Transcript

Okay, so welcome to the meeting. My name is Councillor Paul White and I am the Chair of the Housing Overview and Scrutiny Committee. Members of the committee, I will call your name in alphabetical order. Please switch on your microphone to confirm your attendance. Councillor Austin? Here. Councillor Ayres? Here. Councillor Kishane? Here. Councillor and Mrs Graham? Here. Councillor Govindia? Present. Councillor McLeod? Here. Councillor Rigby? Here. Councillor Tiller? Here. Councillor Varafaraj? Good evening. I would also like to welcome Councillor Dickardham as the Cabinet Member for Housing and Mrs Price as Deputy Chair of the Borough Residence Forum. We have a number of officers present who will introduce themselves when they address the committee. Are there any declarations of either pecuniary or other registrable or non-registrable interests? I'll kick off first of all. I'm a member of Community Renewable Energy Wandsworth but who do deal with the council by draw no financial benefit from that relationship. Anybody else? Matthew? Yes. I'm a council tenant. Sorry. Councillor Tiller? Councillor McLeod? I'm also a council tenant. Anybody else? Councillor Kishane? I'm a council lease holder. Excellent. Any more? OK. Ah, right. OK. Yeah. OK. Yeah. Sorry. So the minutes are from the 17th of July 2024. Are there any objections to confirm in the previous minutes as a correct record? Councillor Kivinya? No, no objection to the minutes. But I just thought that before we go into the substantive agenda, I just wanted some assurance from you and the cabinet member about the Thousand Homes Programme. We used to have a report on this to this committee and after all, it's this committee's cash that's delivering it. In the council's reorganisation, it's gone off to somewhere else. And I want to be assured that we will have insight into it. We will be told what's happening and that we will have, in a sense, an upper hand on what we as a committee are commissioning. And hoping to deliver on. So I'm just hoping that you can assure us. Yeah. I can't quite work out when the change in orders of when papers were coming to various different dates on committees. I think, like you say, we don't have an affordable housing update and it would sit within that paper. So one thing, we want this to be transparent, just not just for this committee, but for the entire borough. So you will have seen on the website now there is a live tracker which has every submission, planning, dates. I think it's really fantastic and I've sent it out quite a few times. So that's a way for residents to keep almost day-to-day updates on progression of schemes. What I definitely want to get into the habit on is keeping local ward members where schemes are happening when there are changes or delays. So I know you had a visit of Lytton Grove and that's now completed, but obviously that waits contract. There was a delay there and we didn't have a kind of regular update with local council. So we're going to try and implement that going forward to give people a bit of a heads up. We're also obviously acutely aware that when the paper comes, it gives a chance for people to come and do deputations to do some political football. So we're not hiding away from that part of it, but we were worried I think last year where any mention of 1,000 homes warranted the same deputation numerous times. So we want to avoid some of that repetition, but I completely understand the need for the council to have total oversight on how schemes are progressing. And I think we've done a good job of not hiding because we're very public and open about when we put things forward and the public consultations and the like. But noted, and maybe Kay can give some update on when the affordable housing paper will come through next. So the affordable housing update paper will be coming to November committee? For the cabinet member for that reassurance, because I think that's very helpful. My own concern was raised by, in a sense, the handling of things, the day-to-day handling of it. Residents in my ward have complained about the way the Lytton Grove development has happened and how the rubbish has moved from the state onto the road. And there are paladins on Lytton Grove and it's attracting a huge amount of fly tipping. Essentially they are saying it's housing department's fault. Housing department is saying not my responsibility anymore. And of course that is the bit where I think people feel that wool is being pulled over their eyes. So I think it's important that people have an understanding where to go on the day-to-day matters. And then we as counselors have insight into how to deal with this.

Are you talking about Lytton Grove or the Platte? No, Lytton Grove. Lytton Grove, okay, that's useful because I've recently visited the Platte as well, which is also in your ward. And so on the kind of, because now that Lytton Grove is complete and keys are being handed over, the kind of day-to-day should really fall with the area housing panels. But if there are things that aren't functioning, sorry, not area housing panels, area managers. But if there are kind of design or leftover areas that the development team need to address, please, please send those through. And Joe Richardson and the team will definitely investigate. I'd like to pursue this further. I mean, the director's aware of the situation. And I think the peculiarity here is that there is some continuing issues on finishing off the work. And therefore, the Paladins can't be accommodated on site and they are accommodated on the road and the usual things happen. Just to reassure the Council of India, although it did come through to me and I explained that there has been a change. And that the major regeneration and the thousand home schemes are now part of the place department, which will report directly to the chief executive, as you know. I did, as you would expect, and as promised, take it up and had a response immediately. There are no silos emerging here. And Joe Richardson has confirmed he's aware of the problem and he's liaising with colleagues in waste to make sure it's resolved. It's a temporary arrangement, as you know, caused by the construction. Well, in as much as it relates to the Kurzveil Road development and had to be sorted. So they are aware of the issue and they will be resolving it and getting back to you personally. Yeah, Councillor Graham. Could I just follow up listening to all the discussions? Basically, what is a simplistic word is, we just want to have the overview of a thousand homes, so that we feel it's within the housing department. I'm very happy if it's in place as well. But it's housing's responsibility, actually, at the end of the day. And I just want confirmation of that as well, please. Thank you. Councillor Dickerton. Couldn't agree more. Place is specifically designed, because Lytton Grove is one we inherited. Maybe some of these issues might not have existed. Now, but place is precisely to do that, right? Places where planning, architectural design, delivery, and housing. I know you're making a face. But the aim of that is to try and make sure that Thousand Homes isn't just seen as a tenured housing delivery model, but one that is creating community spaces, designs that work for local residents. So hopefully it should increase the quality of our work. But I want this committee to be the ones that are leading and charging and over, and scrutinizing. I was going to say overviewing, but scrutinizing the plans. Okay, so can we move on to the Borough Residence Forum report? [INAUDIBLE] That's okay, Councillor Givin, yeah. So yeah, the report of the meeting held on the 25th of September 2024. And if I can remind members to give attention to this report when considering related items in tonight's agenda. So Ms. Price, are there any comments? Thank you, Chair. Just that I wish the members would take note of some of the comments that we've made. And I have received a response from the assistant director on the matters that I raised at the Borough Residence Forum. And for the business plan update, I have no further comments. But I am quite happy to answer any questions that the members may have. Thank you. Are there any questions? No, okay. So are we okay to note the report for information? Agreed. Agreed? Okay, great, okay. So item four, the housing services activity update. Mr. Werf, would you like to introduce this for us, please? Thank you, Chair, thank you, committee. So this paper is the usual update report that comes each time. It's reporting the position at the end of August. So at that time, as the report says, we'd seen a rise in temporary accommodation usage on the back of some seriously heavy demand in the first five months of the year as referenced. In July and August, we had the highest numbers in both months that we've seen in the last two years. So the pressure continues to be significant. Despite that, you will note that in terms of use of accommodation, we continue to comply with the requirement to avoid bed and breakfast. Our bed and breakfast usage is pretty stable, really, just up five. We don't have any families in bed and breakfast for over six weeks. On the letting side, so against the forecast approved by the committee and executive in July, we're actually slightly ahead of our forecast supply. It's there or thereabouts, 1% ahead. But that bodes well when you look at the detail because we've not yet counted the new supply under the 1,000 homes and other development pipelines. So that's looking quite positive. The paper talks in the executive director of finance's comments about the financial pressures. And they are covered in more detail in the paper further down the agenda. So by way of introduction, that's all I'd wish to say at this point. Chair, happy to take any questions. Okay, any questions? Council Rigby? Thank you, Chair. Relating to the temporary accommodation in Balham, could I have an update, please, on the Nightingale Square works? Yes, thank you, Councillor. So the committee will recall these works were agreed, I think, earlier this year, maybe in the last financial year. And they comprise the creation of the laundry free of charge to residents. That's been running now for approximately six months. It's running well, welcomed by the residents. No management issues or, you know, problems arising from that. So that's good. The other major piece of work was the creation of improved play facilities, lighting, landscaping and so on. And contractors are on site at the moment. And we're hoping, weather permitting, to complete those before the end of the calendar year. So it's all progressing well. Councillor Kishane. Thank you, Chair. It's encouraging to see that the council is making use of the private rental sector in meeting demands for homes. It's a precedented time for landlords in the private sector. I mean, there's got to be a lot of change over the coming years. With changes in national policy such as the ending of fixed term licenses, banning of no fault evictions, banning of bidding wars, possible increase in capital gains tax, as well as demands on getting houses above a C rating with significant consequences for landlords that may not be able to keep up with that. We could argue about the relative merits of these policies until the cows come home. It's difficult to argue that these changes will make it easier for private renters or private landlords to put properties on the market. So I'd like to know what the council is doing to make life easier for private landlords. And to ensure that this stream of properties in the private rental sector are still available to use in this way. So if I could perhaps try and answer that question initially. So you'll recall that in the June paper, there was a package of measures approved around, for example, improved financial incentives to encourage both the procurement of units for temporary accommodation, but also the letting to families nominated by us on a direct letting arrangement. So it's early days, obviously, but that is starting to bear fruit. On the wider point, the Renters' Rights Act, as it's now being called, will, I guess like any big change, poses an opportunity and a risk. So I think there is talk amongst my counterparts and professional press and so on, that we may see a spike in homelessness levels in its run up. But once it's impacted and has settled down, one should expect to see homelessness demand drop. Or at least in theory. So it's something we need to monitor. It's only at the first reading, I think, stage. And it could be taped between now and its proposed implementation, which I think is sort of spring in government talk. So it's something we will keep an eye on, obviously, because it is a big change. And we'll no doubt come back to committee with updates over the coming months. Can I just ask what contingencies are in place if we do see a significant fall in properties available in the private rental sector? Well, then, in theory, I guess, speculative, obviously, the problems that this paper describes could get worse in the short term. But our duties are statutory, so we would have to make provision and cater for that. But it is speculative, and I guess it's one of those things. It depends on what perspective you're listening to at the time as to whether it's a positive or negative or a neutral act. So we shall see. But as of the moment, there's no policy for that? Not in a capital P sense. But the council houses that were building social rent and the ones that were pushing the developers to build as well will have an impact as well on that. Mr. Worth? Well, that's correct. I mean, anything that boosts the supply of property to relieve homelessness is to be welcomed. And this paper sets out a number of measures in the detail on the letting side of the things that have previously been discussed. So, for example, you'll recall that we have set ourselves challenging targets for moving under occupiers this year. And this paper reports in the detail that we're up to pace with that. So that will be a positive step. As I mentioned, the incentives that were agreed, we're starting to deploy. We're seeing those come in. They're not reflecting these numbers yet. And, yeah, it's as ever, it's a dynamic piece of activity we're dealing with. Councillor Givinyan. Thank you. I'm just picking up -- I've got other questions of my own. Just picking up Councillor Gassane's point, perhaps the committee might find it useful in time to have some intelligent analysis of the impact on the private rented lease, private leasing pipeline to this council as a consequence of changes both locally and nationally. Because it seems to me that just over 660 families are housed in those units that come through the private sector. And if that dries up, it isn't good for them, it isn't good for the council. The emergence of the nightly rate is possibly as a result of the pressures that private landlords perceive and have opted for a different business model and similarly some landlords have moved on to creating their properties into HMOs rather than the proper leasing. And so there are different things out at play and how that impacts on our responsibilities as a council on housing people, maybe something worth looking at. And in due course for officers to do a report on that informs members of the impact of national and local changes on that supply side. I don't expect an answer now, but happy for you to cogitate over it and perhaps write to us in time. Do you want to provide an answer now? I was just going to add, chair, that probably the best place for that and the timing fits would be the July report next year because by that time the legislation would have been passed, we'd have had the guidance and no doubt there will be, I imagine, the national government will be doing an impact assessment, et cetera. We often live in completely different realities from each other and in my, and I would say the vast majority of evidence-based research on the causes of homelessness, section 21 is part of the reason why we have such a horrific homelessness and temporary accommodation crisis. So it was something that your government was going to bring forward. I understand that that didn't happen and now we are moving ahead with banning no-fault eviction. You are right that there are, and this is where I'm going to meet you halfway, is that in trying to salvage the totally horrific and I would say unfair private rental system that has developed over the last 15, 20 years, and both governments have their part to play in the rise of the private renter sector, buy-to-let, all of these things, the reality for renters is one in which many are, that lives are being constantly ruined. So I think of my age group, my peers, bouncing around one year let to one year let, 15% rent increases, no security, no protections. Now, the kind of tragedy, the commons here is that in trying to move away from that system, there will, and we see it all the time with the lobbying letters that landlords are going to sell up and move on and there's going to be a squeeze on supply. I think in Wandsworth, we're in a position different from other boroughs that Wandsworth will remain to be a very profitable place to rent. We have high demand private rental and rents continue to increase, so I'm not too worried about the financial hardship of the majority of landlords in Wandsworth. And the second issue is what do we do when faced with that moral challenge of in order to regulate, to make people's lives much better, there might be a short-term pain in the sense of the possibility of landlords leaving the market. So we have to tread that line really carefully and we're very serious about that. But I think you'd come away from this committee, from what I just heard, thinking that the private renters are somehow the problem here and that it's not the system which allows landlords currently. We just have to go to the next paper on the nightly paid accommodation system that is crippling councils up and down the country. The market model isn't working and we do need protections for tenants because to be a private renter at the moment, unless you're well off, you have a secure income, is a real nightmare. And I think we have to recognise the difficulty it's causing people. I was only seeking, in a sense, for us to understand the consequences of change and the impact on our responsibilities. And I'm not necessarily going to dispute some of your analysis of why we are here. And I'm not also trying to exonerate the private renter sector entirely. I mean, yet acknowledge that it has a huge contribution to make in assisting local authorities in meeting its homelessness needs. And there are landlords who are good and reliable and continue to provide us that. And, you know, we have, I know Mr. Werth and his team have worked with people and are satisfied, with satisfaction, worked with those people. And what I don't want is that changes drive them out from assisting the council. I'm also concerned about particularly the HMO growth. The growth of HMOs, where landlords move out of letting properties to families, whether the council tenant sponsored families or otherwise, council sponsored families or otherwise. But the growth of HMOs is not good for our neighbourhood. And it is a real business model for some private landlords. And it's not one that I particularly like or approve of. I just think that we shouldn't drive people into that cul-de-sac. But we have made our points. Can I check? I just want to add as well that obviously section 21 was taken away in Scotland and it didn't have the impact. I'm not arguing the toss around these things. I just want to be clear. Just going to the paper, in paragraph 14 and 15, I just want some understanding. The paragraph 14 ends up saying the increase in demand is kind of driven by ongoing cost of living crisis. Which is a good catch-all phrase for lots of things. But there must be aspects of cost of living other than just kind of blanket cost of living. There must be some ways in which we might have a more granular information around that paragraph. And the second is the following paragraph talks about domestic violence and domestic abuse. And then it ends by saying exclusion by family and friends and the rights of occupation are minimal. And I just want to understand, are we saying the domestic abuse and families saying we can't accommodate you anymore or friends saying you can't serve yourself any longer are in a sense one and the same thing. There must be people who say go away. I don't want you anymore. I can't look after you anymore without any abuse. I just think that that paragraph I read is saying one leads to the other and I don't think that's always the case. Thank you, Councillor. Yeah, I confirm that's not the meaning of these paragraphs. These paragraphs are attempting and your feedback is obviously welcome and noted. Just to inform the committee of what's, in headline terms, what is driving the demand. So those two reasons of homelessness which we have to monitor as required by government are showing up as significant factors and increasing factors, hence their mention. Maybe that would have been better put in two separate paragraphs. So thank you for the feedback. Any more questions? Councillor Varifaraj. Thank you, Chair. Just to pick up that point again on domestic abuse. I'd be quite interested to see the figures on how many of the homeless people presented to the council are actually women. And why I ask that is because the council's obviously got a new strategy for violence against women and girls. So if that's something we can maybe work across departments. I understand prevention is really difficult in this kind of situation. So if there's something we can maybe work. I'll happily take that away. Those numbers are very easily obtainable. With this report, do you make it a 30-page report every time? But quite happy to share that with you and copy in all other members of the committee. Sorry, Chair. One more question. Obviously I know we've spoken about the reasons. But do we have any other data available to us on obviously the cost of living is one, the domestic abuse is one, on like why we have such a high increase in homelessness. Like just to kind of understand what the reason does so we can kind of address the root causes. And then obviously we know that the pressures are going to increase. So what's the council kind of doing to budget for the future? I hope that makes sense. Yeah, it does. Thank you. These papers are really reporting activity against what is contained in the much more detailed report that comes to the June Committee. So that's where we try to put that analysis and that level of detail and context. So we do have that information. Some of it is -- so, for example, the reference to the cost of living crisis and the rise in family evictions. So if you've got -- and this is what clients tell us or the excluding parents tell us, is that with the more recently the rise in energy costs, you know, having more people in the household increases those, et cetera. So we know these are factors. Pinning them down as to precise percentages is much more difficult. But what -- and we really rely on the analysis that like, you know, the universities do from time to time, but also in the massive data set that is returned by almost every council to government every quarter and published about five months in arrears. So there's a lot of data out there to analyze. And this report is really just trying to give you in your oversight role the essential information on the trends and so on and so forth. Councillor Ayers. I have two questions. One is quite short. I'd like figures for the number of people with one child in one bedroom flat. Is that going up or down? I'll need to go away and check that, Councillor. I think this was raised a couple of committees back. Yes, I'll ask you at every meeting because it's something that bothers me. The last time I checked it was a very low number. It was in double digits. I'll, again, take that away and come back to you. Good. Thank you. I think I've got the number 27 in my head from the last time I checked. But let me update you. I'll ask you next meeting. Thank you. My other question is a bit more, well, not really complex. It's about the supply of temporary accommodation in short life properties. How long does it take from one of our flats becoming void to a relet? And in that time, how much of it is available for short life temporary accommodation? Thank you. I'll ask Mr. Crawley to comment on the void periods and so on in a moment. Okay. So the properties that we referred to in this as short life are a mixture. They are -- so there's been a longstanding policy going back maybe eight, nine years now, that we would selectively pepperpot some properties that would otherwise be let on a permanent basis for use of temporary accommodation. Pepperpot, sorry. Just dotted around, yeah, the boroughs, you know, randomly selected, yeah. And then the second element of that and the larger element, I think, or at least half of the number, is properties on the regeneration areas which are slated for demolition and rebuild. So, again, under those policies, where a block, Pettythorne House is an example, we were decanting the permanent residents, the secure tenants, those properties were then used as temporary accommodation. So a large chunk of that number, the 700, 800, are in the regeneration areas. So that's why -- that's why the numbers are -- how the numbers are made up. And on the voids. Thank you. In respect to void properties, it will vary quite widely. The first time a property is used as temporary accommodation, there's some additional works that we would do in there that we wouldn't do in your average void property. So we'd decorate all the rooms, we'd put in curtains, cooker, and some flooring, et cetera. So those voids tend to take a bit longer than your average, but then subsequently, obviously, if someone's been in there for a short time, as is often the case with a temporary accommodation property, then, you know, the void property might just need a clean and some minor repairs before it's re-let again. So it's really going to vary quite a lot depending on sort of how long the person was in the temporary accommodation property and really how well it was kind of looked after while they were there as well. So can I have some figures? I don't have figures to hand, but I can come back to you on -- with some more information on that, if that's okay. Yes, please do. Councillor Mr Graham. Thank you, Chair. I mean, on that very, very good question, because I know two empty properties that have been empty for two years. I know in Huntington Road, in West Putney, and also in my patch. And I -- as regards to temporary accommodation, why have they been empty for two years when they could be in temporary accommodation until such time as they could be, as you say, painted, rewired and things. So that's that one. Shall I give three together or just answer that one and then the other two? I can come back on that. I don't know the exact properties you're talking about. I'd have to go back and look into that. But when properties take that long to turn around, it's usually because we're looking at either very significant disability adaptation works or possibly extending the property to make a larger property, obviously, to house larger families. So perhaps if you can share the exact property addresses with me, I can look into it and come back to you with the exact reasons why it may have taken so long. It's unusual for a property to take that long. Obviously, they, generally speaking, would take weeks or just a very short number of months to turn around and re-let. Well, you know, I just hear this on the gossip, you know, why is it so, you know, taking so long. But yes, okay. The other two, Chair, it's actually paragraph 23. And it's actually for information. I mean, if you break down homelessness and temporary accommodation, I know in our administration the armed forces were very much a priority. And I just wondered on that as regards to numbers, you know, how many would be coming through as a priority as we would make it a priority. But also, I know from my experience that there are ladies and gentlemen who are 80 or whatever, very frail, and they're absolutely dying for sheltered. And I don't know whether you can call them homeless, but they're not homeless. But I know that there's a three-bedroom property, if they were found, a sheltered accommodation. I mean, so I just wondered what your view is on that and what any outcomes and what information can you give. Yes, thank you, Councillor. So on veterans, coincidentally, we had a -- I think it was a Freedom of Information Act request on this quite recently. So pleasingly, amongst -- so it's a mandatory question, which we have to ask everybody, and we do. Have you ever served in a managed armed forces because of the armed forces covenant, et cetera? We have very few veterans applying to us as homeless. Partly that's because particularly in London and through organizations like SAFA, Help for Heroes, and so on, there is actually good provision for veterans. There is a bit of a -- not an urban myth, but a bit of a misunderstanding. You often see people who are street begging saying they're ex-military, and most of the time they're not, in my experience and in others' experience. It's a nice -- it's a, you know, a thing that might elicit more sympathy. So that's on that one, very low numbers. On the older residents you mentioned, that would be captured within our underoccupation strategy. And you'll recall the team was expanded. I mentioned earlier that we're up to our increased forecast this year. Many of those underoccupiers, as we all know, might initially start with some misunderstanding about what shelter is and what it isn't. So there's a, you know, kind of a communication point there. But that's where that would normally fall. And we're doing well on those numbers against target set. We've done -- from memory, I think we -- the target this year is to achieve something like over 110 or 98 downsizing moves. And we've done 53 at the end of August. So, you know, we're kind of keeping up. Well, I -- thank you, Chair, follower. Well, I think you will know the one I brought to your attention when they are 116 on the waiting list, and when you're 82 and you're diabetic and you want to be in a sheltered accommodation. I call that priority. But I listen to what you say. Thank you. Councillor Covindia. Mr. Chair, I'm turning to Appendix 4, starting looking at the bottom. The 20 -- 41 unauthorized occupants, kind of a flavor of the reasons why they are unauthorized occupants would be helpful. I -- it's not the same as saying they're all unentitled. But just having an understanding of what are the kind of reasons why they are unauthorized would be helpful. The first box at the top which talks about running vacancies, I mean, there are some interesting figures there on there. In the case of the eastern area, you've got 101 running vacancies, of which only 37 are available for letting. A bit like Councillor Ayers' point about, you know, there are vacancies, but only a small number are available for letting. So what is the reason why eastern district is an outlier? Others are probably not as bad as that. In fact, the western region is very good. So what is the reason? And what are reasons behind particularly something like a property running being empty for six months and more waiting to be available for letting? In relation to unauthorized occupation, a number of those cases will be ones where we've identified that someone is illegally subletting. So we might have served notices on them and were in the process of applying to the court to then seek possession of -- or obtain possession of the property. And in that intervening period after we've served the notices and we've got possession, they would be referred to as an unauthorized occupant. There might be some other cases where the tenant has passed away and a relative might be in the property and we may be considering a succession application or a discretionary application for a tenancy. And in that -- again, in that intervening period, they might be referred to as an unauthorized occupant until the situation is regularized, even with them being offered a tenancy or with them being evicted if they have no entitlement to one. [inaudible] I can. Not right now, but yeah, we can come back to you on that. Yeah, of course. In respect of the void properties in Eastern Area Team, generally speaking, they have a higher number of void properties because of the York Road, Winstanley regeneration. So when obviously people move -- the new build properties are complete, often the people moving to those are people moving from the regeneration area. So that creates more void properties within that particular area. For example, when we have broad mansions, when people start to move in there later this year, that will probably create about 125 void properties specifically in Eastern Area Team. So yeah, they tend to run with a higher number, although that has gone down quite a lot over the last few months because we're back to a kind of business as usual position with regard to voids, I would say. It would be useful to have a little note so that one doesn't chase false things here. So it would be helpful to have a note that the particular problem is that. Okay. Any more questions? Councillor Kishane? I just want to expand on Councillor Varataraj's question about abuse-related homelessness. This seems like something that requires a long-term strategy and there's very little in this paper on what that long-term strategy might be. And I appreciate it. It's not exclusively the preserve of housing. It's also something that concerns the health committee on which we both sit. But that just underlines the need for a joint up approach in terms of a strategy to tackle abuse-related homelessness. So I'd like to ask a question about whether any such joined up thinking and strategy actually exists and if it doesn't, are there plans in place to put that in progress? I can answer that. I think it was June 21 that we reported to committee that we were successful in the housing department with attaining domestic abuse housing alliance accreditation. So that's an accreditation to show that you're an exemplar in the way that you deal with domestic abuse. We're coming up to being in the process of being re-accredited, so it's likely to happen later this year. And as a result of that, we've got about 20 domestic abuse champions. So that's members of frontline staff who are domestic abuse champions who've had external training from Daja on how to deal with domestic abuse so they can help other members of staff on the more complex cases. And of course, we work incredibly closely with community safety and that violence against women and girls strategy. So we do a huge amount of work in housing in relation to domestic abuse and we're always looking to improve and make adjustments where we can. That's great to hear. That's all absolutely thoroughly important and worthwhile, but is there a way of measuring the impact of those interventions on the number of people who are victims of abuse-related homelessness? Yes, so once again, as both a cause of homelessness and in other data sets, it's a mandatory question we have to ask, obviously. So the data exists. We've got various elements to the strategy. We work very closely with the community safety team. You will all be aware of the multi-agency risk assessment committee, MARAC arrangements, which is multi-agency pulled working, concentrating on those assessed as at risk of serious domestic abuse and so on. So I think we've got those arrangements in place. Obviously, part of the numbers is driven by the fact that the Domestic Abuse Act of a few years ago extended the reach of homelessness legislation to give automatic entitlement to people made homeless through domestic abuse to the council's direct assistance. So that was a big change, a big progressive change. So it's not surprising that we see these numbers build over time. So what's that contributed to is pre-that change, we would have had a lower number of single childless individuals in temporary accommodation and that's definitely increased. So I'd like to think we've got most of this covered, but we are seeing it, we are seeing a higher incidence of it because our duties are, one, based on a believing approach because we don't require somebody, rightly don't require somebody to have reported it to the police. It's not a requirement that somebody reports physical injury, it's coercion, mental abuse and so on and so forth. And so, you know, we are accommodating, we are protecting more people from that abuse. Yeah, I think we've got this, you know, I think we're well organised around that would be my short answer. Thank you. Are there any more questions? Could I ask the committee to note this report for information? Yeah, okay, good. Okay, the next paper actually goes with a gold paper which we're going to hear later on. Is it okay if we shift this paper to the gold paper because there's a little bit of synergy between paper four and paper six. So, yes, so our esteemed general public up there, hi Lisa, would not have to leave and then come back again. Is that okay? Brilliant, okay, fantastic. So on to item six. Mark. Thank you, Chair. Good evening. This report covers the financial forecast at quarter one for the general fund services that fall under the remit of this committee. The current forecast overspend stands at just under 5 million against a budget of just over 26.75 million, which is a 19% overspend. The report provides analysis of the individual service areas that fall under the committee focusing on the key area of housing services, as we discussed earlier, which is the main reason for the overspend. This is not unique to Wandsworth and is being replicated across London and indeed nationally. Appendix B provides more detailed analysis on the type and cost of the different forms of temporary accommodation that are currently in use and the main drivers for the forecast. Happy to take any questions and service directors are here to assist. Any questions on this paper? Councillor Covington. Thank you, Chair. photograph six talks about increased competition from central governments seeking to house asylum seekers. A bit of a provocative line, really. Is there any evidence that in Wandsworth is a particular problem? Is there a scale of that competition in Wandsworth greater than elsewhere? And is the competition for shortage, I mean, housing is a resource under enormous pressure for all sorts of reasons. Why identify this as a particular problem? I just find it rather provocative, really. Thanks, Councillor. It's not intended to be provocative. It's intended to reflect what my colleagues around in every London borough would say and what our experience is. So, and the numbers back it up. So, you recall that some years ago, long time ago now, responsibility for housing most people seeking sanctuary asylum in the UK was moved from local government to central government. There were dispersal programs, accommodation being found in assumed lower demand areas. That maintained itself for a long time. But now, the Home Office has, I need to check the numbers, but 10, 20, 30,000 asylum sanctuary seeking households accommodated in London. So, when you read in the press about 4 million pounds a day being spent on hotels, that is in large part or significant part in the capital. And we don't have what are called clearing hotels in the borough. We had one down in Putney that was closed back in March. But there are similar ones in southwest London. There's a large one down in Kingston. And what this does is because when you look at our homelessness numbers, and as we've reported many times, what we've seen over the last number of years is the proportion of accommodation we can find in the borough has dropped significantly. So, looking at it through the lens of just the borough, I would suggest isn't helpful because the Home Office, they don't have clearing hotels in the borough. They do have dispersal accommodations, they call it HMO type accommodation, individual properties. I don't know the numbers because getting that information is tricky, as in not possible, it's not shared. But because we are compelled to go and compete all over London for temporary accommodation, we are in competition with the Home Office because the number of people they are accommodating wasn't a feature four, five, six years ago. So, that paragraph may read as provocative, but it is based on knowledge and well established fact. I just want to comment and say that it's also, thinking about London as a whole, it's also the specific corner of the market that we would be looking to procure temporary accommodation. Just like you were saying that some, in your earlier comment about the mightily paid model coming forward, we're basically, there's a limited number of landlords that are willing to offer that type of accommodation. And there is a crossover there between what the Home Office is looking for and what councils are looking for. So, there are some London boroughs where they are struggling to house their own residents within the borough because they're being outbidded. In many ways, the bidding war crosses between governmental departments and boroughs across London. I think I was making a plea for sensitivity of language. But moving to something else, which is in paragraph 14 about sort of ways in which we will make things better. And how realistic are these ambitions here, the four bullet points about reducing, procuring more private rented, we talked about it earlier. How easy is that? Recruiting more staff, I mean, last time we talked about being able to, challenging in getting staff to the posts we established. And when they were in, keeping them on our books for long enough to make a difference was challenging. So, how realistic are these ambitions set out there? They're correctly included there as part of the toolkit, if I could use that phrase. And in most of those, we are improving performance. So, as I mentioned earlier, the package of financial incentives to procure homes is starting to pay dividends. We are getting more landlords coming to us on our leasing schemes. We are placing more people with their agreement into private rented properties that we've visited and vetted, if you like. Our case work backlogs have reduced. We are recruiting more staff. We've just gone out for eight. We've offered six. We're going back out for the other two. It is that treadmill, which is not unique to us. So, all of these things are valid at the moment. And our challenge is to, as demand is increasing, to increase proportionately the outcomes that we're delivering. And there is a bit of a lag. So, I think it's valid they're there, Councillor, and there's a short answer. I accept, Mr. Worth, that in a sense the paragraph reads like this is a problem and these are the possible solutions to the problem. What it doesn't say is that in the ways in which we previously tried, these solutions have yielded these outcomes. It doesn't say where the caseload has reduced from X to Y now. Although you've just said that we've reduced casework and what the ambition is in reducing it further. So, it's, yeah, this is a problem. These are the solutions. Pretty textbook answer. Not a problem with that. But there is not for us as a scrutiny committee sufficient material there to say you tried this before. This is the scale of success and this is the scale of ambition we'd like it. I mean, that information isn't there. And I wish that we would have that information. I mean, we could certainly take this report away and see what further information would be useful to report. I mean, all I would say is this report has always been a kind of, it's an activity report, it's an update report. It doesn't go into, you know, huge granular analysis about every point that's covered in it. If it did, it would be logistically a challenge to do that for every cycle. And it would be far, far longer. So, it's trying to give you in your overview role sufficient information to ask the right questions. Apologies if that sounds simplistic. But we're happy to take it away, see what more we can say on the things you've highlighted going forward. I was just going to say that you've got to see this is what's happening. And then later down the line will come a paper, this is what we're going to do about it. As you can tell, we're overspent, so we have to go away and try and work out what we can do to mitigate the overspending. There is a challenge here in the sense that, as Dave has outlined, we might, in fact, be in a position whereby we are reducing temporary accommodation. But in the appendices, you see that that isn't helping costs. So, the price of nightly paid is going up for the transparency of this committee. We will be going to central government and saying, look, this isn't just affecting us. This month alone, we'll spend 90 million pounds on temporary accommodation as London boroughs. This is a ludicrous waste of money that could be going into delivering the thing that we all know is more important, which is the supply of safe, secure, long-term social accommodation. So, we are 100% going to have to come back to you and say these are the measures we're taking to try and get these budgets under control. But as temporary accommodation, if nightly paid continues to increase at the rates at which it is, you could have a phenomenal pipeline of social housing and still see your budgets go up. So, it's a bit of a trap. I think it's about saying we'll control the budget by reducing the reliance on nightly accommodation. It's unrealistic ambition to have because essentially it's a demand side, which is the big problem. The fact the supply is very small and demand side is then creating a huge variety of new ways of housing people in almost dormitory situations. It's not good, but it's not an ambition that we can really deliver outcomes on. And that makes up all that. Thank you. >> Councillor Ripley. Yeah, just because this meeting is being streamed and people might watch it, I just wanted to come back on something that Councillor Govindia mentioned at the beginning of that statement. Because I want to keep us honest. So, you made a statement about that we struggle to keep hold of housing staff. And I specifically remember the churn data of 11%, because the industry I work in has an almost 40% churn rate. I remember thinking, wow, that's super low. And that just feels like personal circumstances and people actually just needing to move around, live in different places. So, I just want to keep us honest on this 11% has, I've not finished. You're going for your button. Relax, don't get worked up. Hang on. Okay. >> Councillor Ripley, can you hear me? First of all, can you apologize for that last statement? I don't need to be told by a man not to get worked up. I'm not going to chair. If Councillor Ripley wants to take this as a man woman fight, it's just simply a colleague I'm going for the button she thought I was going for. I'm not going to apologize because I don't think it's in there. Okay, don't tell me to relax. I don't appreciate that coming from a man. So yeah, I just want to make sure that we're not creating an exaggerated narrative of having a problem with retaining staff. I would like that noted. Chair, just to be real about this. I've raised this issue about creating posts several times in this committee. And each time, we've been told there's a need in order to fulfill the kind of ambitions the council has, and that's fine. We've had difficulties in recruiting to those posts. Now the scale of that difficulty, I cannot put my finger on, but we certainly in the answers offices have said that we have had difficulties in filling the posts that have been created. We've also had difficulties in retaining the staff once recruited. Again, I can't put my finger on the scale of it. All I am saying is that this ambition in this paper saying recruiting more staff will solve the problem. It seems in the past we've not actually been able to recruit sufficiently and successfully and then having done so, not so necessarily held onto staff. It doesn't matter if it's 11%. All I'm saying is then asking that more recruitment might help the problem doesn't really fill me with confidence. It may fill other members with confidence, but it doesn't fill me with confidence. Yeah, I think there are three different, well, there might be more actually, and Dave can come in. But on the staff, the program of staff hires and increasing the support for the service. The first kind of immediate priority for the health of the department was caseload. So the extra staff was to help work down the caseload. So once you can manage the caseload, and even when the caseloads are slightly managed, as you have been noted in these papers for years, the demand keeps increasing. So you're kind of treading water a little bit. Then the kind of second part is the challenging nature of the work. So it's emotionally draining. It's very difficult. You're dealing with people who are having probably the worst time in their lives ever, and you're dealing with many of them. And you're offering bad news, which is always a very difficult thing to do for a job. And then there's the increased pressures from the supply side. So the amount of chasing that you're doing to try and find the properties, internal repairs for the client themselves, the need for people to transfer because you're often putting people out. So I think it's a kind of combination of things that we all know if there was unlimited money, having lots more people doing it would probably make things easier for the people doing it and for the people who are coming to us in the need for help. We just kind of know that instinctively. We don't have that unlimited resource. I think that the question about how no department is going to work worse in this council with the revenue to capital balance that we have from having more staff. We all know that. This has always been quite a lean, mean machine of a council and we know that the structure's there. I do think the pressures that the staff run, if you visit the office. I regularly go and visit. I sometimes take clients in. There is never a day where something quite significant has not happened in that office. It's a difficult environment. And so I think part of the idea that recruiting more staff will be successful in us trying to, instead of someone on the last minute on a Friday finding nightly paid accommodation that is really high, having had the 40 minutes because it was spread to find something that was a bit cheaper, seems rational. Like you say, there will be a cutoff point. I don't think we as a council, I have no anxiety about this being a bloated department. This is a department that is working flat out. Is that fair to say, Dave? Perhaps unsurprisingly, I would agree. The thing I would also say is I'm not sure it's a necessary conflation of the number of posts created with difficulties if there are difficulties in recruiting and retaining staff. The fact is our demand has gone up very significantly over the last 10, 12 years and particularly post COVID. So it's kind of chicken and egg, isn't it? If we get more people come to us and we want to provide a reasonable service to them, you will need more people to do that. And that's the same for our neighboring boroughs, our boroughs all around London. So if every borough is looking for more staff, you're likely to get more turnover. Particularly if people want to move to be closer to home, post COVID, flexible working arrangements, et cetera. And we've said many times at this committee that these jobs were never easy. But in the last few years, and if you talk to the staff, they will tell you the level of vulnerabilities they're seeing amongst the families representing to us. If you talk to someone who's worked in the field for 10, 15 years, they will tell you it is much, much more difficult than it was. And so people will, not for hardworking, committed people, after a few years will think actually I want to change and you can't blame them. So there's lots of will, lots of parts to this, I think is what I'm saying. And I think that we'd like to pass on our thanks to the staff working in those conditions in a really bad situation that we have at the moment. So if that can be passed on, Mr. Werther. Okay, Councillor Mrs. Graham. Thanks, Chair. I mean, following on from what Councillor Gavino has said, I think basically we know that your staff work extremely hard. Having been chairman myself, working with staff going around council estates and issues like that. And there are challenges, of course. I think where we would possibly be coming from, how are you going to be recruiting staff? What is the strategy so that we can be sharing your journey rather than having this silly conversation when we know more staff are needed for the actual case work that you're coming across? So that is a comment. But my question is about, I know the government's bringing in around the third amount of money coming to the boroughs, and as regards to, I think, buying of properties or stuff like that. And I'm just wondering, are you looking at buying properties with government money which is coming through with grants, creating all sorts of grants? Mr. Werther. Thank you, Councillor. We have been allocated, I think, 16 million under the local authority housing fund, which is for purchase of properties. That's part of the HRA budget, which will be covered in the next report. Kind of board figure? 56, I guess. Thank you. properties. And actually on that information, where would you be considered buying it? Outside the borough, or would it have to be inside the borough? I mean, decisions about what properties are going to be purchased will fall to the VAMS department, VAMS team, Value and Asset Management team, which falls under place these days. So they're obviously experts in terms of identifying properties and negotiating the price. I mean, predominantly, I think they're looking for properties on our estates. On estates, okay, thanks for the question. Thank you, any more questions? Okay, can I ask the committee to note the report for information? Thanks for the question. I mean, we've had some exchanges at the time, and I did also with Councillor Covington. I suspect that this issue will feature, I'm sure, at the council meeting in terms of the broader response. Just to reassure you that in terms of the housing officer's response with our own traveler's site, we did get down. We did communicate with them. We did open up a rest center on the Henry Prince Estate. And we also booked three nights worth of temporary accommodation in the hotel in case any of them actually needed or wanted to be rehoused. As it happened, none of them took that offer up. It was a distressing time for the whole community around Ilsfield, I think, because the smoke blew across from one borough to another. And at times, it was genuinely quite frightening to behold. There's been a big review around the fire brigade's involvement. Staff were stood down on the Sunday evening by the fire brigade. They're responsible for any large-scale potential evacuation, obviously. That wouldn't be something that a council would embark on unilaterally. But we did make provision in recognition of the fact that the traveler's site in particular was vulnerable to it. And that was there for them in the circumstances. It must be said as well that the traveler's site is right next to, you know, there's been big problems in the past over a long period of time. I mean, this thankfully was fairly short, but they've had problems over a number of years. And they've had a real difficulty getting that addressed by the environment agency. Graham's really talking about the budgetary impact of it rather than the immediate response. And were there any reasons for looking at the budget differently? So can we ask committee to note the report for information? Yeah, okay, good. Okay, so we're on to item number seven, which is the HRA business plan update. Mr. Davis? Thank you, Chair. This report provides an update of the housing revenue account business plan, which is presented to the housing committee each year, and looks at future income and expenditure projections relating to the council's housing stock. The update starts with the previous HRA business plan, which was approved by committee in January 2024, when rents and budgets were last set and the overall budget or framework was last approved. This has now been updated for all approved changes since then, which includes the final end of year position for 23-24, approved budget changes, and latest forecasts of income and expenditure. The report recommends new HRA capital budget variations totaling $8.25 million, which is set out in table 16 of the covering report, and resets the cash flows between years of the entire capital program. The total investment now stands at 563 million over the next four years, which is shown in detail in appendix A. The report sets out how this investment is proposed to be financed, which is mainly a mix of reserves and borrowing, but with now a significant reliance on grant funding. The report then sets out the revenue projections within the business plan and looks at the various risks and financial pressures. Finally, the report focuses on reserve projections for future years. The graphs show that balances are expected to drop over the next ten years when more borrowing is required to finance the capital expenditure of new delivery of development, and then that levels remain relatively stable over the remainder of the business plan term. Overall, this report confirms that based on the latest estimates, the Council's housing business remains viable in the short, medium, and over the long term, but does highlight the continued risks and financial pressures, which will require a continued focus to ensure its long-term viability. And I'm happy to take questions. Thank you, Ms. Davies. Any questions, please? Councillor Givindja. The electric, the voids and the electric rewires, just think of a handle on this. We had 700 voids. They've increased to 1,072 and expected to go to 1,360, which is kind of doubling the 700 figure. So, firstly, is 2 million additional sum enough? What does the 2 million then, in a sense, what's the overall budget for electric rewires after the 2 million added to it? And are we talking about the void property needing just electrical rewiring? Is there other works that will be needed to the void property so that it can be available for letting? So, why electric rewiring being singled out are not other works? I mean, I just need to try and understand what's what here. So, the 2 million is the total budget for the electrical rewires. So, it's not an additional sum? Sorry, Councillor Givindja, can you turn your mic off, please? Oh, sorry. It's an additional sum, total additional, yeah. So, we were expecting possibly nearly 1,400 voids to be completed this year, but it is very difficult to predict the exact number. That figure, I think, is based on the number that we've completed so far already this financial year. And since this paper is written, the number of new voids coming in has slowed fairly significantly. So, we may well come in at a lower number than that at the end of the year. So, we've completed fewer voids. And if that's the case, then I'd expect there to be a corresponding reduction in the number of rewires required and the amount that we'd spend on that. That was, in a sense, apart from, say, the property becomes a void, electric rewiring gets done, that's quite right to do when the property is empty. What else needs to be done to that property as well? And that doesn't seem to feature here. Is it just electric rewiring will be sufficient to bring that into letting stock? No, the void rewire would be part of a suite of normal void works, I suppose, that could include decorating new kitchens and bathrooms. And that will vary depending on what the condition of the void property is when it becomes vacant. The void rewire is usually prompted by an electrical test being undertaken by the void contractor. And then if it fails that test, that will then often prompt a rewire being required. So, it will vary really from property to property as to whether a rewire is required and then also what additional associated works might need to be undertaken to return the property to a relatable condition. Well, that kind of raises this kind of issue about safety of rewiring. I mean, if only when a property is void that the electrical certificate reveals the need to rewire, does it suggest that the property would fail that test when it's occupied but only that failure becomes only visible when the property becomes empty? Not necessarily. Sometimes it relates to just the age of the electrical system in place and the recommendation is for it to be rewired, you know, while the property is vacant as a sort of opportune time to do it. And obviously, as you say, to make sure it's safe for the incoming tenants. We do have a program of electrical testing going on in our talented properties to make sure that they will have a valid electrical inspection certificate for the past five years. So, that will pick up on any remedial works that might be required in our talented stock while residents are still living there. Which is in the summary box on page 33 in the penultimate paragraph, it talks about unquantified cost of decarbonization and fire safety, creating a pressure on the budgets, I suppose. I mean, presumably the fire safety is an absolute priority, it's not a competition with that thing and presumably this is something that we will get more detailed report in due course when we deal with the Grenfell report. Very much so, yeah. Councillor Rigby. Couple of questions, the first one is on page 16 of 19, it's the borough wide estate bin storage improvements, which I really welcome. And I'd love to hear some more about what kind of developments, what kind of improvements would be coming through. And then the second one is on the playground refurbishment, I'm really pleased to see so much money being put against play. And I was wondering if the play, some of the improvements were for the Henry Prince Estate after being a Councillor there for four years. One of the things that I know the residents really would have loved to have seen change is whoever designed it thought it'd be a good idea to have one play item in a pen. So if you want, you could all watch one child play with one item and then you have to move through the car park to the next play pen. And I know it was something that they'd all say it would be just great if we just had one playground, yeah, if that was included in that or it could be in the future. Thank you. So on the refuse bin enclosures, refuse and recycling bin enclosures, we had a paper come to committee, I think it was towards the end of last year. Where we had approval for capital spend across nine priority estates that we chose. A bit of a fair spread across the borough but also estates that we felt needed additional improvement works to help improve the recycling rates but also to improve the sort of aesthetics of them. So enclosing the recycling and refuse bin enclosures obviously improves the look. We also think it reduces fly tipping in those areas and the side loads that you often see beside them. So we've gone through the procurement process now. We have a contractor lined up. We've placed orders for bins. So far some of the Alton and the Lennox estates which are two of the priority estates and we're in the process of, we have scoped out I think the Donington and Rollo and the Winstanney and York Road estates as well. So you'll start to see these bin enclosures appear on those estates over the next few months and then on the rest of the priority estates as well. And our intention is to bring another paper forward probably sometime next year to look at an additional ten estates to roll those improvements out on. So you'll start seeing those bin enclosures sort of popping up across the borough. So your second question about play improvements. Our estate services team are responsible for looking after and maintaining the play areas on our housing estates. And they undertook an audit of all our play areas towards the end of last year and basically prioritized which ones were most in need of improvement. I can't remember off hand I must say whether the Henry Print is on there but I do understand the situation you're talking about. It is a sort of unusual arrangement isn't it with lots of small play areas. So what I would say at the moment is that the budget that's allocated would not go far across all of the playgrounds that we currently have. So we're looking at possibly other things such as NCIL funding to see whether we can use some of that on our housing estates to improve play areas. And I'll obviously take away your comments about the Henry Prints and we can see what improvements we can actually implement there. Thank you because there is that big development happening next door so it'd be brilliant if some of the money from the developers could go to us. Because there is a playground at the back of the Henry Prints but it's also nice for people to be able to look out and see their kids playing at the front. So yeah I appreciate that, thanks. Any more questions? Councillor Ayers. Quick question about the windows in the Alton estate. What material are we renewing the windows in? I believe it's going to be slimline UPVC but I will double check that and come back to you. I mean I take it, is this part of the listed Alton estate? It is, yes. But they can't be UPVC then. Sorry. Like I say I'll have to check that but I think there's more to do with the design of the material as to what they're going back in. Okay, can you let me know? I can. Thank you. As well on the material as well I think we need a definitive answer on that as well. Councillor Kishane. I suppose it's less of a question but really just drawing out a couple of interesting sentences in the conclusion on page 37. The report highlights the external challenges faced with higher levels of inflation and increasing interest rates on the borrowing required to finance the council's development plans. The business plan continues to be based on a raft of assumptions which if varied can have a significant effect on available resources. I suppose one way of looking at that is as a council we're being realistic about the economic landscape. Another way of looking at it is that's basically saying that we are taking a bit of a gamble with this and we don't know if this business plan will ultimately be viable. And it's interesting that that's sort of hidden away in the conclusion. What I would like to see is those risks being acknowledged perhaps more explicitly in the paper as a whole. I think that would be a lot more transparent. I think that would be a lot fairer on residents as well. It seems that there is a lot of risk entailed in this business plan and I think the risk deserves a little bit more than a couple of sentences in the conclusion. Thank you. As you can imagine the business plan is a huge spreadsheet just to drill down into the detail of it. And obviously as part of what we do is we flex the assumptions within it just to see what the impact would be over a 30-year period. Now something like, I don't know if we've seen before, forgoing a rent increase in year one has a massive impact on income levels for the duration of the plan. So that's why we have to say it's built on a raft of assumptions and that's why we... It's also to do with the borrowing as well. It's a whole multitude of things. I mean inflation, borrowing, rent increases, expenditure, rent arrears. There's so many different levers within the business plan that can individually have an impact. And what we're trying to do is put together a projection, a prudent projection that's viable. And let's be fair, beyond three years it's a lot of guesswork in it anyway in terms of the inflation projections. All we can really use is treasury estimates, Bank of England estimates on interest rates. They're the experts and that's what we rely on as part of our ongoing forward-looking financial planning. But yeah, as you get further away from year one, the deviation on this could be significant either way. What we present is a viable position and obviously every year we move on a year. We review, take stock of the position and review it for the next 30 years. So it's an iterative process. I wouldn't want to be here in 30 years time and be judged on whether I've got the imbalance right or not. Because it could be anywhere based on current assumptions, the raft of assumptions we use within the business plan. That's the position we're presenting. Councillor Dickerson. Yeah, I mean I was going to say that obviously there are the things that are unknown that happen, clouding crises and those kinds of things. In terms of the borrowing, the borrowing is actually one of the most known and measurable things because we'll borrow a fixed interest rate. So we can actually factor that in fairly certainly for the long term. It's the external things that come up that damage us. And I mean if you look at the appendices, page 75 and page 74. I mean you will see that the ones with housing revenue account is given the ambitions and given the policies of the current administration. Which are ambitious and progressive and involve taking out loans. We have one of the healthiest housing revenue accounts in the country. I mean there is, if you compare to other borrowers, we're in a really, really fortunate position now. And aren't we making good use of it? And the papers we've just had previously have all been showing the general fund cost of not delivering the homes that take the pressure off of temporary accommodation. And the borrowing is in many ways how we are funding that. And we never go above 10% on interest repayment, which is phenomenal. In terms of the percentage of the overall budget, I saw Mr. Austin just flick his head in nervousness. So every time I see these papers, there is a kind of certainty that we know that we have a really, really healthy financially secure position in the housing revenue account. And as I've said many times, this borrowing will end up generating income for the council to continue its repairs and its program of works. So I know where I think this conversation is about to head. But I just wanted to make that very clear because I think the previous papers show that this is precisely the time. And for those of you who are a bit newer to the council, I was arguing that we should do the borrowing prior to interest rates rising. And I feel like if the administration had listened to me, we would have got one hell of a deal on the public works board loan. And we'd all be very happy right now. So that's something to reflect on, I'd say. I think the thing is as well that because of the rent repayment and that, it's all factored in and all repayable. This isn't like thorough council, for instance, who borrowed, who were bused basically on a punt. This isn't a punt. This is underlaid with income coming in after the homes are built. So it's a much more solid, yeah, it's not speculative. It's a much more solid ground than the other boroughs. [BLANKAUDIO] Well, I think if you're building a shopping center or you're buying some dodgy soda panels as far as it did, then I think then you're going to put yourself in a much higher predicament than we're looking at at the moment. Not defending anyone or castigating anyone, just making an observation that it is always a claim. That the borrower will say, I know I can pay it back. I don't think the demand for council housing in Wandsworth is going to collapse to the point at which we can't collect rent. I just have to put that on record to be a minute. Well, to start this debate, and I'm saying the difficulty is going to be about building at the scale at which you've set yourself the ambition. Because the failure to build will effectively be one of the risks that the officers will deal with. And as figures show, the GLA has not been able to perform according to their promises. And there's a real risk that this council too may fail to deliver according to its ambitions. But it's a reality. Ravi, what's the biggest challenge? What's the biggest challenge for me delivering council homes over the next four years on the sites that we've chosen? Well, get your conversation with people right. I'm just saying, Ravi, we want to deliver. You know we want to deliver. We're not about a council that is against delivery. Getting your conversation with the people in whose neighborhoods you want to build right is perhaps your biggest challenge. It's quite challenging when there are leaflets with a giant tower block that we haven't even consulted on being delivered through doors. That's because you haven't spoken with them. Can I break this conversation? I'm just going to come in. If the leaflet goes in before we've even had the public consultation or motions are being brought forward before we've even had the public consultation, it makes me think that there's not a good faith, genuine conversation about the delivery of council housing. But I know that you might be different from the rest of your group on this, so I'm going to leave it there. New leadership and new condition. And everyone's happy. We want to build council homes. Great. Okay, Councilor Mr. Graham. Thank you, Chairman. Going back to the conclusion for Councilor Zane's question, I'm looking at housing stock alongside the council's current development and regeneration plans. Having experienced that awful fire, and in a very practical, pragmatic way, and having not read but read as much as I can the Glenfield government report on housing of all the weaknesses or whatever which created this dreadful fire so long ago. I'm looking at how in housing will you proceed re-applications tied into the potential new bills and regeneration. When you think of the local plan and other bodies which will have to be put in place, and the changes that will have to be put in place to actually tie in with the regulations. Are we going to bring a report later? Yes. Yeah, on Glenfield. So we probably park that until then. So to November committee, we'll bring a report on the most recent Grenfell inquiry report and the implications. And we can include something on the implications for the homes for ones with program as well. Thank you. Thank you very much. Any more questions? Councilor Vera Faraj. Thank you. I just have a question on the cost of decarbonization. Has the council ever received adequate funds to carry out the decarbonization work? For example, like government grants or anything that could be entitled to? We have bid for some government grants. But what I would say about the government grants is they only ever pay for a small percentage. So normally we've got to then set aside budget to pay for the other part of that, normally 75% of it. But we are in the process of entering into a consortium bid with other London councils for the next round of social housing decarbonization fund. So we're hoping to be successful in that and we've got a few hundred properties in that bid. Fabulous. Any more questions? Okay, can I ask that we support the two recommendations in this paper? Yep, okay, fantastic. Okay, so now we do have a clear gallery, but we have to- [INAUDIBLE] Yeah, yeah, yeah. [INAUDIBLE] Yes, you have, yeah. [INAUDIBLE] Yeah, no, indeed. And we're very sorry to see you go, Marlene, but we're going to have to- And I just want to let the committee know that Marlene's been representing us at Arch all day at the Tenants Conference, so much appreciated. Thank you very much. [INAUDIBLE] Can I ask that we just take a very, very short break at that particular point as well? The Chair wants another comfort break, unfortunately, so I'm going to have to go. Councillor Givin, are you all okay? Oh, of course, Marlene. Are you okay? Yeah, okay. We're not in private session, yeah. Yes, yeah, no, indeed. So if we can reconvene, please. Okay, now that the Chair has been indulged. Okay, so should we take questions on this paper on non-commercial questions? Or should we just go straight into the gold paper? [INAUDIBLE] Straight into the gold paper, okay. [INAUDIBLE] Okay, I've got to propose this then. Under section 108 in brackets 4 of the Local Government Act 1972, members of the public and press be excluded from the meeting whilst item 17 is being. Sorry, it's not 17, is it? Five. >> Five, sorry. Item five is being considered because it is likely that exempt information as described in paragraph three of part one of the schedule 12A to the act would be disclosed to them if they were present. And it is considered that in all the circumstances of case, the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest of disclosing the information. Okay, do I have a second, though? Councilor Rigby, thank you. Okay. Agreed. Is it agreed? Sorry, I'm just saying, yeah, yeah. Okay, fantastic. And we have to, Okay, we're back now in open session. So we have to vote on this. So are we all in favor? Yes. Yep, okay, fantastic, okay. So we've just got a little bit of any other business at the end of the meeting, so. Thank you. I just wanted to update the committee on the fact that the regulator for social housing has been in contact as we suspected they would be at some point. And we are now just starting to commence their inspection. So they're coming in to inspect our services to the talented units that we manage across all of our housing stock. Many of you will be aware that inspections have been taking place across London and other parts of the country. And we have been preparing for this. Obviously, the speed of preparation has changed slightly because they're going to be probably calling in for their two days towards the mid or end of November. There's been scoping documents exchanged. We've met the regulator twice with my team. And we are working hard to ensure that we can give them all the information that they need. They will want to come to a housing committee. They'll want to attend a borough residence forum. And there's a whole range of pretty much everything that we do that they're looking for compliance, fire safety information, building safety information across everything that we basically do currently. So full on time for the department. I mean, I'm confident that we are as well prepared as we can be for it. Quite stressful, obviously, because there's loads of stuff that we need to do. There will be a rating probably at the end of this year or beginning of next year that will range from a C4, which is the lowest, to a C1 that no one's got yet. And quite a lot of the large landlords have been coming out with C3s almost consistently. A lot of the large landlords, both councils and RSLs. So we would be optimistic that we will do- [INAUDIBLE] I would like to say we're aiming for C1, but that may be over optimistic. We will see. [INAUDIBLE] No grading. This is the first time it's happened since it's been introduced with the new social housing regulator effectively. So yeah, we will keep you briefed in due course, without a doubt. And finally, for me, just to say, I'm going to be away for a relatively short period of time, because I've had the privilege of being asked to cover the interim chief executive's role, whilst the new chief executive is recruited, which will take a certain period of time. So just to let you know that we have arrangements in place to ensure that the housing department is in safe hands. And so Mr. Worth, who is at the end of the room, will be acting as the interim executive director of housing. And Kay Willman, who you're all very familiar with, will be assisting Dave in that as his deputy. So I'm very confident that the committee and the service and the department is in safe hands until my return. And I just wanted you to kind of hear that from me, and I will look forward to coming back to my full first love as soon as I can. Good luck to you all. Yeah, yeah, I think on behalf of the committee, good luck, Mr. Riley, and well done to be considered in that way. Thank you. Thank you, any other business? Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. [BLANKAUDIO]