Transcript

I'm Councillor Jason Jackson, I'm chair of this committee and I will be chairing the meeting tonight. Please note that we are not expecting any fire alarm tests this evening, so if the alarm does sound, please do evacuate the building. This meeting is being broadcast live on the Council website, however members of the public are also unable to participate online. I thought they couldn't see us. When you do speak, please do turn on your mic and also remember to turn it off when you finish. And please do speak clearly so that you can be heard in the room as well for those at home. I would like to start by asking my fellow members of the committee to introduce themselves. Thank you. Councillor Henry Kew, vice chair of the committee. Councillor Toby North, St. Petersburg and outside board. I'm Councillor Sheila Chapman, I'm the portfolio holder for Equalities, Communities and Inclusion. I'm Lorna Hughes, I'm the Interim Assistant Director for Culture, Heritage, Equalities and Community Partnerships. I'm Councillor Phil Graham, Bunhill Ward. Councillor Elka Itchenko, Laycock Ward. Dean Donegan, co-opting. Councillor Nohella, an exec member for Homes and Neighbourhoods. Jia Jiang, acting corporate director, Homes and Neighbourhoods. Ian Swift, director of Housing Operations. I think we got apologies from, two apologies. Anthony Coogan and Michael Sullivan. I'm not sure yet, I'm from Rose, Rose-McDinald. Okay. Any declaration of interest? Right. Previous minutes, do we have you with that? Do we want to accept that? Or any questions? I'm listed as attending and also in apologies. I wasn't present. Okay. I'll take note of that. Great. Anything else? I don't know if it's a good time to come in with some issues that for the last minutes that I'd like the questions answered. Yes, this is the time for that. The first one would be about the housing licensing. I'd like it down at the monies for the licensing does stay with the licensing people and that doesn't go into the council funds and pots. So then we lose this new licensing thing that I hope that's going to continue to grow in this land for the tenants and things like that. I do want to include a list of bad tenants. We've got a list of bad landlords, but many, many times I've seen people being stung by bad tenants. I think that should be something added on that because of some tenants are non payers and they continuously do this to people who are barely struggling now with mortgages and things like that. And I want to know as well off of the disposal of waste and rubbish when they've cut up houses and flats and the deposit in the rubbish into the main street bins. I'd like to see something in that of how the disposal of the rubbish from the household instead of using the street bins, which are already overfilled. So I'd like to see something in that. Just for clarification, are these the conversations that we have for the records or this? OK, I am minded to be happy for that to reflect unless any committee members feel otherwise. I'm happy to do that. Go on Jim. Yes. Just to provide some feedback on those observations. I firstly can confirm that the funds generated through selective licensing are ring fenced to that activity. That's part of the kind of regulatory regime for the licensing system. So it will all be used to drive up standards and support landlords in doing that as well. Just to the second point, as far as I understand it, the licensing regime doesn't make provision for registers for tenants, although I understand the question you put into it. But I will take that back and discuss that with colleagues who are leading on the process. And just the third point around waste collection from converted properties where there's multiple occupants. I mean, I can take that back to the waste team. It would generally report into the Environment Committee. And we do have kind of lots of active programmes to try and improve recycling facilities and improve our waste services across the borough. But I'm conscious that there are some properties where that's more difficult to get in a kind of sustainable and good format. So I'll take that back to them. Thank you. Are you? Sorry, I've got another point as well. The purchasing right to buy. Is it the right time to comment on that as well? I would say if that's a new conversation to hold it for later. So with that, we accept that. Thank you. Right. My chair's report, not much on that part from the ongoing conversation around the seat, but I want to take the moment to acknowledge my previous chair and vice chair. Councillor Iruka Chingona for the years of service on this position as vice chair. So I just wanted to put that on record and say thank you and also use a moment to also welcome the new chair and vice chair, Councillor Hannah. And hopefully we can keep the committee in line with the spirit of what we want to do. Thank you so much. Right. With that, I'm mindful of time already. The weather doesn't look great outside, but I still want to catch it the way it is. To then want to. Go into our scrutiny review around literally around our seat, and I'm going to allow. I'm going to allow it to come in, but before them, actually, just before we go into that, I'm going to acknowledge Sheila to just in general, you're here because you are obviously an exec member around what we're going to be discussing in terms of see. So if you can just give us an overview or maybe for us to just something that this committee should note about your new portfolio. And that way we can just go straight to that with that. Yes, thank you, chair. So all of our community centres, like our VCS, sit within my portfolio of equalities, communities and inclusion. So I just wanted to come this evening to thank members for choosing this as a topic because it actually couldn't be more timely. So all of our community centres around Islington, you know, the three that directly managed the other 48. They are, you know, they're so critical in there's so much the bread and butter of what we do in terms of places for communities to come together. Places where we can deliver youth work, where, you know, early learning can happen, where we can tackle social isolation, where we can even roll out early intervention for health. And also where we want to work with our launching community sector partners to get them into those spaces. So it's really vital that they're operating in the best and most useful way for the communities that they serve. And I think I'm happy that you're looking at this because, you know, and I think we all know because we're ward councillors, it's not always the case. You know, some of these buildings are really, you know, they're aged. Some of them are not. The fabric of the buildings is not great. They're not as accessible as we would like. They're not being used as much as we would like. So I welcome this review because I think you will look at those things and you will do so with your knowledge of specific areas and with a sense of how things have changed over time and what once might have been needed in those community spaces has evolved. And we can think about, you know, what's the needs of the communities now and how can we put those community assets to best use of the community as it, you know, looks today. So really welcome the review. You know that we're doing community asset review. Those of you who've been around for a while will know that this has been in train for a long time. And because of changes in personnel and things like Covid, you know, it has been delayed. But it's timely because we're now at a point where we, where officers are going to be able to begin to start sort of sharing the results of that sort of thorough in-depth look at the assets. So what you've got and your objectives is to understand the community asset review and its purpose. And Lorna who's the lead officer on your scrutiny will be able to organise the both of us to sort of run some sessions with ward councillors to kind of go through the output, you know, to kind of go through these are the community spaces. This is the state they're in. This is who uses them. This is who would like to use them. This is how much they cost the council to run. So really timely and I think it will help kind of set us up with a sort of strategy going forward for how we're going to, you know, in very constrained times put these assets to the best use of the communities in a way that the council can sustain given, you know, that we're still strapped for cash. So just thank you very much for taking this on. Thank you. Now we have you here. I'm happy to allow members to maybe questions or remarks. Yeah, thank you. That's really helpful overview. I just wanted to ask you from your perspective and your thought as executive member who's closer to the community asset review, how do you think this scrutiny can best complement that review while it's going on alongside? Do you think is there anything that's a blind spot or a blank spot at the moment of the community asset review? Do you think that we can give some scrutiny to that review itself? What's your thought? My overwhelming feeling is that you can provide strategic oversight because I think when you're looking at community assets like this, the instinct of all of us is to become quite parochial and think about our community assets in our wards and we must preserve them at all costs as they are today. Whereas I think looking at it sort of council wide like this, you'll be able to and officers will help us map, right, here are the community centres, here are the children's centres, here are the libraries, here are the access Islington hubs, you know, here are the Sure Start centres. All of that so you get an overall picture and you can see, right, this particular asset, you know, we're not, people are not using it because they're actually going, you know, 200 yards away to that children's centre. So you'll be able to, you know, instead of having, you know, arguments on a kind of case by case basis, you'll be able to take a sort of bigger strategic look. And the second thing you'll be able to do because, you know, a lot of these community centres on our estates were built in a different time for communities that look very different. And so I think I hope what you'll be able to do is give some thought to, you know, what should be happening in these spaces now because, you know, you know how community centres traditionally run, but that doesn't mean that's how they have to run going forward because what do our communities need? In my ward in Archway we need maker spaces for young creatives, we need affordable work spaces, we need places for our detached youth workers to do outreach work. Okay, so we don't, you know, the traditional place where people, you know, hold meetings and people who live on estates get together and have events, that actually we're okay for those kind of community spaces in Archway, we need the spaces to be different. So I hope you'll be able to think about that. Thank you so much, it's good to have you here. Can you stay for this agenda point to finish? Just looking at the seat, are you, yeah, so I'm minded to, let's go into the point Sheila would be here so that way we could, maybe there might be other things that we can take attention as well to, Sophie. Because I really want to prove this because if I don't prove this I don't have no screwing the topic. So with that, there's been some scoping done and we have Lorna here who will introduce that to us and then we can then go back to questions and Sheila is still here as well. Please Lorna. Thank you Chair, I think Councillor Chapman has articulated where we are coming from looking at our community centres. I think it's important to look at it perhaps not just in a narrow way of the asset review, looking at local need, what is happening in local communities and how we can make best use of the assets to respond to local need and how we can make sure our assets are contributing to the delivery plan and making sure we're getting real outcomes for our residents. So that's what's really important as part of the review work that we are doing. The scoping, we met with the Chair and we've come up with a number of objectives and I'm quite happy to take questions as to whether those objectives meet the committee's need and that's how we'll take this review forward. We are planning to give you a presentation to talk more about our three centres in more detail, how we staff them, the activities that we deliver and how we are using local people within our service delivery model. So I'm happy to take questions on the objectives, Chair. Thanks, it's a comment really more than a question and I noticed the objectives are very focused on those three directly managed community centres and as Sheila has already noted that's kind of a very small number of the overall number of centres. So I'm really keen that as part of this scrutiny that we look at what really good, excellent practice is happening across all of those so that we can learn for the Council-run assets. You know, because of good practice I'd like us to get them giving evidence as part of the review so that can inform the development of Council-run services. Can I respond to that, Chair? Yes, you can. Just to say yes, I think that's an excellent point because I talked about what should be in these buildings, how much they cost to run, whether they're efficient. But it's also how they're run and there are some beacons of good practice and there are some, whatever the opposite of beacon is, of not good practice where, you know, that effectively our community assets are being gate kept and people are not able to access them. So yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, Councillor North has mentioned what I was also going to bring up and just to be concrete on where I see that in the objectives, I'd be interested in changing just the language of the first and the last objective in that box. So to explicitly say directly managed and perhaps other community assets. In the last one, identify potential areas for improvement or innovation. I think we could expand that out. And I don't know exactly how I would word this or include this, but I think what you're suggesting about mapping the need is a brilliant place to start. And I think it would be useful if one of our objectives would be to identify the diversity of needs or to get some kind of mapping exercise of what kind of community centres we want to see in the borough and how well we're meeting that need. I don't know how we word that exactly. But I'm nervous at the objectives at the moment, as we say, speak to the three community centres as we have them. And I think if we're going to do something strategic and expansive with this review, we could think a little bit more about what it is communities are asking for. So I'm happy to maybe come up with some wording and suggest it after the meeting or we could discuss. I'll let you come into it. In terms of suggestions, you might want to take a few minutes to do that because we have to do it now because we can't take this back. The wording needs to be right today. We can take it away. As far as you've agreed, we'll amend it. Absolutely. Thanks very much. That's a really helpful suggestion. What we plan to do as part of the review is to take you out into the community and show you the examples. So we'll visit, yes, our three directly managed ones, but there are some really good ones managed by voluntary sector organisations. We'd like to include that as part of the visit, perhaps talk to stakeholders. Thank you very much. I'm really excited to see that the community centres are going to be coming back to use by the community. My area of concern is the lack of provisions for community centres for children, more so than adults. Because we have a small amount of youth centres which are oversubscribed and a large volume of children. I would really appreciate if we could look at the number of children that access and the waiting lists for these children that have tried to get into the other community centres and the other after school clubs. Because it is insufficient, so it would be really good to see the statistics on that and see how many children actually use the centres and maybe incorporate that when we're doing the mapping as well, please. Sure, you can respond and then I'll let... Thank you for the question, Councillor. What I would say is the review will reveal the complexity. We don't directly manage most of the community facilities across the borough and therefore we don't actually control the activity that is delivered from them. And this review will help us to unpick and understand what are the better management models that allow us to respond to that local need. Which is why I raise the importance of understanding what's going on in each locality, understanding the needs of the community. So bearing in mind we can't always access detailed data because of the management arrangements. And that complexity will come forward as we present to you on the 14th of October, followed by some visits and tours to some of the centres. And that will help you to really understand that we're not as in control of all of them as it might look from the outside. We've got different management arrangements in place and that's what we need to look at and pick and find the best that works for our communities. Thank you. I'll let you, Councillor, because there might be a couple of... Just to follow up on that, when we were just working on this seed, I think it was quite telling at the very beginning point that we only had three that we managed. So that's why you can see how narrow this was. However, I think the committee does have scope to be able to echo in what the other committee members said too. Bring in some people that might not necessarily be part of those three for us to have a little bit of understanding of what's happening. But either way, looking at it from a lot more, again, strategic, high level, we could be coming to some with a pre-empting recommendation now on what should really be happening in this space. But yes, it was of an interest and thank you so much, Luanna, for lining up, because it was almost of a... I was expecting to have a lot more, but that wasn't the case, so it's a bigger conversation to have. You want to follow up on that, quickly? Just briefly, when we had a scrutiny topic on this before about the community centres, I was under the impression that we were on the verge of bringing most of the community centres back into our services. I think that's what was discussed, that we are bringing back our own community centres. So I was quite surprised today when I only found out that there's only three that we actually manage. I mean, those are questions you could ask at a later point as we go further into the conversation. But I'm minded to allow Phil Gramm to raise his point and then I'll come back to Sheila too. Yeah, it's from Clary. What are the three community centres that have already managed? We manage Andover, Jean Stokes and Vibast, and we'll take you to visit all three of those, dependent on time. Because we also want you to visit some of the VCS managed centres as well. I'm definitely looking forward to the strips. I don't know about this. We definitely will come. Phil, do you just want to follow up on that, quickly? Vibast is in my ward. We actually paid for a manager, so it's directly run by us. Sorry, just to clarify for those who are listening online, it's paid for by the section 106 council. The section 106 contribution, but he is a member of Islington council staff. Thank you. Dan and then Sheila. One of your things, the Andover is right on my doorstep. I think we've got to realise how much of a life saver some of these community centres are. Not just for the kids being withheld from gangs and things like that. But for the old age pensioners to take care, if we need the heat in there. And I think that we're going to need these centres for the old age pensioners when the bill's starting in and the food's going up again. So I think that whatever we can do to bring them back into the council, or fund them whichever way, would be a benefit to not just the community, but to everybody around the community included who don't actually use the community centre. But through the point of people using it don't have such distress like in gang culture and old age pensioners dying of a cold. So I think that's one area the committee might help us with is perhaps if you look at our communications and how we are making sure that residents living in and around the Andover are aware of what they can access there. I know it is a much loved community centre but looking at communications would be helpful for us. Right, thank you. Sheila, you don't need to have an answer for some of those because I think that's what we're here to do to kind of unpick some of that for you. However, if there was any of those that you just wanted to highlight, maybe you're already starting some work on it, that would be great. I want to be transparent from the beginning and as we're at the outset make one difficult point, which is we are in such financially constrained circumstances that some of these community centres are costing to keep them heated, open, running. When you look at what they cost and the value they deliver, I think you are going to see that there's something out of kilter. So I just would urge you to approach this review with a very open mind and not to focus in on these are the community centres, but to think broadly what are the assets here, what do people need? Yes, elderly people need warm hubs, especially as you said with the wind fuel allowance. Detached youth workers, as I learnt when I was showing children's services scrutiny, need places to take at risk youth. So you look at the need but you look at where else that can be or is being delivered really well because honestly keeping all these buildings open and the council funding them in exactly the same way is not going to be manageable. Can I just interject, you mean what, the three or the others? No, I'm not referring to specific community centres, I'm simply saying that I suppose when you're making your recommendations, I suppose to put it simply I'm asking you to do so realistically in terms of what can be delivered with the council finances as they stand and I'm asking you to be imaginative and look at what else, where are the other warm hubs, where else are some of these things being delivered and actually in some cases where are they being delivered better? So we've got Access Islington hubs now, three of them in the borough doing some excellent work. So it's going back to that point of being strategic and mapping all of the assets of which the community centre estate is part and bearing that in mind is what I'm saying. Thank you. I'm out of time. Is this a direct? Okay, sure. Thank you Shiva for that. Would it be possible, and this is for the chair and for yourself, would it be possible to actually get a list of the community centres in the borough, not just the ones that we run, but the community centre in the borough of what their costs are, just so we can understand, but also how they're managed. And some of these community centres, and we all know this, are also run privately in the sense that some community centres are hired out to work. So it would be really great if you could find that information. You are going already into the scrutiny. So I would suggest you hold that question when we do go into the scrutiny. I want you to first accept this and then when we do go into scrutiny, that's what we do, then we can go into that. Some of those requests can be made. So you don't need to answer that because you would answer at some point. I would just ask my vice chair to just give us that suggested wording and then we can note that and then we can go forward with this. Thanks, and I think this might support doing some of this scrutiny that you're suggesting. How about something like to map the community centre offer in Islington, in particular forms of community provision and to identify areas of need. So that will bring up whether we need more child care or that kind of thing. I can send that one. Thank you. Right. I just want to say that the ongoing conversation, I would ask members if there are any specific groups or who we would like to have attend this meeting, please do let us know. We will ensure a try very best and thank you so much for offering the visit and I think that definitely is going to be taken as well. With that, if we're happy, can we accept this? With the changes obviously to be added, are we happy with that? Great. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Lorna. You can stay if you want to. Thank you for the invitation, Chair, but I do have a train to catch, so thank you. I'll see you again on the 14th. Thank you so much. I believe we're going to move into our next agenda point and that is on homelessness prevention and rough sleepers strategy update. Thank you, Chair. So, a couple of meetings ago we presented you with the draft homelessness prevention and rough sleeping strategy, but then Vice-Chair, Councillor Ilkay Uno, wanted it to become an update rather than just present it to you, forgotten about and then it goes to Executive. So this report basically confirms that we've completed the consultation. We've presented it to the homelessness forum, which as you know has about 80 community-based organisations, Chaired Visings and Law Centre. We've met with all of the directorates within the Council, Children's, Adult Services, et cetera, to address the specific needs. We did a wide consultation online. Councillor Ilkay Uno wanted us to meet with people as well. It's got lived homelessness experience, especially young people from the black and multi-ethnic community and we did that and we did that in partnership with Arts and Homelessness International, so that was independently facilitated. What we've realised from all of the consultation feedback is the housing strategy does need to be improved, to be honest and transparent with you, and the themes that's come out of that from the consultation, which will be amended, is greater attention to looked after care children and that is a report that's come in the next agenda item. Greater focus on people from the black and multi-ethnic community within this because the black community represents 13% of the population, 32% of the homeless applications received each year, obviously because of poverty and insecure living arrangements within the private rented sector. So we need to refocus on that area which we're currently doing. So the next steps will be is to present it to the Homelessness Forum, again because it's a partnership approach to those residents that have taken part in those focus groups and then to bring a version back here probably November before it's adopted by the Executive in December, which was the request of the previous Chair. You see a version of it for comments before it's adopted by Executive and that remains the plan. Any questions you'll be pleased to answer? Thank you so much. I'm happy to take questions from the committee. Sure. Councillor Chifford. I'd just like to say thank you very much. I think that the fact that we're looking at reviewing the housing strategy is a really important step. I'm really grateful that we did speak to some of our vulnerable communities, especially care leavers and the black and ethnic minority communities. This gives me hope. Thank you very much. I read this and what I've seen on the news of the Section 21, people making themselves intentionally homeless. It always comes up to me because I've got a friend on the street who totally made himself intentionally homeless because he didn't want to live in a house. He does get help off you, which is brilliant, which is great. He does get hot meals and things like that. But the way things are going at the moment, there seems to be an upward curve coming of homelessness through people not being able to afford their mortgages and people having to sell. We don't like to give out Section 21s in the private sector, but the thing is that we have to sometimes because some people make themselves homeless because they have to sell their own houses because there is a deep increase now of people losing their jobs as well, especially to AI and to bigger companies. I don't know if you've noticed two major building companies have gone down this week as well, one being an absolutely massive company. I'm trying to get to the point of how are we going to stop this curve going upwards because I can't really see it. You did really great years before and now it's like a couple of people, a couple of people more, a couple of people more. So are we going to have to throw more money at this and more stuff at this through no fault of your own? There is a real increase in circumstances of putting people into homelessness through the cost of living crisis, through high interest rates and insecure forms of tenure. We are seeing that year on year, all councils are seeing that year on year. So yes, we will have to put more resources into relieving people when they do experience homelessness. And unfortunately, that does mean that it's putting some pressure on the councils finances. We are, as you know, and Ian's run through before, taking lots and lots of steps to support people as best as we can and minimise that financial impact. But we do owe those duties, statutory duties of care. So it will cost the council more money and it will create an overspend pressure on the councils finances and as you say, it's caused by kind of wider economic conditions are increasing levels of homelessness. That said, there are some steps, further steps that Ian's taken. He's not at all complacent in these things, he works extremely hard. He commissioned an independent review of the way in which we deliver our services to look for areas of potential efficiency where we could squeeze out any other changes in the way that we work to kind of reduce the impacts of homelessness in the borough. And he's in the process of redesigning the services, the way the officers are organised and adjusting the number of officers who work on the prevention end of the spectrum to try and reduce where we can people experiencing homelessness during that stage, rather than once they experience it. So we're doing everything that we can and Ian and his team are working extremely hard to do that but you're right, there is an increase in pressure. We expect that to continue over the time being. Yeah, thank you. I'd like to echo that. I think the review is thorough and it seems there's been a lot of really good and important engagement done so I really welcome that. One question I have is what can we do to scrutinise the quality of the temporary accommodation offer that we have? I know when I went out on the street count and went to visit the temporary accommodation offer, I was struck that these are places that may feel unsafe, that there are challenges in getting good temporary accommodation, so what can we do to keep accountability of that? The council is one of the few councils that's got a quality standard that we introduced through this committee two years ago under the chair and the vice-chair's insistence that that quality standard is in place. It's fair to say the all party parliamentary group on temporary accommodation is suggesting other councils adopt our standard so like two years ago we were saying cops had to be provided, Wi-Fi etc. We're buying, you know, in the last four years we've bought over 500 properties now. We bought 10 x-ray to buy properties last week to use as temporary accommodation and the week before that it was five. So we've got a programme to buy probably another 200 properties between now and March 2026 which is achievable to provide better quality accommodation. Either way we've opened one scheme for people sleeping rough and another one is due to be opened in March 2025 which is really useful for our residents. What we could perhaps do is go through that quality standard again at a future committee with you and also suggest for you to suggest different ways that we can improve. I am producing a report which is going to be considered in the future by the council and no doubt we could use some of that report in this room for you to critically challenge me and my service to get better. Thank you, that's reassuring and it's great to hear that we are leading standards and also that there's so much to keep improving those standards that we're doing. I'd like to ask the same question essentially but with relation to the offer we give people on the streets at the B&Bs that we would offer, the emergency accommodation, what are our ways of scrutinising this? So we can present to you a flow chart that shows you where people go from the streets etc. So we have two emergency off the streets schemes and that is currently met in partnership with the Ministry of Housing so we don't want anybody to sleep rough. There was another report on this agenda about rough sleeping so they automatically always be offered accommodation on the night so we, jumping ahead, several agenda items but we did the rough sleepers count, not last night, the night before, finished at four o'clock in the morning and we found 18 people sleeping rough, none of them with a connection to Islington apart from an Islington council female who was a tenant, who was struggling with her mental wellbeing. And obviously we need to work with that individual and other people were evicted from home office hotels, not Islington's but others and as you know we have a brilliant track record of that work. The government has allowed 700 people to move from the two hotels in Islington with status, none of them have come to sleep on the streets which we're really proud of. But we can certainly show you a flow chart with quality standards, you are right, the quality of some of our accommodation is not what we expect it to be but it's what we can afford as a council within the framework, financial framework that we've got. But I think it's pleasing for you to know that all those 18 people that have slept rough, all of them were not known by the services because we do regular evening counts and daytime counts as well, we're the only council to do that in central London to actually get people off the streets. So we have the lowest rough sleeping numbers in central London but you're right, we can always get better. Thank you, Councillor Warner. Yeah and also I'd like to say Ian represented us, was it a week ago, two weeks ago in Liverpool and was one of the main speakers and people are learning from us because it is a problem. I think you're right that there was 18 people, I imagine none of them had links to Islington but we still had a duty then to find them somewhere. I really want to thank the committee for challenging us so thank you, especially OK because you really did push this and I think it's right we review. And you're right about temporary accommodation, it isn't always fit for purpose, sometimes people send us pictures of where they've been placed and straight away, we do our best to move them because we take a chance where we don't have enough properties in borough, the more we buy back, better conditions but we have to use other authorities and take that chance. So there's more to do. Thank you, I'll take the last one from Des. This would be rather for Mick O'Sullivan because he does bring it up to you quite a few times. Tourist homeless, other boroughs since we do such a great job in Islington, other boroughs forcing, as Mick once told me, Westminster, once gave them tickets to get to Islington so that we take care of their mess. You're just saying now 18 people you didn't know, where did they come from? I mean if they were homeless from resident, you should have, you could have known a lot earlier but are we going to get a void where other boroughs are going to start sending people to this borough and making our expense go up? To answer your question, the information is available of where these people originated from, they're all some from Newcastle etc. So we're working with far flung places in London as well, we're working with those people and with those councils to see if they wish to return to Newcastle and other places. We're not going to leave them on the streets, that's certain to be the situation. But yeah, we're very proud of our work compared to other neighbouring councils, Haringey, I was advised today, we had 18 people, they've had 42 people, Camden's got somewhere between 100 to 200 people, Westminster 300 people. We're not in that, you know in terms of rush sleep we're not in that territory. In terms of statutory homeless, Islington council like every council in the country is facing a massive homelessness crisis, we've got more people in temporary accommodation as a country as well as Islington than we've ever had. We've had more homeless applications than we've ever had and that needs to change for the wellbeing of those individuals, never mind our own finances. We need to treat every one of those people with dignity and respect that they deserve in line with our values and principles as a council which we intend to do. I just want to add, I'm really happy about this, I think it's good to know that this works, what we have is coming here and it takes also an officer that wants to sort of take that on board. When we talk about homelessness, anyone can be, life does happen and it's very important that there is always a support in place and I really appreciate the great work you're doing on this so thank you so much. Thank you very much for this. We move to our next one, I don't believe you're going anywhere actually so you'll be introducing the next one, that's the Islington Care Leave Offs and Housing Protocol. Thank you chair, so this report has been requested by the chair of Children's Services, Scrutiny, Councillor Osdamer and by Ilkay Buna who was requested it when she was the previous chair. Also, so that you are aware, at the next meeting there will be a different protocol so don't get confused, the protocol will be on temporary accommodation work between housing and children's services because of the concern of Councillor Osdamer with the number of children in temporary accommodation. So this is dealing with a specific area of housing and children's services work, people leaving loved after care, not the other one but I need to flag that, that will be coming to the October meeting because Councillor Osdamer and Ilkay Buna asked me to do that which we will do. So this report that you've got in front of you will travel on to Children's Services, Scrutiny like I say before it is formally adopted, that was the request that we've received. We've consulted the Ministry of Housing, Community and Local Government, we've consulted everybody that we think we need to consult on the development of this. It's honestly a partnership framework that's been co-produced and co-developed with Children's Services. This isn't been Children's Services saying to housing, this is what we want and it's not been us saying to Children's Services, this is what we want. It's a true honest partnership framework. It is quite radical and the government is adopting some of the issues proposed at the conference that we heard this week in terms of this area of work around homelessness, etc. So the questions have been asked about intentional homeless. Islington is very radical with regards to saying that we don't really want to make people intentionally homeless because that then transfers the problem to somewhere else. So every year I monitor it, every year this committee has said to me that they don't want to make people intentionally homeless. Every year we have less than 10 people made intentionally homeless and that's when they get two offers of private rent, etc. accommodation. We then say well what do you expect us to do? We then have to have dialogue with Children's Services on those cases. These are all vulnerable people leaving looked after care. We do have a provision of accommodation for these individuals. As you know this committee pushed us to acquire 20 properties through the extract to buy for looked after care. Those have been purchased and occupied and working really successfully with Children's Services. The other issue about this is kind of like the fact that we need to give priority needs to these individuals in homelessness so they can get fast track through the accommodation. But also the support provision wants that in the accommodation because if they fail tenancies where do they go? So we've made a decision that nobody will be evicted from a council property if they're leaving looked after care between the ages of 16 to 25. Which again is quite radical but we believe is necessary and that's a partnership agreement. We've offered employment to these people within housing that you need to be aware of as well. In terms of our restructures in housing management and housing needs is that we've been given training to these individuals to hopefully assist them with employment within the council, within the housing service. Because it is important that we employ people with looked after care provision and homelessness so we become more empathetic to our residents. Hopefully the protocol meets your previous suggestions that you've made to me on numerous occasions but if you need any further changes let me know and we can certainly introduce them before it travels on to children's screening. Firstly I just want to say you used the right word. There's some radical approach and I read this and I was just nodding out of really good piece of work there. I let members come in to either but I really can't see. I can only make it more radical but at this point I have to manage some level of expectation. Yeah, thank you. I have felt really humbled to sit on the corporate parenting board this year and get to meet some of these incredible young people who can explain advocate for themselves in a way that I wish I could have done at that age or even this age sometimes. I have in those meetings also learnt a bit about some of the struggles that they face and this surely goes a really long way to helping them and that's wonderful. Two things I wanted to ask. One, I know it's radical but is giving a classification of priority need actually enough to make sure that all of these children and young people are housed? Because obviously we have such competing demands on our housing. Is that all we need? And two, what is the process? It's great that these young people won't be evicted but what can we do to help them with their council arrears and the management of their debts as they come in? Do we have people who can help them learn the budgeting but also in many cases take away these debts they can't carry? Thank you. Thank you for that question. So to answer the last question first, they have a support worker, all these individuals that will prevent them from going into rent arrears etc. I think the transition between receiving benefits and getting employment and keeping that employment is the most important thing for these individuals and that's where the support is. Literally saying to people get up, go to work, you've got this job to go to is really essential for that individual but also giving them that mentoring and coaching to get through life because sometimes society has failed them. So that is a built in service that's provided jointly by housing and by children's services, mainly by children's services if I'm going to be frank with you. And we've also received revenue funding from the Ministry of Housing, the first one in the country to obtain it for this type of scheme so that support is intensive so it's like a housing first initiative for those individuals to make sure that they never have failed tenancies from those 20 properties that we bought. In addition to that, last year we gave 50 lettings to look after care people which we're really proud about, that's a quota. By giving them this additional priority we'll fast track their rehousing. So that you are aware 60% of homeless households are single adults with vulnerabilities. This isn't going to add to any of those issues and if you look at the data of the length of time that somebody stays in temporary accommodation in Islington, who is homeless, it's 64 weeks. Compare that with other councils neighbouring, it's five, ten plus years. So we are pretty good with that work if I'm honest with you. So yes it will guarantee the rehousing. As a previous member of corporate parenting I heard a lot about the development of this protocol from the other side with children's services so I just want to recognise all the work and thank you for it as well because this is a genuinely radical and leading piece of work that I also know from other professional experience that not a lot of local authorities have done so I just want to recognise that. A lot of the conversations we had at corporate parenting board previously did still focus on the real challenge in securing stock for this particularly vulnerable cohort. And given the looked after children population and transition planning for those young people we do have relatively high degrees of certainty about the number of young people who are going to be needing accommodation as they transition to independent living. So I wondered if you could tell us a bit more about exactly what the work happening within housing is to try and make more of that stock available and are we thinking outside the box in terms of allocations and new build projects for these young people. I want to be convinced that we're doing everything we possibly can do to make sure that these are the young people in highest need who are getting the stock available. That's a really good question. So the issues are going to be difficult to answer so the issues are going to be here is we've mapped out with children's services the needs and the layers with finance and the layers with children's services from a housing perspective and we believe we've mapped out the needs of what children's services are for this client group over the next three years. And that will improve the outcomes of those individuals and it will save the council funding as well for those services. With regards to new build that has been raised with me in the past at several meetings and I've always responded by saying we have local lettings policies in place within Islington so if something is built on that estate priority is given to the tenants of that estate. It may well be then that they vacate properties on that estate which we can then allocate and some of those may well go to or are likely to go to a looked after care provision. But there is no, there is nothing at the moment planned to change the local lettings policy to say children's services that I'm aware of. If I could just follow up on that very specific point before you come back in Jed. We do know there are cases where management transfers will take priority over local lettings and then general allocations as part of new build schemes. Have we considered exploring whether securing stock for care leavers could be something we do via that mechanism as well? In this housing allocations for now we won't be looking at any of this until 2026 but it's because we've had a lot since we've launched the housing allocations like for key workers, children's come up so it is something but at the moment it is about priority and need. So I think it is something like you say about new building future. There's nothing stopping us to sort of, the local lettings is for local people if something's built there. But we probably will be looking at it and do a consultation and people, this committee and everyone will feedback but nothing will be happening until 2026. Two sort of supplementary points. One is, and Councillor Hallam is absolutely right, the local lettings policy that's in place at the moment is for that first access to those new homes within the local area, particularly where the construction takes place because of the impacts it has upon that community. But it is for people in housing need within that community. So if it was the case that we were building say a large number of homes in a location where maybe there isn't that level of housing need, then there might be spare capacity within that new stock and then care leavers and other people who have a high priority would be able to get access to those homes. It's not that it isn't possible to happen, it's just Ian's being kind of clear that the first priority does go to the communities who are most directly affected by the construction. Just on your other point around the planning, and Ian said it's quite right that we've been working jointly with Children's Services both to get their advice about what they think the next two or three years looks like in terms of care leavers moving towards independence and needing to access accommodation. But I think more importantly to work out what the financial cost is for the council between the different approaches and because this does produce a net overall benefit to the council, that us housing them within our stock as opposed to Children's Services having more expensive and less suitable accommodation options, it makes the approach scalable. So if there is a change in the levels of accommodation needed for care leavers, so if that was to grow and the backlog became bigger for some reason, that means we can scale and flex the approach, maybe not instantly and perfectly, but there is the ability to move it in and out as we need to. One very brief. So you're telling me, and I hope this is what you're saying because it's great news if so, that you've allocated the stock for the next two or three years which Children's Services think, or you've earmarked, ring fenced, whatever word you want to use, that Children's, the number of properties that Children's Services have estimated they think they're going to need. I would like to say yes to that. Obviously needs change. But as of yesterday, when I met with Children's Services, I thought we knew what we were rehousing over the next three years, but I can guarantee you that figures like this change in the future because needs are likely to increase within Children's Services as well. So then you'll hear through your corporate parenting that we're not addressing something and that's because the needs have changed from the Children's Services, not from my perspective. Just to say, however, I think it's a strong point that Councillor North has made and that's definitely what we are as a committee putting out to you and we're hoping this will work. Dean, thank you. Great job this, that and the other, but is there a parallel to youth, you're saying, from people going up to the age of 25? I'm seeing if these people get flats first or the houses first or they're looked after, they've got all these people looking after them, this, that and the other, if I was just about to be looking for a flat off these in Council, would I not find this an easier way in to get one? Is there not a parallel structure for people who are generally looking for a house who are not in this sector and do they get all these benefits as well? Can I just say, these are our most vulnerable children, our looked after children. Yeah, I know it's about vulnerable children, but we don't want an additional influx of other people thinking this is the easier way to get some flats and houses. I mind that I can see hands going up. As a committee, we're open to having all views and the whole point is to make sure that things really, however I think it is one of those, the demographics here is a very critical one. I'll let officers come to that. I'm also minded that members should be just trying to work on this, on your view. Thank you, Councillor Cimcona. Thank you, Chair. I really appreciate the work that you're doing for the most vulnerable in our society and that is looked after children. These children have been left, have been abandoned most of the time, have a lot of issues. It is our duty and we are very proud of having this duty, of giving our children our looked after children priority. I think from where you're looking at it, I don't think that that is what is... Councillor Cimcona, you... Yes, thank you. I just want to say thank you very much and I think that you guys are doing brilliant work and thank you for listening to this scrutiny and they are the most vulnerable children. Okay, I'll let my Honourable Vice-Chair go ahead. Thank you. No, I think this has been a useful discussion. I think it's worth just clarifying that this is an offer only open to Islington's looked after children, which is a well-defined group. So it would be hard for anyone to jump stream to access the scheme, which I think reinfects it really well. I actually just want to put on the record that what I think is amazing in the future, I'd like us to consider if 25 is even too young to finish offering this scheme. I think I am now 30 without a mortgage and I'm aware that I've had plenty of advantages in my life. But it's true, I think the way that society is changing and the pressures on young people, we should keep an open mind to how long these young people may need our support. Thanks. Yeah. I mean it used to be until 18 and it was moved to 25, but if the lead member of the children, if you know her, once they're your children, you're looked after all your life here and I think Islington do because you're right, 25 is just a number. And if they struggle, I think they'll always be part of the looked after children whatever age. Thank you. I think, again, I have a great piece of work here. If I've tried anything, I think a lot more outside of just housing is really critical. And especially for this group of young people, that the transition to the ability to have aspiration and that always being open, I think is going to be critical. And so, yeah, there's a lot more work, but this is a strong foundation to work on. And I want to say thank you so much again. Right, great piece there. We move to, again, thank you Ian, and thank you to the team as a whole, because I know it takes a lot to bring this together. I want to move to the next one. I think you started touching a bit on this already, so you don't really have to present again. But if you want to just give us some highlight, I'm happy for members, I'm sure we've looked at this. The Rough Sleepers Day Talk. Just a minute, so it kind of drags out the highlights of the information for you. So obviously, rough sleeping is increasing, like statutory homes is increasing. It's at the highest level it's ever been, as the report says, outside of the Covid years. But it's always shy of the Covid years by four, which is really disappointing. Rough sleeping in Islington, this report first of all has come because a year ago it's right that the chair of the committee wanted further information, because he was concerned about the numbers of rough sleepers. We have to do bimonthly counts with the Ministry of Housing, so this week we identified 18, like we said. Two months ago it was 22, so rough sleeping is coming down in Islington, which is positive from that data. However, new people are sleeping on the streets all of the time. Nobody's been forced to leave the prisons from the recent prison release thing to go to sleep on the streets. The next release on the 22nd of October, again we know all of the individuals, none of them will go and sleep on the streets, so that's really fortunate. No one's gone to sleep on the streets from the two home office hotels. We work in partnership with the Ministry of Housing, they're really pleased with the work we're doing. Homelessness has gone up, as you know, 25% locally. We've got the lowest numbers of rough sleep numbers in central London, which is pretty good. Over a year, as well as through the counts, which we're really pleased about. We can always do more, we recognise that as a service. One person sleeping on the streets is one person too many, but we are continuing to work to try and eliminate rough sleeping where possible. So thank you for your support, and by all means be as crisply as you wish to see if we can make further improvements. Thank you. Just a quick question. From your count, do you find that you're probably counted the same person over again, because they either not choose not to? I'm just intrigued. Yeah, so all of the 18 people that we found, not last night, the night before, were new to sleeping in the streets of Islington. Two of them are of the 18, are long term rough sleepers in London, that have been sleeping rough for a considerable period of time, and float around London. And I happened to be on that night, it was in Islington, and even though there was a reason for that night, or that week, or whenever we found them, because it was hiding, we offered them accommodation and support, because nobody should be forced to sleep on the streets for decades. Any questions from members? Or we can move on to this? Thank you. Right, we're into the quarterly review. I think members have had a look at this, but I would allow the chair to introduce this for us. Thank you. Yeah, as you say, Choe, you've had a copy in the pack, and you're very familiar now, I think, with the format, so I wasn't really particularly intending to give out a huge presentation, other than just to note our kind of quarter one performance update on tenancy satisfaction measures. For the most part, they're relatively positive for us, there's still two areas of concern for us in terms of our performance. So non-emergency timescale repairs performance is dipping, and it was already a kind of an area of concern. So we're doing some analysis, and we're working on an improvement plan in relation to that, and we still have relatively high levels of complaints being reported. Our management of complaints is good, but our rates of complaints are still relatively high. So that's something which we're also concerned about and looking at, along with other colleagues, as part of the corporate complaints review, which is a kind of ongoing review. And just to give you some assurance on some of the health and safety checks, so the lift safety check, BSO5, which again, we've shown as a lower quartile, I think I've updated the committee before, that there's been some challenges in coordination with the subcontractor who works for the council's insurer in completing all of the necessary checks. We've now resolved those issues and also secured an additional contractor that we can direct to fill in any gaps whilst we're working on that coordination. So you'll see that tick up and get up to 100%. By the time of the next return, I'm very confident we're very close to 100% now. Yeah, thank you. So specifically on lifts, I know that you're mentioning lift safety checks. Can I ask about lift maintenance and the work schedule for lift maintenance? And I appreciate we have very squeezed resources, but I am aware in my ward without making this a casework point of so many recurring broken lifts, and I just want to be reassured that we can do something better. Yes, very happy to, Councillor. So you're correct, we do have quite a lot of old lifts, and they are beyond their planned timescale for their life operation. SIBC is the regulatory body that kind of provides advice about the expected lifespan of lifts, and it is the case that quite a few of ours fall out the back end of that timescale. In terms of maintaining and keeping them operable, our performance levels are actually surprisingly good, given the age. So we've got over 96% lift availability across the course of a year. But that doesn't mean that there aren't areas where those older lifts that are more obsolete aren't affecting people and performing worse. So we have, in the last six months, with Councillor Halloran's support, allocated a five-year capital investment programme for lift renewal, so I'm really pleased that we're doing that. This is part of our intentional approach to shift some of our stock investment away from simple modernisation works, and to look at that kind of infrastructure which sometimes gets left out of capital programmes and address it directly. So that's underway, and that will work from the worst lifts to the best lifts, so it will work for the worst, oldest, most obsolete stock, and renew that across the course of five years, bringing all of our lifts inside their lifespan. So it's a planned capital works programme that's just starting up at the moment. One of the benefits for me, and the benefits which I believe residents will notice as well, is that the new lifts have got more sensors, more technology in them, so they'll monitor their own duty cycles and components. They'll tell us when things are due to wear out. They'll fault report to us directly and remotely, so we don't have to wait for a lift to break down for residents to contact us and tell us there's a problem. We have the opportunity to maintain them more proactively, so I'm really pleased that that works underway, but it will take some time to go through all of those lifts. Thank you. I'm delighted that we can use capital spends on this. Can I ask as an action that we could see something about that programme in a future meeting, that we could have a paper about that work. It would be good to bring it to this committee. Thanks. Yeah, I'm happy with that. Sure. Lifts don't generally break down. It's human interference, especially on my lifts, people trying to move households through the lifts and smashing the buttons and things like that. How much of that goes into your data of it's not the lift that's breaking down, it's people that are actually breaking? That's a very good point. I don't have that data at hand, but when we bring information on the programme, I'll ask them if they have that record. They may have it, because they'll probably have overlaid in, and they'll have records if there's clear signs of damage to lift carriages or to the operating controls, etc. So I'll see if we can bring that in when we bring back a paper. I'll just add to that as well. People in lifts, there is a lot of movement, people move in and out, people get kitchens and everything else. But our lifts, we have got data where our lifts are quite an older stock as well. So a lot of it is wear and tear. Just to fill up on that, are we using those that carry out the repairs on our lifts, are they external contractors or in-house? Yes, so a company currently called Amalgamator Lifts, we've got the contract for maintenance. We do also carry out our own inspections, and I should have mentioned that point actually when I talked about the statistic. So our statutory inspections, the returns we put into that are one specific inspection regime that this insurance company does called the Lola inspection regime. We also have more regular inspections carried out by Amalgamator Lifts, the contractors, so they do attendance and inspection. And then we do a sample of quality assurance of their work and of their inspections with our own engineers. So there's three layers of assurance, effectively. I'll come to you, Councillor Phil. But just following up on that, when the repairs are carried out, do we have a fixed contract or is it based on, without going to contractual issues, do we pay per service carried out for every lift or tendencies that we have a fixed set contract with them? If I could, if I can take that into the kind of request for information, we'll bring back a paper for you. We have different target priorities and timescales for attendance, depending on the nature of the lift and the type of outage. But I don't have all of the details of how the payment mechanism works. We can certainly include that. And just a final one, so that now that you're going to bring that information, so it can be a little bit more in-depth on that. It would be interesting to know are some of the issues around the timing of the lift being repaired, carried out? Is that more of just delivery of the service that we've contracted to do or it's just that we have old lifts? It would be interesting to kind of differentiate. And I'm sure you have monitoring to know, right, you're supposed to do this, but you didn't do it. It took longer. So it would be good so that we just know that we're getting value for money. And Che, you are absolutely right. That is one of the regular conversations that takes place between the contractor and between the client team about their attendance. Can they restore a lift within the target timescale or is there an element of obsolescence, which really makes it impossible for them to do? Do they have to order parts? What parts can they carry? So that's something which the contract management team are forever kind of going backwards and forwards with the contractor in relation to their performance. It's a very good question, and it's one which I think we should bring back to the committee with our paper for discussion. What I will say is, as we see that renewed lift plant being installed, we should just see better performance across the board, frankly. So obsolescence is definitely a factor for them. And I think they are generally a well performing contractor, but it is a kind of regular challenge for the client. Thank you. Councillor Fubriel. Yeah, just coming back to the people moving out. I don't see we don't have good lifts. I don't see how people are supposed to move from the 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th floors with all this stuff. Or when they're moving in or moving out without using the lifts, they're not going to be carrying stuff up the stairs. Would it be an idea to suggest when we have contractors working in a block? We tend to put protection on the lifts. I know it would be a real pain with the amount of transient people who we've got coming in a lot of our blocks. But if we know someone's moving in or moving out, is there a way of... I know it would be really complicated, but I don't see how anyone is going to move out without using the lifts. I think it's a very good suggestion, Councillor, and you're absolutely right. When we carry out capital works, we install additional protection lifts to try and protect the carriages. And the same for a period after we complete new homes as people are moving in for that very reason, although we are at that point moving everybody in. So we know there's going to be a lot of volume, a lot of material moving in and out. Could we have redeployable lift protection if people notified us? Maybe on estates with concierge, I think it's something we should take a look at and consider. It's really funny, well not funny, but interesting you brought that up, because we've got a new lift, so the other lift's waiting to be done. And a neighbour come to me and I know she's having like masses of work, and I thought well if they're having kitchens and everything, should we not just cover the new lift? But there was a problem of us even putting some kind of protection on the floor because of the way we have to clean the lift. You know like even with, I call it that sort of strong plastic stuff and things, it's that as well, people pick that off as well. It can be like how then do you keep it clean, it's all sorts of other things that's in your service charges that we maintain, keeping the floor clean and lifts. Maybe it's something we could ask the TMOs with a lot of them, with their excess funds languishing in foreign accounts, to pay for themselves. Thank you. I had asked a couple of scrutiny's before about how many sub-contractors we would use for our repairs, and have they actually reduced? Are we using more in-house repairs teams, because that's costing us a lot of money. And another thing is with the safety checks and the welfare, is that working? Like we were doing our ASAP safety checks, we were also asking if there's any repairs. I'd like to know if that's started and if it's working. Okay, so I don't have all of the detail around the sub-contractor arrangements, but I can tell you broadly we deliver around 85% of the repairs directly in-house. And the elements, we are increasing on some areas what we deliver directly, so increasing void servicing by the in-house team, partly actually to respond to the work that Ian's doing in acquiring new property. It provides a kind of sustainable work for an in-house team, so we're able to grow that service efficiently. Of the remaining 50% or so, it's a mixture of allowing us to manage peaks and troughs, but we couldn't really have a permanent staff group if we can't use them full-time. And for some of the specialist activity, which requires plant usually or sometimes specialist skills or sometimes insurance, so we don't scaffold, we largely outsource roofing, we largely outsource bricklaying and brickworks and sort of structural stuff, for want of a better word. So it is a bit of a mix. Matt could prepare and Mike could prepare more detailed information on that if it's something he wanted to put into an agenda and bring back in. Thank you. Just a question just based on complaint response within stage 2. Very good. I see the numbers there, but obviously there's the overall tenant satisfaction. Do you just want to tell us a little bit more? It's a kind of mixed bag, isn't it? Our overall satisfaction rates are good. We are in the upper quarter for London and they're improving. We're just looking at our early results this year and they're continuing to improve slightly. They're not shooting up, but they're going up gradually, which is a good thing. And our complaints response departmental is also good relative to other parts of London, the upper quartile. But the number of complaints we're getting for the size of us as a landlord is higher than it should be. So there are definitely service improvement issues for us to take on board and to find and to figure out and to improve upon. The one that's very apparent and I mentioned earlier is that non-emergency timescale repairs where we're often not meeting the timescales that we are telling people we're committed to achieve. So that's something which we are taking away, doing some analysis and going to look at where we can make improvements to those. And sorry, I realise I didn't answer your other question, which was about the welfare checks being carried out. So we carried out a pilot program of that last year. It will become part of regular daily life once we complete our tenancy management restructure. And we're also looking at whether we can provide technology to those housing officers so that they might be able to order repairs on site, even just to kind of cut down time. We're not exactly sure when that will be ready. Thank you. Just one last one for me. I've noticed, obviously, we never really captured the leaseholders' satisfactions or but obviously safe place to call home. They are, you know, they are pretty much either part of or sharing shared spaces with our own tenants. So I'm just wondering, how do we sum up these numbers? Are these numbers reflective of leaseholders at all or we don't collect those data? We do collect data from leaseholders and we can provide that in the future for you if you wish. Satisfaction was 54 per cent compared to neighbouring council, which is 14 per cent. It's pretty good. We need to get better. We are launching a leaseholder forum. I think all members received information about a drop in service for leaseholders on the 24th of October between three and seven p.m. And following that, we'll be having our own independent leaseholder forum that we'll meet with on a regular basis. We do have the resident service improvement group, which has leaseholders on it, and they meet each month at the moment. Very challenging towards us in terms of the service provision. And just before this meeting, I met with some leaseholders about service improvements, suggestions that they made. So leaseholders are an important element of our work. When we do the restructure, which has started, when it's implemented, one housing officer will manage 561 properties in a patch, including leaseholders. And they will get the same service to tenants, et cetera, going forward. Thank you. I was leading you that we need to keep an eye on that. Leaseholders are also a very important part of our community, and especially they do encounter the services that we offer or share some of them. So I think it's a really piece of work, which we can't abandon them and not take them. So thank you for knowing that there's ongoing stuff there. Right. Dean, I will take yours as the last question on this. With the great work you're doing with buying more and more houses and things like that, are you getting your operations managers, more and more of them, more plumbers, more builders, more everything else? Or are you going to overstretch yourself? Because I've noticed that the repairs are down again. Are you overstretching yourselves when you're buying too many properties and you haven't got the facilities to look after all of them as quick as you'd like to? Very astute and challenging question. So I like to stretch ourselves a bit, is the honest answer. So as I mentioned before, actually, when we talk about insourcing and voids work, we have increased the size of our in-house voids team a bit because they do most of the turnaround for those properties Ian's acquiring. So to respond to that, we've got a real challenge. And I think all social landlords have this challenge at the moment that our repairs demand is going up year on year. And we've delivered more work during the last year than we had in the year preceding it. And again, for the year preceding that, there's been a growth in pressure. And that is causing us to spend more on repairs than we are budgeting for. We've also increased the amount we invest in capital. And what we'd like to do is spend more on capital than we are on repairs. And it helps make the stock more sustainable, as you know. Now, I'm making these kind of judgments in discussion with Una and particularly my property services team about how much additional resource to put into the repair service, because every pound we put into that, we're taking out the capital program in effect. So we've made some additional provision kind of temporarily across the last year to meet that additional demand, but not proportionately to the size of the demand. So we are still squeezing it quite hard in reality because we don't want to take too much out of our available money for capital investment. We've got to make a decision every year about whether we then permanently grow that repairs service activity and say this is our new baseline. We just need to accept it or whether we kind of do it and test it and hopefully keep it still within reasonable limits. So that's a judgment we're forming every single year. You're absolutely right to call it. It is a difficult balance. And this is one of the areas. So on non-emergency repairs, we can see the effect of that, that we prioritize emergency repairs always because they have the greatest impact. But you can see where the performance has just tapered off on the non-emergency, and it probably is about that kind of stretched resource, and whether we're getting the judgment quite right about the level of resource we provide to that, which will also be considered. Thank you so much. And again, thank you for the report. So I might need to move to the next agenda. That's just for noting. I will use this opportunity to say when the invite does come around about visiting those centres, I really encourage members to really make an effort for us collectively to go and so that we can see. Just on the work plan, I did have one suggestion from lights and we might want to look at agenda in the not too distant future. That is, I understand that we've been consulting over the summer on potential changes to communal heating hours, and I would really welcome an update and a discussion on that here at Scrutiny. I welcome that. I don't know when the decision is due to be going to executive on that. It's actually on its way to executive right now, so it's in the current cycle in time for this heating season, but we can certainly bring it to you for visibility awareness and for Scrutiny if you'd like to. I always would welcome that if there are, I know things have got to go to the executive, things that you would rather want the committee to look at, I would always welcome it. I think Ian does that quite well, brings quite a lot of stuff for us, so please. I think we would have liked, for example, that would have been a good one for us to at least have an oversight beforehand. But it afterwards works as well for us, and I'm sure we can always fit in. Thank you. I just want to say it's brilliant that we're buying all these properties back. That's brilliant news, and I would like, if you can't bring it to Scrutiny, but if we could get information about Wellington News. Wellington News, as it is now in the government, and it was the Ministry of Justice. If it's a direct question, yeah, it would be welcome. However, I have to note that, correct me if I'm wrong here, the new build doesn't actually sit on this committee anymore, does it? That's not new build. I'm not sure, because I don't know if it sits on this committee or if it sits on what used to be PNP, but with Wellington News, I'm happy to get a briefing for the committee about that. I'll get Karen to send you something. I was piggybacking because of the information you were requesting about. I will want clarification on this, because there's been... If you look at the terms of reference, it's not very clear, but it's now going to be considered under the Corporate Resources Economic Scrutiny Committee. It doesn't come to this committee anymore. Thank you for that. Now we know. Great, thank you so much. With that, I would like to bring this meeting to an... Yes, nine o'clock. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. [BLANK_AUDIO]