken already this evening a number of times about the GANS Council actual position. So obviously one of the big things we're looking at is where we can collect services across the borough. So I can't give you a quick answer to that. Perhaps we can revisit it at East Ham. (overlapping chattering)
• Okay, thank you. Thank you, I must move on now. Before I go, Appendix 1 and 2 obviously summarizes some of the issues we are having. It would be good for us to get on the progress made. And we look at resident access, we look at the diversity needs information and try out these issues that are being raised there. And hopefully there would be some improvement in the coming months. Can we get some follow up on this in about six months time or so?
• Yes.
• Yeah, thank you very much. Now we go back to the item which I jumped to mistakenly before I'm back on the building safety. Thank you for attending. For this item we have Kunstham Hamid and we have Darren. And as I said before, the purpose of the meeting is outside the building safety in the London Borough of New York. And we've got the report already, so we'll go straight into question given the time. However, as a matter of courtesy, Chad, if you want one minute to contact--
• Just gonna sort of comment. I think, you know, since Grenfell, as a local authority, we've done some great work. And I think hats off to Councillor Call, who in 2017 started the cladding removal on all our high rises. And I think that work's continued. And I think, you know, it's an ongoing situation with building safety and building safety regulations. But I think, you know, we have to make sure that all our buildings are safe for all our tenant leaseholders and including buildings in the private renting sector as well. So it's an ongoing piece of work. And we want to hopefully build a relationship here with scrutiny here today and work on that journey and make sure that, you know, all the issues around fire safety being answered. And one of the things that I would say that we have written to all our residents about fire safety and fire safety plans in the borough. And that was done in June. Thank you very much. We're going to take this report as Rev. And therefore go in to questions from members. Councillor Paul. Thank you, Chair. Got serious quick questions. On the Grenfell page two report, on the impact, what's the financial impact to the local authority of the GTI recommendation? I have a series of quick questions on it. Grenfell two? Yeah, Grenfell two, for example, 113.7, you've got the recommendation, you've got the impact, but you haven't got the financial cost of the impact. Obviously, cost is paying. So my question is, how much are these recommendations sitting here costing the local authority? And the substitute question is, how much is the Grenfell recommendations costing? And I have read the report, so I don't need to, I'm coming, that's where I'm coming from. How much is it costing us? In terms of the recommendations that come out of the Grenfell two, we haven't quantified that yet. Okay. Can I just say, Chair, bearing in mind the significance of the report, I find it quite hard to believe we haven't costed in terms of a worst case scenario, the impact of Grenfell, bearing in mind, we're entering a budgetary round, which the mayor was told up is going to be tight. So, and it leads on to the secondary issue, if we haven't actually quantified the cost of Grenfell, being a member of the audit board, I look to my audit colleague here, I'll be expected to see on the corporate risk register. That's my first question. So we should have had the impact of the cost here. Going to the, I'm clicking through, slide number 12 at 13, it's headed fire safety brackets England regulations performance indicators. On the right-hand side, and I will say I have read the guidance, it said all our doors should be checked from a quarterly basis annually. And look at this, it tells me the last time we wrote to our residents was in March 20, 2023. Bearing in mind, the regulations are saying we should have written out at least on the annual basis and checked the fire doors in quarterly basis. And I will go through the regime of fire doors.
• I can answer that first, Pete. So we have an inspection regime of fire doors monthly, and currently below rise, we're a team of people inspecting.
• Looking at this, it tells me, I'm going from your presentation, we last wrote to residents in March, 2023. Letter sent to residents, March, 2023 on fire safety instructions on fire door, (indistinct) March, 2023. Looking at the regulation,
• I see, right.
• And to at least on an annual basis and checking doors on a quarterly basis.
• So we are checking doors on a quarterly basis or a monthly basis for our high rise. But we haven't entered that letter to residents. We wrote to residents in June, in June 24. So we're quite right.
• I'm not a mind reader. All I can go on is information which I have presented to us. If on the information you have presented, you wrote to residents in 2023, or are you saying you gave incorrect information to this committee?
• We have that needs, yeah. We haven't met who did that most recent letter.
• The chair can take that up with you, but you gave incorrect information on this. And I had to read the regulation to check what was right. Just going on, final question, chair. On the fire risk assessment task force, FRA groups, kind of clarify, before my question, it says here all in progress actions to date. Does that mean they're open in simple language?
• Right, so they're open. Right. If I go down to number five, bear in mind, the recent firing diagonal, the complaints of the resident was no fire alarm was set off. You know, would tend to safely evacuate the building. When I look down here, at 1,633 fire alarms that should have been checked, we checked only nines. Is that correct? Taking information. Did you want to explain about those?
• Yeah, so in relation to the fire in diagonal, this- - All right, first go back. Looking at the sheet, we only checked nine fire alarms, is that correct?
• That's not correct, no.
• So what does this information tell me then?
• So this information is in relation to the fire risk assessment actions. And the fire risk assessment actions are quite broad in that they normally have a number of actions within one. So for example, they may have said, carry out, a lot of them say something along the lines of, I've inspected flat number 24. The fire alarm system was what it should be or not what it should be. You should carry out an inspection of all of the flats within your block. Now we can't necessarily close that action until we have checked all of them.
• I just come back checked for brevity. If I'm the fire safety inspector, I look up new, we have 12,028 actions. Looking at this, 75% of those actions are still open. The regulator is concerned, not about progress, but about the end date on the outcome to ensure safety to residents, right? Checking, reading regulations, that's the implication. So looking at this, right, I guess there are other things that could go on, but I wanna focus on the fire alarms. We are saying only nine fire alarms have been checked out of 1,600, so what information have you given us then?
• We've given you the amount of FRA actions that are open or in progress, not actually how many premises or units we've visited. So in terms of our high-rise block, we've visited, we've made a minimum of three attempts to visit every unit to check their detection system and we've let it drop them. Where we've inspected, we've either tested if it's required to be tested or we've installed a new system if it's out of testing.
• And if I could just come in on that, in terms of as part of our standard inspection where we carry out a gas service of a boiler, and that's around 14,000 properties, the servicing team with the gas team will check the carbon monoxide detectors and don't sign off the certificate until they're satisfied that they're all working and also test the smoke alarms that were in place at the time. So this is very different from that testing of alarms. This is around fire risk assessment actions around for whole block. So is, but I apologise if it hasn't been described through one final question that verifies that.
• And the final question is, a comment and a question. I don't think the information you've given us is of sufficient clarity or insights. And bearing in mind we're dealing with fire safety, bearing in mind with cancer sheds, I do feel it's quiet. I haven't experienced the conscience of local authority, but the information I presented is not clear. And therefore, if the regulator is having, we'll have a problem in explaining this. Just one on the budget, question for Paul. I look at the budget here, and it's at 63.5 million pounds is the budget. That is based on the fire safety programme now. Link to my earlier question about Grenville. So we haven't quantified the impact of Grenville. What assurance do you have for the residents? And for this committee, because at the moment there is none, what assurance have we got that we'll be sufficiently funded for the Grenville remediation?
• Yeah, so I just come on to the, so the funds available to bring, to repair our homes, to make plan maintenance, to do fire safety checks, and doing safety checks of course is entirely funded through our housing revenue account, as you're aware. And we renew the housing revenue business plan every year, and you'll be aware that next month, we've got a revised HRO business plan going to cabinet, and it includes fully costed high through all of the HRO and all of the fire risk assessment actions that are contained in this report. So they're costed up, they're planned, procurement has started on some of them, it's about to commence on others and so on and so forth. So there's a momentum there. We're obviously going to comply with the findings of the Grenville report. We're obviously going to cost those up. All of our offices have read the executive summary of that report, we take it as seriously as members do. And as we understand the impact of that, in just the same way that, in fact, earlier on in the post Grenville landscape, the industry and local authorities and other landlords took to try to understand the implications to cost them up to work out what supply chain can do and so on, we will have to factor a number of moving parts to the HRO business plan, as you understand, so we can spend less on some things, more on others. We're obviously going to spend, make sure that we spend money on the essentials and certainly the procurement stuff around Grenville 2 report. So the HRO business plan, although we're putting a new version to cabinet in October, will be refreshed on an annual basis. And indeed, as our asset management plan, for example, materializes at Easter, will get revised again. So I just conclude, there's flexibility in the HRO business plan to meet our future obligations.
• Yeah, thank you. So thanks for all the support. Rita, I'm going to bring you in and Susan, I've seen you, okay.
• I haven't brought you in yet, thank you. Colleagues, as we said, as I said earlier, we do have an export weakness 'cause we had one before and now we have an export weakness in the name of Spencer Aiden Smith, who's here with us to just add some clarity and to give us a sense. And I think you are area commander of the London Fire Brigade.
• I used to be, formerly. Now I work independently as an independent contractor with the fire safety team in Europe.
• And because my colleague, I think my colleague has already touched on the Grenville report, et cetera. So it might be an opportunity time to bring you in so that when my colleagues or the colleagues ask the question, they get your input.
• Yeah, thanks.
• Okay, so yeah, I retired from London Fire Brigade in 2019. I finished as the Borough Commander for Newham in 2019. And I've been working with the fire safety team in housing since around 2020. Was there a particular question?
• What we would like to know from you is in terms of your work in Newham in terms of fire safety, because you would have lived through the Grenville and you would have seen our immediate responses after the Grenville and your work with us as of now. So what's your experience as we made, because we're going to ask the officers about the progress. Do you think we are making sufficient progress?
• Yes, so I attended overview scrutiny committee. As the Borough Commander in 2019. And some real good progress was being made. And I supported that and we had a real good partnership and still have between London Fire Brigade and London Borough of Newham housing. Since then, as has been described, it has been challenging for housing providers. But I think London Borough of Newham has met those challenges on a number of occasions. The fire safety team between when I first started assisting the borough in 2020, until now is actually transformed. And there's now a team, a dedicated fire safety team where there wasn't previously. There's actually a policy in place around building safety and around fire safety fire risk management that there wasn't previously. So, yeah, I mean, I'm assured and I've got confidence in the direction of travel and where we are now, actually, in meeting all those challenges that have been expressed today.
• Thank you for that, Spencer. So I'm pretty sure for all from Spencer. So I'm going to bring in Rita and then I have a question for Shab and Darren, Rita.
• Three points. Firstly, instead of other engagements, do you think there's anything missing from that chart, that current bar or where you've got stakeholder engagement? Is there anything missing from that?
• Sorry, which?
• Sorry, I've not got it. (indistinct)
• It's in the slide deck.
• Halfway down.
• Slide 16. Yeah, that one. (indistinct)
• Well, actually maybe for Councillor Muhammad first, is there anything missing in your opinion from that stakeholder engagement chart?
• Anything, it'll probably be residents.
• Thank you. So I think, yes, I don't understand how we can have a strategy there. We're not to want to quote the mayor, but where we're putting residents at the heart of everything, where is it? So thank you for that. But I think also, as we've learned from Grenfell, Councillors and scrutiny, if you're not going to involve us in this and hold us to account, and that brings me to my second point, data. Now you've chosen and you've made a deliberate choice tonight to share certain data sets with us, which seemed to me a moment in time. What assurance can you provide this committee that the onward programme or the existing programme of all assurances have been met? Because you'll appreciate from our position of scrutiny, we need to be assured because we don't want to make the same mistakes as Pennington and Chelsea. So why have we only been given a snapshot in time? Why do we not know the full programme? And is that something that maybe it's a difficult question for tonight that you can go back and address so that we can get a full picture of satisfaction? And then I think my final point is on staffing. Now, again, Grenfell makes it quite clear that in several respects we have to query the competence and the skills and qualifications of staff involved in this. Now, can we make sure that in future, when people, and this is costing no special on everybody in this room, but can we be assured that when witnesses come forward we have a snapshot of their skills and their competencies? We may not be in a position to assess that, but also I just wondered, and I haven't, and like Councillor Paul, I haven't read the whole of the Grenfell yet and halfway through, but I would just also ask, do you think there's a place in the skills and competency test, it focuses a lot on officers, is there a place to focus on the competency of Councillors?
• So I think they're all excellent points to reflect on. So absolutely right, we can and should provide a short bio, I suppose, on the fire safety team experience and expert witnesses expenses just run through this short CV there, I think that's actually right. I would be very happy to report on progress on this issue at each of these meetings. And I think actually building Councillors scrutiny, monitoring into this stakeholder kind of mapping is a really standard idea.
• And so we should just adopt that.
• In your experience, as you're going round, will you campaign or will you ask for competencies for Councillors to be included in the overall framework? That's a Council investment.
• Yeah, no, I can get that looked into and I will do it.
• Yeah.
• And will you lobby for it?
• Yes.
• Okay, thank you.
• Yeah, very good points, thank you.
• Thank you, how are they?
• Thank you, Chair. Just if I could pick up on one of those, Nigel Wiles from the building safety.
• Yes.
• In terms of the chart of the external stakeholders, that came out of the building safety strategy where it was listed as stakeholders and it doesn't include residents and semis.
• My mission here, because it was external stakeholders, is to put residents out because we didn't believe them to be external stakeholders. We considered them to be our customers and therefore we are (indistinct) So within building safety strategy, residents are there, the highlights have been read in the centre of our dot. So apologies for any confusion.
• Sorry, Chair. (indistinct) We're getting bits of information. So if I hadn't asked that question, we wouldn't have known that residents are included in that. So maybe the committee can take back or officers can take back the need for comprehensiveness. (indistinct)
• Thank you. Thanks, Rita. And Paul, can I remind you in much too distant past when we came here to do the calling for the bridge across the docks, members raised concern about the quality of information, missing bits of information then. And during Councillor Paul intervention is questioning, we gather that the information weren't quite clear or not as accurate as they should be. So can I ask Councillor Muhammad and you Paul, when information is coming to scrutiny, that their facts check and they looked at two of them, papers are coming before us. That is not accurate because we've called it out on many occasions in the past. We are getting tired and calling it out. And when we call it out, it seems like scrutiny is the bad guys. We cannot be the bad guys, but call now something that is not right, that is not correct. And we shouldn't be made to be the bad guys here. We are doing the specimens of new service. So please, can I ask in the future, but these are facts properly before they come before us. Thank you very much. One of the question that I mean to ask, in the Grenfell report, the one that comes to Paul refer to back to space 25 and my book here, the phrase tool report, it says that the high risk is not just about the height of the building now, but about the occupancy, especially vulnerable residents. And my mind runs straight away to Oden Point because Oden Point is where we have some of our most, you know, the elderly residents, et cetera. How many of those buildings we have that is old because I'm not Oden Point because I was once a ward member for that ward. How many such buildings do we have? And are we now factoring, are we actively not at the Grenfell recommendations that come out actively considering buildings where we have vulnerable residents? Yes, apologies. I didn't introduce you to the last time I spoke. So Stevie Clifford Tucker, the Fire Safety Manager for Newham. Yes, we are and we're continuing to do so. So we've recently reviewed our fire risk assessment policy and within that we've triggered how often we (indistinct) and it is focused heavily on heights because that is what the Building Safety Regulator and London Fire Brigade do. But what we have also done within the policy is say that any block that is a sheltered accommodation scheme or is a temporary accommodation scheme, we will do the same frequency as our high-rise blocks. 'Cause we agree, we do consider them our high-rise blocks and the Grenfell Tower Inquiry has recommended that a high-risk building is now considered those. We do await, obviously, the government response to that, but in the meantime, we treat those buildings as high-risk. Okay, but how many do we have in terms of? So in terms of our sheltered accommodation scheme, we have three low-rise, we have two high-rise, so that's Holden Point and the Mile of Garth. Yes. In low-rise, we have Northfield, Centenary and the last one's Ava and me, but I'm sure someone in this room will pick me out. And then we just are doomed to be taking on a new block, which again, will be considered one of those, which is Noel Gordon House, which is independent living. In terms of our temporary accommodation, our low-rise. And you would give us assurance that they are compliant? Yes. Thank you. Councillor Masters. I wanted to build on the point Tony raised. I also wanted to talk about vulnerable people. We have a hospital, which currently has a fire enforcement order that should have been fulfilled about eight years ago, but because of capacity issues, it hasn't been. We also have a number of large care homes. I mean, the buildings you were talking about earlier were more like sort of supported living. Are we sort of also supporting our care homes and how are we being fully funded to do that by the government, given that they're all in the private sector? This report's focused on council-owned properties. It's not, if you look at the report, it also sort of talks about the private sector. The wider rental too does, yeah. So we've got a section on the private rented sector and what we're doing in that respect, so we can move on to that. In terms of the sheltered schemes that were within the housing portfolio, which is what Stevie was referring to. Yes, we are compliant. I don't know, just talk a little bit about the PRS, Wayne. (indistinct) No, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about our private care homes, like Manor Farms, like Moreington Hall. So we'll need to refer to adult services and come back to you 'cause we haven't looked at that as part of this. Right, so that's not part of the work that's going on at the moment. Not within the housing team, but there may be work that's going on within our services. I'll need to come back to you on that. (indistinct) In the report, there are 740 buildings broken down from my notes, 400 high-rises and 331 mid-rises that we have an enforcement duty, right? So therefore, Councilor Masters's buildings could come under that regime, which we are moving from looking after their own blocks to actually enforcing a mediation on private sector. So Councilor Masters is correct in her- Absolutely, I just don't have the detail of those specific blocks, but we can talk about the enforcement activity within private rented sectors. Is that a question for your team or is it a question for adults? We'll need to review whether those adult schemes are within the schemes of the private rental sector we're looking at, but we'll do that. I find it really worrying this isn't known. I mean, we're talking about several hundred vulnerable residents in private settings in our borough. Can I, sorry, can I jump in, could you mind sharing? So if it would be helpful, I think that we've- It's all slightly across purposes toward the end of the meeting, but maybe if we invite candidates to talk about our building safety and projects team, so the role we've had in enforcing all of the building safety stuff on third-party buildings, that would be helpful at principal level. I think what Darren was saying was he wasn't quite sure about the specific homes you were talking about. So if we maybe talk about end principal level, that would be helpful, because that is an important component of the report that came forward. That'd be okay. And over to you. So, I mean, what is it that you specifically like to know about building safety and what can you do in the same words, what our win is for building safety and projects team, and the next- It just seems really, really unclear our role when it comes to our big care homes, when it comes to the hospital, buildings that have a lot of vulnerable people in, but are kind of either privately run or run by public bodies that are outside of the council. Okay. I think what would be best to clarify is if I could bring Wayne in as the manager of the team, for the operations, to just clarify what his team has responsibility for under the legislation. And then that clarifies what we have responsibility for. And also, if you don't, who is responsible? For the hospital, that's the question she's asking. Who's responsible for the fire safety plan at Newham General? Is it us? Okay, I'm sorry. (indistinct chatter) The responsible person under the (indistinct) That's the answer to my question.
• Okay.
• Okay, so Wayne was just about to say, but yeah, I mean, Wayne's team has very specific (indistinct) about private sector properties within the bar line, but that are, that come within such criteria, which doesn't come within the responsible person at let's say, (indistinct)
• But what about the care homes that are private?
• Yeah, but they come on to be different regulatory regimes.
• Okay.
• In terms of fire safety and care homes, the responsible person under the regulatory reform fire safety order would be responsible for fire safety. And that's usually the employer or the landlord, or both. There may be other levels of responsibility for instance, CQC in terms of QA, and there may be well responsibilities for the council, but I'm not aware of those. But principally fire safety is the responsible person under the fire safety order. (indistinct)
• I think it is, is it 25, the slide deck. I'll just make this (indistinct) 303 in the private sector, 106 in housing association, right? I think we're missing a couple of bullet points underneath saying by exception, we don't look after public sector buildings and missing the regime. Again, the chair has taken up thunder, but in terms of that report, they've got to be better and they've got to be looking at the holistic, right? So if Councillor Martin would have had the information, if the reports had said, it's fire safety in the borough, who's responsible for what? And that's the answer, right? And on that point, it does seem in council, he's moved into enforcement and he forced remediation, right? It says in here, we're only looking at 50 buildings to currently prioritize out of our liability of 740. So that means there's 690 buildings where we haven't quite yet prioritized. Am I right or wrong?
• Sorry, can I just interject for staff? This information on the private sector does say that we have a requirement for local authorities to continue to play a role to remediate, secure remediation of private sector residential building. Okay, so this team, there's a private sector residential building as opposed to-
• Thank you for the clarification on my point here.
• So when I'm looking out to explain to you about the breakdown of what we're doing to get the private rented sector, what the 50 building are-
• So make it easier on the committee. It would be easy if we have it on the detailed notes so we can see what is a piece of paper, what are we responsible for, and to give an example. So if it's like public sector building, regulated purposes, like me in general, happy days. And I think because of this fire safety, I think we'll be much more happier if we got it on the record and got it accurate, rather than in a comic. But my point I was gonna make, looking at the review of the enforcement options, it looks like Newham is moving to a position where we're enforcing remediation on tenants. Do we have to get legal liability? For example, if there is a building which is clad, unsafe built, clad in, it's on our list and there's a fire. Could not the residents say, Well, Newham should have come and enforced remediation on the leaseholder or freeholder that haven't come round to us yet? I think the answer would be yes. Therefore, have we taken that legal liability against us being sued, or what have we done to mitigate the risk?
• Can I just answer Wayne, please, in the center?
• Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• Yeah. (indistinct)
• In terms of the responsibility for any remediation works required in the private risk entry law, responsible persons can always be (indistinct) and the new regulations under the Building Safety Act. According to the Building Safety Act, the responsible person required to provide that information to the new Building Safety Regulator, that is denied. So they have a requirement to provide all the necessary information about the safety of their block related to all citizens in the city.
• And if they don't comply, what's your next step?
• Well, if they don't comply, initially, unless we were to attend the property and assess its premises as a risk, and upon assessing that, if we were not then to enact our statutory responsibility to carry out the new direction, then there may be some liability. Or not. But if we have not inspected the property and identified a risk-
• But looking at your own notes, it says here, there are 740 buildings where we, I'm going to run over you, so we have to, especially in your presentation, let me point you to Paige.
• If I can put in the detail that I provided in my slide. I referred to 303.
• Right, it set to Y25. Y25, right? It talked about building safety and project team outputs. And you lifted out the properties under 18 metres and from 11 to 18, right? So those are, and then you say, it should be a currently prioritised property. - That's right. So that's 303 by the sector. 106, the housing association, that's a total of 409 high-wise rocks that we've identified to this point. Of those 409, only 50 are currently still prioritised for any of these developments. That does not mean we have not assessed the-
• You said we may have a legal liability. That is your answer before.
• If we had attended a property, carried out an inspection, identified a category one hazard, in accordance with the housing of the same housing system under the housing of 2000-
• Have you got legal liability or statutory duty?
• I've got statutory duty.
• You have to give him a chance to answer, Terry.
• Yep.
• Don't have a statutory duty to carry out enforcement actually in line with the options available under part five of the housing tax. If we've identified a category one hazard.
• If you don't, okay. There's a lot of buildings out there we haven't touched yet.
• There will be some, right. But we've still got to go out and accept those buildings.
• Yeah.
• Right. So if a fire happened in those buildings, we would not have a license. So is it in a perverse incentive for us not to go out and inspect the buildings?
• Can I stop? Can I stop? Right.
• Thank you.
• Even before the question of the weakness finish, an answer given my remarks has been made. And I'm sure Aaron is not catching all that because I'm struggling myself to catch some of that. So can we wait please until the conversation stop with one person before the other one respond? 'Cause it's only decent that we do that. And also for Aaron, 'cause I'm struggling to hear that also. Okay. All right. Yes. Thank you.
• So, Councilor Thompson, just about you're passing me, as I showed in the interviews I felt previously that it's quite set to have enforcement comes on while we're in it. I'd just like to point out that, you know, I don't think that this is what we've, the information that we've given lays out quite clearly that actually with regards to enforcing private rented sector housing over 18 meters or above, we have taken very robust actions that we've done the most nationally joint inspections with the joint inspection team, with the government. We've taken quite a lot of the Boston section, we've had a landmark legal case against a developer in the borough who didn't take action soon enough. So we are very active in this regard. So I want to give assurance to everybody here in this room, that this team is extremely active in kind of visiting these properties, assessing these properties. So the notices where it needs to be enforcing on them were required. And the fact that we have these 50 blocks identified that are currently still prioritized is this active work going on by safety elements.
• Thank you. Any other member? Yeah.
• My, Councillor Mohamed, given I take it that you read the Grenfell report, I don't know if you read it in its entirety, of not halfway through the Grenfell report, but I'm, my scrutiny, our scrutiny officers have provided us with an executive summary and so on, which I've looked through that and I know everybody's going through. Now, given that of the politician in the room, what is your vision in terms of taking us forward?
• I think, you know, the main thing is having confidence in the building safety teams, making sure that we do fire risk assessments on all our properties, continue to monitor those, making sure, again, we do the engagement work, right to our tenants, making sure that all our buildings are safe and the biggest thing is making sure that we put investment in all our effort in our fire risk assessments and our building safety to make sure all our buildings are safe.
• Okay. So going forward, that you would take, and that is to be your main area of oversight.
• Yeah.
• That is your-
• For me, it's having a confidence in all those areas and making sure that, you know, we have, I have an oversight in all those areas, making sure that we take them forward and everything gets done in terms of our FII actions and the building safety work that we need to be doing.
• Okay. We have the transformation programs and also I know some of this money is going to be the HRA money, et cetera, and so on, but with all the work that you're undertaking, would it have a significant impact on our finances?
• Dr. Scott?
• Yeah, well, I, I think the Cata Hamavid has just outlined the areas that he'll focus on in terms of governance and holding me to account. And then Darren and I will work for our management structures. Darren has weekly meetings, for example, on fire safety risks and the delivery of the fire and assessment actions, for example. As I said earlier, the funds to implement all of the actions is costed and it's programmed into the HRA business plan and we're working with some checks now starting to write bigger checks to make sure that's done. So we've already accounted for the actions that we need to take and the continued monitoring and so on in terms of resource plans. So it's already in the business plan, I suppose, Chair, is what I would say.
• So these are, okay, it's already, it's coming from the HRA, but then there's the money that we could have spent elsewhere. Fire safety is important. So with the residents, the residents have to be safe. Don't get me wrong. But with the complaint level as low, sorry, as much as good, because we see that they are not satisfied. So I guess, or it might even dip further 'cause when you have to redirect funds to look after their safety, we may not be doing all the things that they want. So...
• I don't think that does have to happen. I think one of the Councillors, I think it might have been, Councillor Chadder asked, what would make that resident's heart sing? It's probably the simple things, answering the phone on time, getting our fixes right, first time, making sure that we provide information on time, all of those things. Those things can happen at the same time as prioritising our communities and our residents' safety. I don't think it's an either or, Chair.
• But what's happened negatively in Pachamari residents?
• We should be aiming, we'll be aiming to improve on satisfaction on all areas in that regard, as well as the compliance work that we need to do.
• Okay. I'll support that in a minute, Councillor.
• Thank you. Just to go back from the... I'm quite surprised that in your kind of response to the Councillor, you'd seen what you mentioned about that resident engagement is a pivotal part of this. Residents haven't got the confidence to engage with you and bring forward complaints and bring forward their concerns. Then we're just doing exactly what I've been going for again, aren't we?
• Well, I think, again, it's about building those teams and making sure that we answer all our complaints. And again, like I said to you, I want to make sure that the oversight of those complaints, I'm getting those and making sure that we deal with them.
• Well, it's not just about dealing with them. We're dealing with them.
• Well, it's not just about dealing with them, it's about having confidence and making sure residents feel that their complaints are being addressed. So I think this is a systemic performance issue as well. The other point I just want to go back to, and it goes back to this issue of data. And I say this at every meeting these days in New York, the golden thread issue, it says in one of the slides, that there's missing data and there's a golden heat. So even when we do get the baseline data set back, how confident and robust can we, how much confidence can you have in the data that's put in for us? It says that you've got data sets missing.
• That's page 27, that's the question I was going to ask. Yeah.
• We've asked you this evening to kindly go back and give us a baseline of what maybe, for example, all your properties are in a certain category and the inspections you've done, what's outstanding, what's the priority. But underneath it all, it says golden thread, there is data missing. So.
• I'm really struggling to, I'm really sorry.
• The bit that I want to talk about in terms of the golden thread and to find out, for you, somebody to elaborate on that. I'm looking at building safety act part four, occupy high rise buildings. And on my agenda is page 27. Deferred item. And I read what it says. Keep information, golden thread S section 88. It says it's ongoing. It's a requirement to obtain information where this is not currently available. Suitable software solutions to be identified. So that to me is that you haven't identified where. Yeah.
• If I pass to Nigel for that.
• Yeah, no, thank you. Yeah, in terms of the golden thread, the building safety act makes specific requirements for us to maintain this level of information, which they call it the golden thread. It's not fully defined, but it can be basically all the information that you need to manage the building. There'll be more information if we have a new development. Part of the challenge in a way that is worded here is that essentially all of our buildings, so all 86 of our high-rise buildings are what I would, legacy buildings for these buildings were built up for. And as part of our activities, we are looking at the information we've got. And if that legacy information doesn't exist because of the age of the building, we're seeing what's practical to actually go back and retrospectively get that information. So for example, we're having to undertake measured surveys of the buildings to provide floor plans of all of the stock. Because that information wasn't and isn't available because of the age of the building. And some documentation, some evidence we won't be able to collect because some of the original construction details are no longer available. And we're going out and seeking to get that information to fill any gaps that we've identified as part of that.
• Can I ask, because as a layperson, and maybe there's where Spencer may help us lay people, in terms of fire safety, what information do you actually need from this building? Do not have to list all of them, but give us a few examples, for instance. So for us to get an understanding of what you're talking about.
• Fire safety and the building safety.
• Maybe Spencer can help you there in terms of what it is that you need to form this golden trail.
• Thank you, Chair. You're okay if I make a few notes. I think in terms of the new operating regime, I think it's useful to think of building safety in a certain way. And the lens that I look through it in terms of building safety is spread of fire and structural safety of the building. So the building safety act has those as the two primary risks. And they're the two things that we're seeking to address. Then we've got legislation, Fire Safety Act and Fire Safety England regulations that are all very much looking at building through the lens of fire safety in its own right. So when we talk about building safety, we're looking at those two risks. And then there's a third set of risks, which you could call building safety land or obligations, which would be all of the other risk areas such as water management, justice in the life, which are all other risks that the organisation has to manage. So in terms of looking at building safety, the information that we would need to have is originally in terms of construction information, what was the engineering intent for that building? How was it built? Under what regulations was it built? Because those regulations have changed. The building regulations in 1965 are completely different to the building regulations that we've got at the moment. So some of the evidence that we would need there is a structural review of the building. And we've engaged structural engineers working with the Institute of Structural Engineers as well to create a structural safety case for all of our high-risk buildings. We've advised to identify essentially how the building's constructed, what is the size of the columns, how much resistance they provide, what protection has they got to the building. On the far side of the side, it would be information around compartmentation lines by risk assessment. So there's a combination of documentation that we're going out to find. So we've got a whole range of activity at the moment going to collect information on our existing buildings.
• I think I've got it from my point of view. When I ask the question, now I understand better now it's about the risk of fire spreading and that the material that the building is constructed of might force the fire to spread more faster than others in terms of where the windows are, for instance, to feed oxygen into that space, et cetera. And it's expensive to come in there.
• So I think the golden thread is all around finding out the data of the building, the history of the building regarding its maintenance and regarding the competency of the people that are working in the building and to get a handle on that and to keep a record of that. So for instance, if you've got people working on the fire stock and all the fire doors within the building, we need to know that these people are third party accredited. We need to know where they were accredited and what work they were doing and on exactly what doors within the building. So that provides a record of competency and accountability, which probably was missing before and that's why Dame Judith Hackett made those initial comments in her initial review post Grenfell. And that's where the golden thread initially came from, which has been taken on into the Building Safety Act. And I think it's a real challenge for housing providers in terms of data management, because as Nigel said, a lot of the stock is legacy stock that the information doesn't exist anymore. So it's a lot of the initial work is trying to find that information out. And then the challenge is any maintenance and servicing that's done on our blocks is actually recorded, who is doing it, when they're doing it, to make sure that people are accountable for the work that they do.
• Thank you very much. And we are going to take the last questions, Rita.
• My question's here.
• Chair, can I just sort of thank officers for that's the best answer in the evening. (indistinct) We'd start with that. And on the golden thread, so it's about individual buildings rather than a massive hole in data sets.
• Yeah, we need to collect information. The golden thread can be a subset of all your data systems. We just need to define where we're holding the information, which is the single source. Then we need to provide information where there are examples of expenses that we haven't. Just a quickie.
• 30 seconds, that's all I'm doing.
• Paul, you mentioned the HRA (indistinct) we're not considering any financial provisions for Grenfell.
• Grenfell 2.
• Grenfell 2. So therefore, what assurance can you provide councilors who are going to pass a budget this year, which is going to be a three-year budget without consideration of Grenfell 2. Concern of mine at the moment. We're going to a period of time where there's no financial provision and input being put aside for Grenfell 2. And I think that's a serious organisation issue. I want to find one. Actually, Councillor Chadder's comment about in the stakeholder engagement, the resident is not being mentioned. In the early part of the evening, we looked at resident engagement and the slow satisfaction. Obviously, what that was a symbol of us not communicating with our residents and not solving their issues. And if you go back to Grenfell, there was a misconnect between the resident and the organisation. But what I would say, and earlier tonight we had technical solutions to solve the communication problem. Can I put it on the record, but not to look for technical solutions. Something is not quite right in how we deal with residents and that does have an impact on our fire safety. Grenfell used the word golden thread. There was a golden thread in the report. The people who are effort minorities, need to be English, they were laughed at and admonished for raising complaints about repairs. Okay, so can we, thank you. Thanks, I would like to thank our members who are participating and officers. And Spencer, thank you very much for giving up your evening. To be here, I would bring this to a close. Thank you all for attending. Obviously this work to be done. And this commission will be monitoring and obviously require you again to see what's happening in terms of our implementation and this terms of taking Grenfell into account. Also, as I said before on the other item, at some near future, I would like to bring the two, I'm from the scrutiny and I was in together for a meeting to look at that report sometime. Okay, so your notice is solved that we intend to do that. Thank you, and thank you for coming and have a good evening. And can I ask colleagues to our work program item eight. And this has been presented to us many times. It was also on our (indistinct) So can I ask that we note the work program? Noted, sure. Thank you, and item nine, the date of our next meeting. The next meeting it would be on the 26th of November. Is that noted? And the meeting is now brought to an end at 9/28. Thanks, Chair. Chair. Yeah, no worries. How are you, Josh? I am okay. How are you? (indistinct) Nice summer holiday. Felt long, besides the riots at the start. You know what? We spent every summer at the back. Exactly. (laughing) I actually said that. (laughing) (indistinct) Oh, everything else. (indistinct) No, the family did. So? Yeah, so they spent. (indistinct) I left you by yourself. I was like, yeah. Britting my thumbs. Sometimes that's a holiday. Exactly. It was. I was like, this is so quiet. What do I do now?