Transcript

Good evening everyone, welcome to the meeting of the Homestead Community Screening Committee. I'm Councillor Jason Jackson, I will be chairing tonight's meeting. Please note we are not expecting a fire alarm test this evening, so if the alarm is sounded, please do evacuate the building. I think we had one last week, or this week. There was some smoke alarm. So do please evacuate the building if the alarm does go off. This meeting is being broadcast live in the Council website, however members of the public are unable to participate online. Please do turn your microphone on when speaking, and remember to turn it off when you're finished. To make sure that you can be heard clearly in the room, please speak clearly and directly into your microphone. I will start by asking my fellow members of the committee to introduce themselves, starting from my right. Councillor Hannah McHugh, Vice-Chair of the Committee. Councillor Toby North, St. Peter's and Canalside Ward. Councillor McGill, Gunn, Tollerton Ward. Councillor Michael Sullivan, Binsbury Park Ward. Councillor Sheila Chapman, I'm the Executive Member for Equalities, Communities and Inclusion, here to speak to the first item. Raz Chan, I'm the Corporate Director for Community Strategy and Change, here for the Community Centre review item. I'm Lorna Hughes, Interim Assistant Director for Equalities, Culture, Heritage and Community partnerships, for the first item. Good evening, Stephen Kaplan, Interim Director of New Homes, Corporate Landlord Services, for the first Community Centre item. Councillor Elkaichenga Ono, Councillor Flea-Cockwood. Dean Donaghey, Co-op 2. Can the officers there introduce themselves? Hi everybody, Matt West, Director of Housing and Property Services. Good evening everyone, my name is Ian Swift, Director of Housing Operations. Good evening everyone, Councillor Ono, Halloran, Executive Member for Homes and Neighbourhoods. Good evening everyone, Jie Jiang, Acting Corporate Director for Homes and Neighbourhoods. Good evening, Sinem Yannick, Assistant Director of Housing Management. Good evening everyone, Mike Hall, Assistant Director of Property Services. Thank you. We do have, I believe, apologies for Councillor Phil Grant. Yes, and Rose. And Rose as well. Was there any substitute for? No. Okay. Any declaration of interest? Great. Just looking at the previous minutes. Chair, we've got a correction to the previous minutes. Yeah, Chair, page 20, sorry, page 21, item 20, midway down the bullet points, it reports that the Council has responsibility for three community centres, but they are named incorrectly. We'd like to change that to Andover, Vibas and Jean Stokes, please. Thank you. Sorry, Chair, there is just one slight additional amendment requested. The following bullet point says there are a further 48 community centres, but 48 is the total number. So if you want to report as a further, it should be a further 45. Thank you. Thank you. Councillor Hanamagu. Thanks. Just to note that I was the Vice Chair on the 26th of September at the top, and also it would be helpful, I think, if we could separate out Councillors from co-optees, just because we have some names listed as Councillors when it should be co-optees. But otherwise, great, thanks. Thank you. Any other thing from the minutes? With those corrections to be made, are we happy to agree on that? Great, thank you. Okay. I don't have any report. I'm just looking forward to going into our scrutiny, because we've been waiting a little bit, so there's no direct report from me. I think the only part is we're expecting to have some report here around libraries, so there's going to be some conversations. So members should be – it is a new area that comes under the Humsum community, so we're still trying to work out how that report would look like. And I will feed back to members accordingly when we've had conversation with officers on how that report – I think that's in my agenda for tomorrow. But for now, just noting for members that libraries does come under the Humsum community in terms of report to us. Libraries used to come under the Environment and Regeneration Committee, so why? I'm just doing the Lord's work. I've been told that's why I have to take it on, so I can't really recall the reason why it's on here. The reason why it's on our partner, but it is part of Humsum community. I don't know if the exec member is aware of this. Are you aware of this? I wasn't aware of any – it falls within my portfolio, yes, but I wasn't aware that you'd asked for any reports, but I'm happy to take that forward if you let me. Yes, I think it would be due diligence for us to at least have this report as requested of us. But I think the very first report will be setting the expectation of what members would want. So if members really want to have what you think you should be getting from regarding the libraries, if you can drop me an email, then that can form the conversation of expectation of the report itself. Are we happy with that? Yeah. Okay. That was all my report. At least that was a short one. Right. Let's go straight into our men's scrutiny review, which is all about East Linton community centres. I think we have a presentation. Over to you. Who's going to present? Thanks, Chair. Yes, what I'm going to do, if it's fine with you, is I'll say just a few words of introduction. But then, because you've had the papers and they're pretty self-explanatory, I wasn't proposing to click through them on the screen, but rather to say a few words and then take your questions, comments, thoughts, because hopefully you've all had a chance. I actually was expecting the offices to do the presentation. Usually it's the executive member who comes to be scrutinised. Okay. With feedback, I think knowing we've got Lorna here and we've got the directory, I still want them to sort of go through, and then we're more than happy having you here, and then we can ask the questions accordingly. Absolutely. So that's why we're all here, so that hopefully between us we will have the answers to whatever questions you might have. But I'm just mindful that you've probably got limited time and we don't need to go through what you – No, knowing that is the first one, I would like a presentation. So I take it from anyone can present, but I would like a presentation. All right. Well, I'll take off then with a few words. So I guess just to contextualise what you've got in front of you and on the screen, and just to kind of outline what our vision is in this area, which is that we have a thriving network of community spaces across the borough, right? That's what we want. We want that network to be buildings that are in good condition, and we want them to be well utilised by all members of our communities, and that's important, all members of our communities. So what steps are we taking to realise that vision? The first step you'll understand is that we need to understand what assets do we have, and actually that's been a while to get to that point. We need to know what assets we have right now, we need to know what state they're in, we need to know how well they're being used, and we need to know by whom, because that would also tell us, when we know who's using them, that will tell us who's not using them, which communities are not using those spaces. That will be kind of the first step. The second step will be what are our residents telling us that they want from our community spaces, and this is something I alluded to last time. Community centres have been operating in quite a traditional way for many decades, obviously on our estates, and they were built many, many decades ago, and that's how they've been functioning. What we need to do is engage with our residents, with our communities, talk to them and hear from them what they want from the spaces, how they want to use them, where they need to be, and where the gaps in the provision are. So the purpose of this evening was to bring part of the step one to you, which is a snapshot, or an overview rather, of what we currently have. So we can click through the slides if that's what you would like. I'll just make one sort of further general comment, which I think that you'll understand that that sort of work of engagement with communities and understanding what people want and need is really important, and I feel like there's really scope for, you know, obviously officers and the council will be doing consultation, but I think there's real scope for members of this committee to kind of help facilitate that and be a part of that, you know, to the extent you wish to do that. So those were the only comments I was going to make, and I was then going to move to questions, but if you want we can, if I've got a clicker, which I did have, we can click through the slides. Is that helpful? So, look, that gives you the background and context, which I just will leave you to read, but that's, you know, broadly, we want everyone to thrive. That means active, useful, really nicely maintained, sustainable community spaces. That's what we're trying to get to, okay. I don't know why that's happening, Chair. Thank you. If you could turn your mic off for a second, let me just, thank you. I think, I'm pretty sure members have had a read on this, and you're right, we are, but I kind of want to set the mood of how we think the conversation could go. We know with this that there are some forward thinking or forward information being put in front of us, which kind of tells us where the direction, but I think for us it's a scrutiny. We kind of want to be able to understand certain things in order for us to feed positively, and some of the information that is being presented to us now are new. I don't know if other members had a privilege of having access to such information before, so it's new. So I kind of wanted a little bit more, a soft introduction, because it's an ongoing conversation. I don't want to jump ahead in terms of what could happen ahead. We want to understand the background of how things are currently in order for us to be able to inform, be able to have sort of a long-term conversation. So at this point, hence why I kind of wanted a presentation, because there are some numbers here. I can see maps that shows where community centers are. I wanted the committee to be able to have that sort of background information. I know we've got it. That way we're able to have the conversation. I don't know if I'm kind of setting the tone right. That's really what I want. So if we can start there again, that would be ideal. So I'm still happy to give the members of the offices or the exec member ten minutes to do that again, because I'm sure there might be some things you might say verbally that might not be on the PowerPoint slide itself, that would be useful for us to know. With that, I will take members' committee to ask questions so we can go further, starting with Councillor Hanamaki. Thanks. That was helpful background information. Appreciate it. So I think that this document is really strong on the review side, and I felt that coming through what you were saying, Councillor Chapman. I think it's good to have a sense of how we're going to assess our existing community centers. What I would like to hear a bit more about is the vision of where we're going to. You've said we need this to be community led, and I think that's important. Do we have some examples of best practice? Do we have some community center models in mind that we're also able to look at, whether in other boroughs or our own, to see what works well? And a second question, but related. In particular, I think what's going to be very challenging for us is how many of our community centers are not managed by the Council. So I'm concerned what sort of oversight we have, and in particular, looking at the sustainability of funding. So I'd just be interested to hear your reflections on what are some of the best funding models, how they stand up, particularly for these that we don't manage ourselves, and if you have a way of giving some best practice. Thanks. I'll let officers come in on the best practice, and maybe we've seen in other boroughs. I will just sort of say that in terms of where we are in the process, we're at the beginning of it, right? So those reviews of the state of the building and the photographs of them and who's using them and how much is it costing the housing revenue account to pay for the heating and who else would like to get in but can't get in, that's all being done sort of as we speak. So certainly we can talk about, we've got our directly managed centers, three of them, which are sort of you've got more information in the pack. We've also got those that are run by our VCS partners, so that would be through the OptiPUS network. So we've certainly got good and clear oversight on how they're managed. Some of the other ones, they're all quite bespoke. Some of them are TRA managed and led. Some of them, officers are in the process of getting to the bottom of how they are managed. Some of them are really honestly not being managed. They're being used on an ad hoc basis and somebody on an estate somewhere has the keys. So all of these things are being unpicked. Obviously the ones we directly manage, we have very clear information on that we can already provide. Same with the OptiPUS ones, the others, that's where we're getting to. But I might invite officers to speak to your other question, which was around methods of consultation and how we're going to approach that. Particularly where they're not managed by us, what kind of models of funding there are available and if we have some best practice in mind and how we're going to assess the sustainability of that part of the management. Thank you for the complex question, Councillor. You can imagine community centres, first and foremost, they meet local need. So we can't necessarily do a direct match. We can look at our neighbours and we have seen some really well-functioning community facilities in other boroughs such as in Euham or over in Barking and Dagenham. But there are so many variables involved in that depending on community need, depending on budget available, depending on the type of facility and management that is available. So it's difficult to find a direct comparison at this early stage where we haven't fully scoped out what our need and vision is for the future. So what I would say is probably in the new year we would be able to come back to the committee with more information on comparative models that align to the vision that we're exploring through this review. Thank you and I think absolutely happy to wait until we're at the appropriate phase of the review. I just want to emphasise that having alternative models will help us have a sense of what's possible and what's out there. We're at that moment but it's heavily weighted at this time towards what we have and that brings a bit of a status quo bias and I hope we'll go past it, but I'll look forward to that in January. Okay, I'm happy to take questions from other members. Thanks. The papers note the extreme difference in management arrangements across different community centres in the borough. I appreciate that that could be a strength in some ways because it could be really innovative examples of work that's going on but it also could be a risk from a governance perspective. Are we taking a really long, hard look at governance of each of these facilities as part of the review and will we be trying to set really high standards for governance of these spaces given that they are community spaces but if they're underutilised, whoever's managing them, they might not be serving the community as best we need. And then I've got a second question point around impact and do we have a good understanding of the numbers of people these centres are serving and if we don't, can we make sure that's part of the review, can we give these facilities a toolkit in the future so that we understand what parts of the community they're serving, how many residents they're supporting through their activities and make sure we've got really robust and standardised measures on that so we can be in a better place moving forward. Yeah, thanks Councillor, I think that's exactly right. So on your first point, the state of the building and the management, that's really important because these are our assets and so if there is some kind of accident or incident that takes place in any of those buildings, we are liable for that. So how they are being managed, who has access, how are people getting access, at what times of day, with what supervision, what safeguarding is going on, that's very much part of the review. And then you also asked about how these assets are being utilised and I can say, I haven't been like officers on the cold face of doing the reviews but in my own ward I can say that some arrangements are very hard to get to the bottom of, it will be an individual or a family who hold the keys, there is no online booking system so people have to make phone calls and that means you need to know who to call so the people who have got access to the community centre are very limited to the individuals who perhaps know the keyholder. Similarly, access to these buildings is, you know, there is no key access so you are dependent on someone to be present to kind of let you in. All of these I mentioned to say are kind of barriers to fall and inclusive access to the site so some of them have been very much used by a very small section of let's say an estate and others, not that there has been sort of intentional gate keeping but it has operated that way so very much an objective of the review is to get to the bottom of that and to look in other boroughs and to see models that enable you to allow much wider access where you don't always need a caretaker to let you in, where you can book and pay online because that's another thing, it's been difficult to see how payments are being made for bookings and so on and what charges are being made and how they are being arrived at so that has been opaque in some of the ones that are non-council or VCS owned. The other thing I think you said was around, please just remind me about impact. Well, governance standards but then also how are we measuring impact and can we do so in a more consistent way across these facilities in the future? You can take the hard measure of this is how many hours there are in a day and this is how much of that is being used for regular groups or events or parties or bookings so you can see broadly which are being utilised well, which are not being utilised at all and I've had one in my own ward that closed for the whole summer so just in terms of efficiently utilising an asset you can see and obviously you can compare that to how much is it costing us to pay for, heat, maintain, paint, etc that building but the other piece of work around which I mentioned at the beginning, what we don't fully understand yet is what is the local need and so that consultation work is needed on a sort of locality basis because as is clear from the papers, it doesn't make sense to look at these assets on a one by one basis. Let's say by way of example there's a particular group that meets at a community centre weekly, there may be a more suitable space 200 yards away that they could utilise more cheaply and efficiently and more easily but that requires people to take a much more strategic look at a whole locality to see what is the need, what groups, individuals and so on want to meet, what size space do they need, how frequently they need it, what can they pay and therefore where is the best kind of community asset for them to be and so that work is in train and we'll bring it to this committee but it's not fleshed out yet, it's not done. Just, you have a follow up for that question? Sure, please. And other members should, I will come back to you, I'm Councillor MacPherson. Just a follow up on the governance point which I think is important, each centre from what we're saying will have a different purpose and a different mission and I wonder if that's something which you're going to identify in the governance review and if you're going to ensure that each centre then has structures around it to enable it to achieve its specific mission. Thanks. So I think what you're asking, there's not going to be a one size fits all, you know, this is the structure we want to see, no because we recognise that there's a, you know, it's a kind of broad church at the moment, we've got probably far too many and kind of management structures and some of them have arisen kind of in an ad hoc way so that's not great but we're not, we certainly don't, I don't think we'll get to the point where we'll say this is the right way for a community centre to be run so that's the model we're imposing I think and maybe officers can speak to it. There are, you know, there are community owned community centres, there are ones that are managed by, you know, VCS organisations, there are ones that are managed by trustee boards of local residents, there's all kinds of really great ways that community centres can be run, there won't be a one size fits all and we certainly will be looking to other boroughs to see what innovative ways but we do need to have, we do need to have clear good governance, we do need to have clear good ways of people booking and paying for space and we do need to have transparent ways to see this space is being used well, there is somebody in it 25, 30 hours a week, 40 hours a week, different groups, it's full, that's what we want to see and that's what we don't have at the moment. Thank you, Councillor. Was it last year I went to the 50th anniversary of, well what was, there's now Brickworks Community Centre, it was Crouch Hill Community Centre at one time and I was quite impressed really what they've done throughout the years, in the 50 years and they utilise that, that's been used to the full I think, Brickworks and I think it's very important, you know these are just buildings without local residents and I feel that various activities, various classes are very important to every building that we have there and also advice centres, hopefully picking up on, extending advice on different services that are needed. I'm just a bit concerned about like if one manager has got a key, I just would hope that we have a, all these buildings have a committee structure or a trust of people involved from the local community sort of running the centres. Well I can't give you that assurance at the moment, Councillor and honestly that's one of the reasons why we're doing this review because that isn't the case but I'll just pick up on Brickworks, that is an absolutely phenomenal example of everything a community centre should be because they are, it's a place where you can exchange furniture, you can be warm, you can get food, they've got a kitchen, it's every inch of that building is being utilised and I think we'll bring Colin who runs it here to give you evidence about it. Thank you. Yes, Dean. Can I just throw a curve ball, three of them belong to the council and over does, I know that. You keep mentioning dilapidation like painting and things like that, if they're owned by the council you've got a massive team of plumbers, painters and all that who work for the council so why is there any dilapidation in the council run places? Dilapidation I think more on probably a structural level so there might be some that are just very aged and that would need to bring them back into sort of a real ship shape modern accessible, not all of them will be accessible because they were built in the 50s as part of a social housing estate so it's not just a question of giving them a lick of paint. The council ones should be met to a standard like the council housing so any whooping owned by the council should be at that standard, there shouldn't be any crumbling, there shouldn't be any paint leaks or things like that, they should be a very high standard like the council houses. So just a comment on that Councillor, sorry you're the co-opted member apologies, just a comment on that. Equipment, utilities, boilers, central heating systems degrade over time, things modernise, we've got more modern heating systems and some of our centres have got very old central heating boilers, old radiators that are very, very costly to repair. So when Councillor says dilapidation it's not just plumbing or a plug required, some of them need real huge investment to bring them up to a modern standard that also has an impact on our carbon reduction for example. So we're talking about costly dilapidation, not just a lick of paint or a screw required, there is some really costly requirements for some of the buildings. Is that an answer? Sorry can I just clarify, the 48 are owned by the council, there are assets within the HRA, it's three are managed directly, the rest we don't manage directly, but the 48 are owned assets of the council. Okay, thank you. Let me ask some questions and I will come to you. Firstly, just to clarify, you've noted that the strategic asset management plan will be published in November 28, are we still on target for that? The strategic asset management plan is going for the executive 24th of November I think is the executive meeting, I think it's the 24th of November. So we're still on target for that? We are. Okay, and that means we get to see it as well? It's public if it goes to the executive. It will be public the week before I think. It will be public, perfect, great. We've got here on the pie chart which I think that talks about the management arrangement, can you clarify what is informal management arrangement please? I think that's the scenario that I was describing to you that I'm sure many of you know from your wards which is someone has had the keys for many years, they may or may not still live on the estate, they may or may not be easy. I mean I'm not pulling punches here council, you will all know that there are some community centres that are difficult to book and it's difficult to get hold of people and there's no real name to put to the management arrangements because they're ad hoc and informal. Follow up on that, I think somewhere along the line I think the one that was directly managed by us and there are sort of arrangements in terms of tenants, are those tenants, how does that work? Can you just explain the ones that are managed by us, we have tenants, are those free tenants, are those paid tenants, how does that work? Are you referring to the ones that have got organisations that are letting rooms for us? I'm actually not sure at this moment, I would need to go back and check those licence arrangements to see whether there is a cost attached to that occupancy. One more from me and then I will let the other come to you. The informal management arrangement or the tenant management organisations or the tenant resident associations, I mean from my personal experience the use of community centres, most of the time there is a little cost involved in it. People pay, have a birthday party or do all of that. Are we able to attract this? Do we know how much is being generated in those forms or how does that normally, if you can give me a scenario case study that would be accurate, just no. So Councillor, we do attract income through hires, many of those hires are at community rates, it's for local birthday parties on an estate for example where the cost is very low. We do have some private hires where we attract a bit more of an income through that hire, so for a weekend party for example that might finish at 9pm there will be a deposit paid returned if the building is not damaged and there is no noise etc. But we would have to come back with you with a breakdown of income generated if you want to see that level of detail. I think my colleagues kind of did raise something along that line which I think would be useful to actually know, and I think when that does come in it would be interesting to also know what are some of the costs that you take in terms of, is it energy costs? To have the centres, who pays for that? I'm intrigued to have a bit of an understanding around that. Last one and I'll come to you Councillor, from my little quick maps, site not open should be about three or four, am I right or is there more? You've got a management arrangement, you've got sites not open. Yeah so that's when we go through planning with new builds and often part of the agreement with the developer is that they'll provide a community space within the new builds, so they're coming online effectively. So is it four or five? No it's more like three or potentially four, three or four new builds that don't have a tenant inside them. Can I also comment Chair on your question on utilities? We certainly can come back to you with the cost of utilities for 23, 24, you'll know that we had an energy crisis, community centres do not attract a social tariff for energy, so our increase is as big as the increases faced by members of the public. And I know that we had a huge jump in cost of utilities for our community centres across the year, but I'll come back with the detail. Thank you so much, Councillor Chico Uno. Thank you Chair, I'm going to also be talking about the 48 sites that are under management arrangements. These 48 sites are Council owned, out of the 48 sites how many of these are informal management, under informal management? Would it be possible to see a contract or a previous agreement because we do have people that take keys, disappear, what's the procedure of us taking back those keys? Going back on the cost of these centres, now because most of these centres have been managed that way, because we all have a couple in our wards that are managed by a person who is a keykeeper. What are the utility costs for each of these 48 sites, a breakdown of each of them, because then that will give us, with their names, because then that will give us as all ward councillors, because we know which centres are being in use. I can give you examples in my ward where the centre, the heating is on constantly, but it doesn't get used. Also birthdays, it gets booked out, we say that we charge a small amount for local communities. I can give you examples where it depends on who books it and the key person will then tell you how much that they want. So I think we need a thorough scrutiny on these 48 sites, especially the informal management ones. Councillor, that's spot on, and exactly what you've described is exactly why we're doing this review. Because as I said at the beginning, we're not quite sure who's got the keys, what they're charging, they may be taking cash and the heating is on all day. So absolutely we are drilling into that and as my colleague said, we can absolutely provide the utility costs by centre to you in a report. Can I just comment there? I am Councillor Chikoda, I also understand the remit of my committee here around contracted issues that might be, you know, I'm mindful, I would seek the proper advice around it. But if there was anything, it might not have to be a public thing, because for contracted reasons, if some members were able to have a look, if they wanted to, outside of the remit, because of that I'm more than happy. But I also do not want a scenario where we can't have a little bit of insight just based on contracted issues. So I'm just trying to remind you that we might not have those information put out here on the public. But however, I'm sure we could find other ways to, maybe we can give us an, if there are some of the committees that would like to attend the committee to kind of just talk about their approach, or if they're happy to do so. But I'm happy to have an oversight and then we can find the right way for you to have access to some information. Thank you very much, that would be brilliant, because I know that there are confidentiality issues, contracts, so it'd be really good if members can have a meeting with the executive and the officers, just to go through these centres. Also, I repeat myself, councillors are the best people to know which centres are being used. So councillor, you're absolutely right, and that's why we've scheduled three localities-based evening workshops, where Lorna and I will join ward members from each locality to discuss the portfolio in that locality, for exactly that reason. Because there will be members who can say, oh by the way, what about that flat in that, you know, TRA book, whatever, and what about that space that we didn't know about, and so that's exactly what we want to do. Thank you. I notice that you're not looking at the voluntary sector assets in this review, are you going to take into account organisations like Caxton Hall, St Luke's, Resorts for London, Finsbury Park Trust, and locality? Have you lathed with any of this? So this review looks at the 48 centres owned by the council, you will know that Caxton House isn't owned by the council. I know it's not owned by the council, but on the other hand you have a huge, big voluntary sector out there, of which I would reckon the council is part. So if you're going to carry out a review, you need to incorporate some of these organisations in as well, because they provide similar services, as the council of properties do, to the community. It would be good to map these as well, when you're carrying out a review. The other thing, are you liaising with locality to trade body for community centres? Lorna, can you turn your mic off when you go on, Councillor Mickelson? Are you liaising with locality to trade body for community centres, which is based in Islington? They will have a model called conduct, model rules, that can be applied across the border to the council managed properties as well. Maybe adjusted suggestion, adjusted appropriately, I would suggest you put in provisions there, in the event of what you get is what's known in the trade as the jumped up Hitler syndrome, where people take over the management of these properties. I've seen it in Camden, and basically the community gets excluded for it, we get all that sort of corruption that you talked about, Councillor. That can be prevented if you have a set of model rules that allows you to exclude these people when they're identified. I feel quite strongly about that. We also have a number of spare space offices, et cetera. Are we looking at, when we give money to charities, or when we support organisations here, shouldn't we look at making sure that when they are looking for an office, it's not the private sector that they look in, the public sector, our sector, and the voluntary sector, when they're renting space, rather than spending grant money in the private sector. I'll come back on two of the points, and then if officers have anything to add, they can. You said, what about the voluntary community sector? That's exactly right. That's why the mapping will look at, here's your community centre, but don't look at it in isolation. Look at it with regard to, here's a library, here's a children's centre, here's manor gardens, here's Caxton House, so you get the entire picture and the entire offer to the community in that locality. What you said is what we're doing. Because this is an asset review, we're looking at the assets that the council own, because we have the ability to tweak the management structures and so on. We will be looking more broadly at the voluntary sector strategy going forward, but this is an asset review, so that will be done separately, but the services the voluntary sector offer will very much form part of this. You're absolutely right, people looking for space should be using public spaces that will be much cheaper, so that kind of goes back to what I was saying at the beginning, that the needs of communities change. So now I hear from people when I'm out and about young entrepreneurs who need workspace in Archway, which is now a cultural enterprise zone. I hear from a lot of young makers who need space to do their pottery, and that's the need that's not being met by the asset base we have. So it's about how do we tweak the asset base to make sure these people, I've got no rehearsal space, people are going to Hackney and Haringey because there's nowhere in Islington. So exactly right, what do people need? We've got buildings that aren't being fully utilised, how can we sort that out and get people into our spaces at an affordable rent? First of all I want to say thank you so much, I think it gives us a good starting point and overview. I would ask Steve, and I know this going back to your, I guess you'll be presenting to the execs, like you said in the next couple of November, just around the corner. On the SAMP? Yes. Stephen Biggs will probably lead on it, I'll be there if he wants me to be there, but yes Stephen Biggs will be the lead corporate director for the presentation on the SAMP. Are you able to present that to us after the next, when that's done, after the execs? I would have no problem with that, it's a public document, if there are things in it you wish to be examined, I personally see no problem with that whatsoever. If the committee are happy with that I would like that to be the case, because that's a good piece of work that is being carried out as going to the exec. You can work out between the offices, I would rather not the exec member carries out the presenting for us, because I want the officers to be able to present, because you're doing that work. And if I'm right I would actually ask this to the exec member, are you aware of when this particular piece of work actually started? The asset review, of the community asset review, this piece of work? No, that's what Steve is working on. I don't know. The SAMP has been ongoing, I joined council in January and the SAMP was already starting to be drafted, so it's a piece of work that's taken most of this year to get to a robust state with input across the whole council, and obviously that document, a policy going to the executive in November. Thank you, please go ahead. Can I just clarify, so the strategic asset management plan that Steve has talked about is a large document that covers the whole of the council's strategic assets and not just the community centres. The community centres are a small section of that strategy, so I would probably suggest that if we want to look at the strategic asset management plan, that's a separate piece of work. What we can do is we can bring in what the community centres section is into this meeting and that is part of this work, but I'm just conscious that that is a very separate area and piece of work and quite a large strategy that the members might not want to bring into this review. That absolutely makes sense, so just what is to do with a community centre, we welcome that to come in to us. That's fine. Are there any questions from members, if not, might it be for us to sort of move ahead on this? Just before we kind of close, what should we expect as part of this review from your team that will come outside of what Steve will bring forward the next meeting? Chair, if you tell us what you want to scrutinise, we will bring it. Tell us what you want. We did already set this out, so I think at this particular point we would like to hear from, if members, I would like to hear from some of the community centres, those that are run, not necessarily by the Council, how the pieces of work they do. It would be interesting to hear what the others are doing, maybe as a community to think about that. The question is what would we like to hear at the next committee for scrutiny? Well, I think it would be good to have some reflections on the current position. It seems like we've got pretty good scoping questions out at the moment, so some progress report on how those questions have been received in the centres you've looked at. But, I mean, otherwise it seems like the phases of the review are pretty well set out on page 13, so we'll follow that pace. But you've also mentioned that you want us to bring a portion of the SAMP to the next meeting as well. Wait, can you repeat that? So if the SAMP is, I think what Councillor Jackson was referring to, if the SAMP is formally completed across the Council before the next meeting, any aspects which are relevant to the community asset review, it would be useful to hear them presented on. I suppose it depends where that document lands to find out how much of it is actually salient to this committee, so perhaps we can discuss this offline to see what's the most relevant part once we have the document. Does that seem sensible? Chair, can I just clarify, for the next meeting we were going to suggest a couple of expert witnesses being community centres run by the voluntary sector, but rather than looking at progress, it's about their current experience, what they think could and should be improved. Because we're not quite at that stage where we haven't started any engagement, there is no formal framework for this as yet, so we're at the very, very early stages of understanding the assets that we currently have, and that does include voluntary sector provision. So I'd quite like to bring a couple of voluntary sector partners to the next meeting, if that's okay? Yes, let's do that. I would have a conversation with the clerk to just see how the agenda would look like, but yes, for the next meeting, that and what Steve will present as well would be welcome, and then we'll go through. I think I'll probably have another meeting with the officers again, just for us to realign again, so we'll put something in the diary for that, and then we'll go there. I'm minded of time to bring this to an end, and we can move to the next agenda topic. Are we happy for that committee? Thank you, sir. Thank you, chair. Thank you. I guess this is all about broadband, right? I'll keep this short and sweet. So you got a report three months ago, it had 50% of the community had been connected to broadband, this obviously increased, as you can see, to 60%, so that's pretty good. 21,000 council tenants or council residents in our properties of the 36,000 can now have access to broadband, which is pretty good. The update that we can give you that's not contained in the report is agreements has been reached with BT Open Reach to allow them to access to the council's buildings, highways, et cetera, for them to commence cabling for broadband. 8 community centres has been connected to it, vulnerable residents are receiving reduced costs for broadband, so it's a pretty good progress since we started in January 23. We started way behind other councils, but we're now catching up, as you can see, with the average being 60% here, 62% across London, but happy to answer any questions you may have, chair? Yeah, I'll just take a quick one. We're at 60%, still the lowest compared to all the others. I mean, it's still a high number, I must say, but is there any reason for that? Yeah, we started later. We started in January 2023. When I was at Southwark in 2015, they had started then, but as you can see, we're catching up to the other boroughs, and now the BT Open Reach is a partner. We believe that we'll reach the target set within the manifesto without any difficulties. Thanks. I think these are promising numbers, and there's a lot of promising progress, so that's really great. I'm conscious, as I think councillors always are, of the broadband in their own community centre. So, in ours, in the Popham, we have had WiFi and broadband fitted, but it just regularly doesn't work, so are you confident that these numbers involve a review? Are you confident that everything you're reporting is still working, and how can we keep on top of keeping services running? We can present a report to you, as we plan to do in January, to answer those questions in terms of reliability of the broadband in our community centres and within the residents' homes as well. That's no problem. Just noting the point around some of the challenges with listed buildings. We probably have, I'm right in thinking, as varied as stock as any local authority. Are planning being helpful in getting those listed building consents consented in a good timeframe, and I presume it's almost a case-by-case approach we have to take with that stock? Yes, case-by-case approach, planning department are very helpful with the work that we're doing in partnership, and we haven't had many difficulties. When the residents have reported difficulties to us, we've resolved those difficulties within 48 hours, which is pretty good at the moment, and if any resident is watching on the webcast, if they want to contact me, then we can certainly address those issues for them. Hopefully they have a good internet connection. They should do, 60% of our residents have. Thank you. Do we have any more? Can I just throw a curve ball here? By the time you've finished with all this wiring and all this through the streets and knocking up our pavements and making a mess of them, is this all going to be outdated, the way technology is going? Because everything that all these broadband can do, you've got on your mobile phone, and now the mobile phones connect to your TV, connect to your computer, connect to everything. So is this really necessary? I think it's necessary. It gives people access to Wi-Fi that they haven't historically had. We've had complaints from tenants and leaseholders about the poor quality, even with their own telephones, and with TV in terms of download, et cetera, so it will improve things, but you're right, technology is advancing at a pace greater than any one in this room can keep up with, and the council will have to reflect on the changes in the future. But on today's day, it's doing the things that residents are happy with what access they're getting. Thank you. Right, we've always had this on the agenda, and I think you can see a level of improvement, not still 100%. Is there anything else we can do as a committee, or is there anything else you can do as officers for us that we've not explored yet, or you're thinking about? We've got an excellent working relationship with the providers, and they are moving at pace now. As you can see from the previous report, it's increased by 5% in three months, so we are now having that upturn. We said it would start slow and then build up. With BT Openreach now a partner, we believe that we'll achieve the ultimate manifesto commitment that was made to roll this out to the residents within our society that need it. But by all means, continue to challenge me, as you've been doing since we started this program in January 2023. Thank you so much. I see Jed as rest. We've had a discussion with, particularly with BT, who have been, it's fair to say, taking their time over signing the access agreements with us. They have been carrying out enabling work in their exchanges within the area, so we can see they are kind of gearing themselves up to do a roll out in the borough, which is really encouraging, and people in the highway suspension team are in regular contact with them and encouraging them to sort of switch on their program and enter into those agreements with us for that as well. Thank you. If we don't have any more questions, I would say thank you Ian on this particular agenda topic, and I'm happy to move to the next one. I take it you're taking lead on this as well. Yes, so this is the draft homeless prevention of sleeping strategy. You may remember at the very beginning of this journey, 12 months ago, you insisted the chair and the then vice chair, Councillor Sinca Uno, wanted to have the draft that was presented to you before we went to executive. So we presented the original document to you, you commented on that, you then asked us to go out and speak to residents who have got lived homelessness experience. We did that, we brought an independent party in to do that so that they was not, we didn't circumvent their voice, so what you've got within the document is the resident's voice and spine in terms of the action plan and the findings. We also liaised with the organization as the secretariat behind the old party parliamentary group on ending temporary accommodation, and they've seen the document and commented on it. We liaised with Shelter Crisis. Shelter Crisis, as you know, Shelter did mystery shopping, Crisis did critical friend, we had the PPL reports, which was about the systematic review of our work. We brought Homeless Link in to do customer focus groups, so again the strategy is a live document. It's fair to say that we've tried to get the strategy in a place that represents the values of Islington Council, but more importantly will help us to reduce homelessness and eliminate rough sleeping. We've got one of the lowest rough sleeping numbers in London, so the last account that we did, as we said at the last meeting, we found 18 people, but only one tenant was sleeping rough, who was having a mental health difficulty, and one person in Islington wanted to experience what rough sleeping was like, so the other 16 people came from other parts of the country. We don't have any people coming out of the Home Office hotels going to sleep on the streets, which is unusual for a central London borough. We have lower numbers in temporary accommodation than the average, we have reduced problems in terms of homelessness prevention, we have higher homelessness prevention than the London average. We also have an overspend, as the report clearly says, £2.25 million projected overspend for this year, but that's considerably lower than the London average and the national average. So the strategy is presented to you as a document where you can change before it goes to executive. The report has not gone to PLM, which is obviously Councillor Halloran's meeting, and it has been CMT for views from the Chief Executive Management team of what changes should be made, but now is your opportunity that you asked for to make the changes before it went to executive, so hopefully that introduction has helped you, but by all means challenge us, make changes, the action plan is yours to kick about, anything you want we will consider. Thank you, firstly I want to say a good report, I let members to come in. Thank you, I think this is a really really wonderful document, I think it reflects really exactly what we are aiming to do when we say resident-led policy, and treating rough sleepers as residents in a really earnest way, so I'm very pleased to see this, thank you. The question I have relates to priority four, which is providing accommodation and resettlement services to refugees and migrants, I'd like to understand how it is that we've managed to avoid rough sleeping coming out of home office hotels, I think that is fantastic, but it wasn't actually completely clear to me from the phrasing what we've done to achieve that, and secondarily I'd like to understand a bit more about the challenge that we face where national immigration policy does mean that there are limits to what we can do as a council to settle certain members of the homeless community, and just what it is exactly in this strategy which is getting past those barriers, I didn't quite get it from reading, thanks. I think it's a very good question, and I was mindful to send to you, to send to the members confidentially, a flow diagram that shows the journey from the home office hotels to actual accommodation to prevent homelessness, which it can do on a confidential basis because it does name the hotels and does have some specific location details, but basically, and I can certainly send that to you as a presentation, some members have asked for that which I've sent to them, what we basically do is we've employed people to go into the hotels and to talk to all of those individuals, so as the report shows you, around about 700 people have come out of those hotels with status to remain in the country. The previous government then closed hotels down in other parts of the country and then moved the people from those hotels into the two hotels in Islington, which we welcomed because we're a welcoming borough. Now what that basically has meant is 700 people come out with status to remain in the country because they have got friends, they've got family and connections to this country, and then there's around about another 700, 800 people now in the two hotels. Now we've done that upstream prevention work by explaining to each individual, before you get your status, because the majority of those people are getting status to remain in this country, this is what you need to do. You need to liaise with us, we need to prevent your homelessness, we don't want you to go and sleep on the streets of Islington, and we go there on a weekly basis to hold surgeries for those individuals, we're now liaising with doctors, et cetera, on exactly the same basis, and the health, medical people, to explain that work. So we don't want people that happens in other parts of London to get status to remain in the country, unable to access the services and go and sleep on the streets of this country, because that's not human for those people to suffer that, but I'll certainly send that presentation slide to you and to the rest of the members as well. Thank you, I'd like to see that, and it sounds like a very nuanced and well worked out approach. I don't think that it's best to think of any of these policies in terms of the financial cost, but I think, I suspect, we are saving significant money by getting these people housed and never allowing them to face homelessness, getting people rehoused being so much more expensive, and I think that would be worth putting into this strategy and acknowledging that that's the benefit of this mode of policy making. Thanks. We can certainly do that. Councillor, and I will send those presentation slides to you as well, because you are right, it's saving the NHS and everyone else a considerable amount of money. Thank you, thank you. Again, there is no other feedback. Again, thank you very much Ian for this, and I'm happy to move on to the next agenda. Thank you Ian, thank you. [inaudible] Ombudspit, they're not coming again are they? No Chair, although we are regularly dealing with them in relation to casework, I went to a Lunch and Learn session on their invitation to give them some feedback from the landlord's point of view this week, which was really good, and with really good attendance, 140 or so of their colleagues came to talk to us, which was really nice. We gave them our feedback on their process, which was a really enjoyable opportunity that we took up. But no, there's no further action. This is really us keeping committee informed about the remaining actions that are left and that follow on from our kind of action plan from their report. So the report was published October 23, as you know, we were regularly in touch with the committee throughout that investigation period, and kept you in touch throughout. They discharged us in April of this year, because they were satisfied that we'd implemented effectively all of the recommendations that they'd put to us. So table three, there's a long table of what we have done and completed and is in place, which I'm very happy to take any kind of questions, comments, observations on, but much of which you've seen before. And then there's a second table just underneath section 3.3, which just makes sure that we keep committee informed that there are still some measures that we're yet to fully implement, so we need to be held to account for and keep a good record of, some of which relate to things like the new policies that were approved earlier this year, so in September, that we need to operationalise those and carry out training across the organisation and some other process and audits and other bits and pieces. So it's really just to keep members fully informed of those remaining actions, which we'll do until we complete. Probably, we're saying the end of autumn, I suspect that's autumn running up to December or thereabouts, and we can give you a final closeout report when we finish everything off, but I'm very happy to take any questions. I'll let Councillor just come in and let members know. I just want to thank this committee, because you did hold us to account, and I think it should be an ongoing thing, because we know damper mould is not going to be sold overnight, but I think as long as we have it mapped out and make sure cases are going down, and if new cases scrutinise why is it happening, because we went back three years, and it's still not sold, but we've got better things in place, so if a case is live now, we action it really quickly, but I just think whoever is going forward with this committee, please always keep damper mould on it. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, I'll let Councillor Hannah come for some questions. Just a really open question. What do you think is the biggest challenge still ahead on this? What's the hardest thing to solve still? I'd say overcrowding is a big thing. I did my surgery Saturday, and you could see, yeah, overcrowding is, I'd say, some of it is the stock and the conditions, and telling people to put your heat on full and open your windows seems a bit mad, but that is the reality of it, and energy and everything else, but overcrowding. And then for my slightly different point of view, although I agree with you on this point, it's the £1.8 billion gap in our investment plan, which is the big challenge for us in keeping the stock to a good condition. We're keeping our fingers crossed, as I'm sure many people are up and down the country, that there is a positive Alton statement. There's been lots of good things trailed that might come from that, including a new rent settlement. And if a rent settlement was made for the CPI plus 1%, through the life of the business plan, that reduces the investment gap by a billion pounds. So those things have a huge effect on our ability to maintain the stock. So that's probably the biggest challenge with spending not enough on capital works and therefore having to spend more and more on repairs. That's a kind of general size and shape. Una's absolutely right, there's also a housing supply crisis, lots of people overcrowded. It sits together really. Thank you. I'll take these questions and just go one question. Just a quick one again. Are you expecting, with the money not going through to the pensioners now, are you expecting your stock to be getting more damp and more damaged because they can't have the heatings on during the winter? Have you prepared for this? So I think that's kind of a wide government policy. So I'm aware that the council has a resident support fund and are promoting that, promoting access to that, which does provide an opportunity to support, regardless of age actually, people who are struggling with fuel poverty, and provide financial assistance which can help maintain people's ability to eat their homes. There's lots of support provided through a network of food banks in the borough as well, because food and fuel poverty quite often are linked for people suffering those kind of affordability challenges for their basic needs. But yeah, there could potentially be obviously those kind of impacts felt. We will be monitoring closely the effects, and as Matt's kind of nodding his head, where possible he's been offering people their kind of smart sensors so we can help them keep track of kind of heat and damp levels within their homes, so heat and humidity, which means we're more able to kind of assist and monitor. I'd just say the other sort of support the council offers, and has always offered in fairness, but it's probably increasingly important given some of those policy changes, is that Shine Energy's advice service, which is helping people take those steps they can do to improve efficiency themselves as well. Thank you. My question to Councillor Ching-Kong or not, and then I'll come to Councillor Michael Sullivan. Short? Very short. Yeah, it's all good about the stuff that the council's got for assisting people that are going to be finding it difficult to heat their homes. How are these services going to reach out to people whose English is not their first language? How are we going to reach those communities? I don't directly manage the resident support fund, so that might be a query that I could pass back if that's OK to them, and ask them to provide maybe a written update for committee members. But I understand, you know, the same way we have for our housing services, they will have access to kind of translation services, different language formats, etc. But I don't know the exact details of how that's delivered. And will we be advertising this and telling people about this, or would people just find out if they just go onto the council website? It's fairly widely advertised through the council's channels and through its communications plans. We also include it within the information we produce on the estates themselves directly, so we're making sure that tenants that we're directly responsible for as a department are kind of kept fully informed of it. Thank you. Councillor Michael Sullivan? The social housing decarbonisation grant, the biggest tranche yet, is about to be announced, but has been announced already. Is the council preparing to bid for this, identifying properties in most need, and preparing a work plan so that we can actually heavily subsidise our capital when we come to do this? And do we still have the emphasis on looking for structural reasons for dampness rather than just assuming lifestyle, as that was a major failure in the past? Yeah, there might be a two-part answer for me. I think I can see Matt definitely eager to answer that question. Please. Thank you very much, Chair. Thank you, Councillor. Yes, we are very excited to see that the third wave of SHTF, a warm homes fund, is now preparing for bids. We're part of a consortium bid across 23 landlords in London, hoping to put many of our homes through. It will be our largest bid yet and a massive one across London, so we're very excited to be part of that and help other London boroughs as well. In terms of the damper mould, obviously damper mould is a variety of different reasons from support from fuel poverty, property and improvements. So our surveyors remain trained and we keep rolling that training through to make sure that they get into the root cause. So we get in there, we remove the damper mould, then we find the root cause and try and deal with that as quickly and as best we can, whether that's assisting with transfers and re-housing, making sure they've got adequate points, whether that's making sure they've got access to services to provide support or whether it's doing structural work inside the homes. Thank you. Councillor McLachlan. Just following up from fuel poverty, last week there was a national lobby in parliament on this issue, the United Union and National Pensions Convention. I don't know if these actually make headlines or not, but it's a big lobby of an installation of homes against fuel poverty. And I think just following on from that, you know, the installation of homes is the solution, you know, the natural solution. I know other London boroughs and boroughs up and down the country are sort of lobbying government, new government now. And I just wonder, are we keeping that up? Because really, I think the answer to it is the installation of homes and of course retrofitting. And of course that means a lot of investment. It needs an actual injection of government investment. And the installation? Maybe not a political answer, but just the installation statement. Yeah, OK. So I was just going to make the point that we are also supporting that public affairs function in highlighting the need for investment. So we were original kind of signatories to the select report and we are kind of playing an active part in that. In relation to installation, yes, and that will feature within the SHDF bids. And Matt's got his kind of ready to go sort of overlay of the UCL assessment for carbon reduction in stock, which often includes measures to improve insulation alongside the kind of damper mould assessment and alongside our core investment needs. So as more money becomes available to us, Matt is ready to spend it in the right way. Right. Thank you. Just one question from me out of this action plan that has come up from the Ombudsman. Are there any sort of innovative approach that we are now heading or we're now leading across the country because of having to come up with a solution to that? And if you can share that, that would be great. I think the one for me, which is there's two things I think we're pretty innovative on, but one which I think we're uniquely innovative on is this exchange with the regional health system on people who might be more vulnerable to damper mould. So data on actual people alongside our property conditions. So those three years of case history and the properties we think are more at risk of experiencing damper mould. As far as I know that we're the only local authority who's done that data exchange. We've only done it statically. So they can compare statistically prevalence of damper mould and those kind of medical vulnerabilities. And we can do the same thing. What I'm pushing for and kind of like supporting is that we have an active data link. Not so we kind of have information that is improper, but so we understand those people who have health conditions with some vulnerabilities, the kind of asthmatic COPD respiratory immunosuppressed. So we can target our investment more carefully. That's something which is in consideration and we'll keep pursuing. But that's the only thing I think we've done that's completely unique. I think some of the work that Mike and Matt have done on putting sensors into homes isn't unique, but it is something that councils are just starting to come in to do. So we're in that kind of range of early adopters, but we're not unique in doing it. Thank you. As you know, I'm always very keen on us being innovative in our approach. Hopefully we don't need to wait for another ombudsman before we become more innovative on approaches that will be coming in future because we do need to sort of take lead in certain things. And thank you so much for the report. Because of time, I don't have any questions and I'm probably members are happy we can move to the next agenda. Thank you so much. Right. Smithley, we go to report. How's the report? Welcome. And I've got my key as well. If you can, members have seen your resources in the time, so please go ahead. Thank you. That's OK, Councillor Jackson. Thank you for having us today. This report is quite self explanatory. It actually shows a good outcome for us around how we process key to key voids and how we transition this resident from when they give up their property to when it comes vacant. Obviously, how we rent it out to them and how we then process that process of sign up. So ultimately, we'll open the floor up because of time for questions that you might have for us. Right. Members, questions? I must have questions. It's not that perfect. I'm joking. Any questions? I must say I will start a question. I must say, when I looked at the report, there was the some of the Claire Wynne's investigative approach in terms of getting stocks that might be in the wrong hands and things like that. Do you want to tell us a little bit more around some of that work, please? The Investigations Force team does quite a lot of intense work in trying to retrieve properties that are being used unlawfully within the council. We want those properties to be for the residents that are most vulnerable. We have quite a high list of residents within the housing allocation list. And obviously, it's really important that anyone that's misusing a council property is retrieved back in the correct way. So those stats show how we've been trying to manage those, how we've identified that and how we've identified some quick wins in trying to retrieve property to then relate to the people that actually do need and deserve it. Yes. Just a follow up on that point. Am I right in understanding that that's incorporated then in the fraud rate, the 4.8%? And actually, could you just expand a little bit on how you identify potentially fraudulent voids and do you suspect that there are some which we haven't caught yet? And what do you think could improve our process of investigation there? Thanks. So to answer the first part, Councillor, there are a number of different ways that highlight to the council where someone's doing illegal activity or misusing that property. That could be from not paying their rent, that could be from other people notifying us of the coming and going. That's council officers probably identifying some aspects of not understanding or knowing who the residents are and how we identify. So it's about state-based staff and also office-based staff, residents. We rely on a different number of Czech councillors. Ultimately, there are a process which we're going to start to put in place around tenancy audits and those in the next three years plan will identify a lot more of how the council stock is being used. And we probably will identify a lot more in the coming years around misuse of council properties. Yeah, just on this. So I think what I'm unsure about how we're reporting and actually how we're approaching, sometimes we'll have a resident who's legitimately in a property but then they're using it for drug dealing. Or now it becomes, I guess, some kind of mixed purpose, right? How are you dealing with those kind of hybrid sort of situations? So they're dealt separately because we understand that they are a vulnerable person that possibly could have been taken advantage of and they're not misusing them as a profit to gain for themselves. So we look at those cases slightly differently in a respect of answerage behaviour or unauthorised occupants with regards to how it's been taken over. So like drug use, cuckooed properties, people that are vulnerable that have been taken advantage of. So we wouldn't necessarily class them as someone that's probably profiting from a council property. However, more in the case of the vulnerable side of that, they've got underlying issues that could result in them probably not being able to accommodate them or have the use of their property. I wonder if you could say a bit more about specification of works. I've observed myself perfectly good kitchens, bathrooms being whipped out by the void steam and replaced with new in order to make sure things are up to standard. Now obviously we want higher standards for tenants when they take on a tenancy but in the context of looking at minimising waste, could you just say a bit more about the work specification and how we know that the thresholds are at the right level for that? Thank you, Councillor. We always make sure that we do the work that brings the voids up to the minimum standard. So we have our voids standard which has been agreed for a number of years, we review on a periodic basis. There are occasions where we will need to do work such as asbestos removal which would predicate removing the kitchen units. If they are older kitchen units, sometimes they're not returnable or perhaps it's a mix match where over the years the tenants had several different parts replaced. There's a general rule where we use as much as we can, simply re-kitchen with flooring and stuff like that, we'll leave that down if it's in a good reusable state. So we are trying to minimise the waste use as well in terms of how much we can. But unavoidably sometimes there are works where we have to remove the kitchen and bathroom or upgrade it or if it's past its usable life to make sure that the property is decent, we will return those. But we'd never remove anything that we didn't have to. Thank you. David, do you still have a question or you just answered it? OK, great. I've got a few questions. Earlier on, when I took on this role as chair, I think I did ask questions around voids and empty homes. And there was a little bit of a, not very sure what was the definition of empty home and void. And I think I even went on a, I remember going on a tour with yourself, so I had a little bit more clarity. Now I'm just trying to understand now at this current state, where are we now around those numbers? Have things gone better? I know there's been buybacks, which means whenever they're coming, they're more likely to go straight into the void. So I'm just, if we're looking at the scale of things, are things getting better in terms of numbers and our turnaround time? There were some key works around what we can do to make that process a bit faster. So I don't know if yourself or Mike, you want to take that on for me, please. Thank you. Thank you. Hello to everyone. Yeah, we are in a good spot for that at the moment. I remember there's a few of us around for a look at empty voids a year ago. Put that office out there again. In regards to London, we're in the upper quartile for the key to key handback, which is a really positive sign. It was in that report. The other bit we're in the upper quartile is the number of empty properties per thousand properties in our housing stock. So again, these figures are really good. We're turning those properties around as a joint effort with colleagues and tenancy. So it seems to be working really well at the moment. So I've got here in terms of voids, I think it's 4.2, the voids team reports an average 900 voids property per financial year. I mean, it's average. I mean, I would have liked, you know, some sort of more specific numbers, right? Is that something not today that you can send to us because it is when you said average could mean anything? So we can bring those figures back to you about year to year difference of how many properties that we turn around each year. I mean, during the pandemic and obviously after the pandemic, due to the several deaths that we encountered within our properties, the empty void properties did go up a bit. However, obviously it can change year to year depending on life, depending on how the stock is, you know, the difference in people's lives when they move out, when they want to move into a different area. You know, so it does factor each year to year, but that is the average. Matt, I know you want to come in this. Let me put a question so that you can make sure you put all of them together. You've got two set of contractors listed here as the ones that carry out the voids outside of our team that is in brewery. How long is this? Is this new contract? Is this legacy contracts? I'm just curious to know. Yeah, so I've been lucky enough to be working on voids for quite a long time. So first of all, to the numbers, the numbers are fairly static over the longer period. So around 900 voids, I would say for the last 15 years, there's been a couple of years where it's been 1000, 1200. Sometimes it's been 800, but it's on average over that period. 900 voids, pretty good year on year. Things that can affect that, pandemics and stuff like that. High rates of recovery, generally big blips in a given period down to new build coming on stream, which creates a wave of voids going down as we sort of rehouse residents into a number of different tenancies. And the biggest impact recently has been our buybacks, which are not quite reflected in these figures because it is a different business unit technically. But the voids team have been doing a great job converting properties that we've been buying on the open market into temporary accommodation. The partnership work again between tenancy team and the repairs team has been fantastic there and managed to help us deliver more temporary accommodation. In terms of your question around the contractors, we used to have 100% contracted out works for voids. We've slowly been bringing that work back in house. We've been increasing that, sort of periodically keeping in pace with what we can manage in terms of growing the team. I think the voids contracts are out to, we're scoping the contracts out and the next scale for next year. So those contracts come to an end, we'll go back out to the market and decide whether or not that's an appropriate point to increase our in house reserve or not. I'm not going to ask any contractual questions. I'm sure the team will do what it needs to. I'm going to move to, when I went out to do a sort of on-site observation, one of the things that came up was one of the issues that makes the delays in the turnaround with the voids. And I think that was more sort of workings between inter-department. I don't know what the term was. We have to use part of the team of our environmental to clear this. What is the term? It was the removing of the lumber. The lumber, that's the word. And we can identify that was an issue and that had to be addressed. Has that been addressed? Yeah, it's still not where you need it to be, but it has improved a lot. Again, we're working really closely with that team. We've got other options also for moving that lumber now. So we haven't got those delays that we had had previously. Is there any of your contractors who are doing these voids up? They're not contracting, contracting, contracting are they? Because the level of your work will go down with the price. Is it the contractors that you actually pay and have, do they do the work? And who checks that it's actually that company that's doing the work and not subcontract, subcontract, subcontract? Yes, so the contractors we have, we have the sole contract list there. Within that contract there is the possibility that they will subcontract. We are meeting those contractors on a weekly basis and calling over those works and they'll be vetted through our processes that the same contractors vetted through. So we have got a good quality control check on that. We have a VPN so post and spec those works at the end of the projects. So we've got baskets, pricing cases also, so we can manage the cost to it and the quality of it. So we feel confident that it's fine with that. Right, thank you. I think the only thing I would like on that average number, I think ideally we prefer numbers. Just every one void it makes, so if we can in the future we'll really welcome that. Apart from that members don't have any other questions, I'm going to say thank you to the team. Sorry James, I just had one very brief additional observation for members of the committee if they're interested. Your Vice-Chair, I think you had some questions about how we're managing housing investigations and fraud, particularly as a subset of empty properties. We're very happy to bring a report from the housing investigation team if you'd like more detail on that for a future meeting. That's good, thank you so much. Thank you team, thank you very much. Thank you very much Ian. You've sat there a couple of times now so I'm sure you just want to summarise this for us. We have a report from the housing investigation team from the housing investigation team and it's by Councillor Osdamer and Councillor Sinca Uno who wanted to have a protocol this time on homeless families in temporary accommodation and that protocol between children's services and homes and neighbourhoods. We've drafted the protocol for you as requested. This has been done in partnership with children's services. It's also been done in partnership with Just Life and Shared Lives which is the organisations behind the old party parliamentary group on homelessness and temporary accommodation and once again please feel free to make any suggested changes or amendments. We are pretty good that we don't have homeless families in bed and breakfast hotels or hotels compared to other authorities and that's something that the council should be rightly proud about. Happy to answer any questions. Councillor Hannon, would you? Yeah, thank you. Have we ever been challenged by judicial review on the provision of accommodation under section 17? Yes and also we get challenged on our homes and studios as well from various legal agencies. Can you give me a sense of the number of challenges, how that compares to other boroughs and what the outcomes are? Thanks. So we're very fortunate within Islington that the challenges that we've addressed, we've not really been to court. I've been here three and a bit years. I can only recall on one occasion where we've been to court in that period of time as we do have a sympathetic viewpoint to our residents and we will be willing to liaise with the legal representatives of our residents and discuss that. We're not renowned to rewrite the legislation, case law, etc. I believe that's other boroughs so very rarely we end up being in court and a court judgement. Thank you. Any questions from other members? I am curious of those cases where there has been challenge. Is it because of the kind of accommodation? Is it they're in temporary accommodation for too long? What's the nature of the challenge? Certainly. So the average waiting in temporary accommodation now in Islington is 64 weeks. That has increased from 52 this time last year because of the housing crisis that we are facing. A lot of local authorities in London are having temporary accommodation for five to ten years. We're not facing that. We haven't faced any legal challenges over the six week rule for families in temporary accommodation with children. As we don't have families in bed and breakfast or hotels. That closes down that loophole. We've had challenges in terms of quality of accommodation that's been provided and once anybody complains about that quality or a member of this committee raises a quality issue we act upon that immediately. We don't question it and we don't use that temporary accommodation again and move the person away from that. It's not about distance from Islington. 50% of temporary accommodation is in Islington which is pretty good. That 50% is owned by Islington council which is good to compare those with Lambeth with 78.3% of temporary accommodations, hotels and private landlords. It's pretty good compared to that. 45% are in neighbouring boroughs and 5% are in other parts of London or on the outskirts. So we don't get challenged on distance. When we do we listen to it. The last challenge I think was two weeks ago when somebody had moved 4.3 miles from this building in Haringey which I thought was decent compared to other boroughs moving to other parts of the country. Thank you and I can see you on top of all the detail and the statistics which is really helpful. I don't personally know but I'd like to understand what priority the Children's Act give to families in temporary accommodation and if we actually treat these as our highest priority families or households to move. Yeah so anybody that's in temporary accommodation is treated as a priority. That includes families with children but also single people. 6% of our homelessness is now single people. Families with children we have a policy that basically was adopted that came to this committee. You challenged it. It's a 90 minute commute on public transport. The first phase has got to be within Islington. Anybody that's got a child taking an importance exam or transitioning from junior school to secondary school or from secondary school to college or A levels has got to live in Islington. If not, then bring them back into Islington. The property purchase program is helping us. You know we've bought 500 properties over the last four years. 200 plus of that maybe 300 has been within the last 12 months so we're doing pretty well. It's reducing those legal challenges, but you are right. They get priority for rehousing as quickly as we can. We have to balance that though, Vice Chair, with children living in dangerous situations in our stocks and maybe tenanted with a child with autism on the 14th floor who doesn't recognise danger and we've got to balance the homelessness cases against priority needs cases. Thank you. Councillor Sullivan. One of the major causes of our lack of family accommodation is the right to buy when properties with tree rooms, bedrooms and above were basically effectively privatised. Are we looking at liaising say with our housing association partners so that they emphasise building tree bedrooms and above properties when it comes to their section 106 allocations? Mainly because there isn't the same right to buy housing association properties as there is with council properties and this is a way of safeguarding a resource for residents in the future. We have excellent working relationship with planning and they ask us on every site, whether it be a council owned site that we're building new build on, housing association or section 106 sites for the need within that locality, we give them that need in that locality, we expect the providers to meet that need in that locality. The good thing about the property purchase programme, that we're buying extra right to buys, you're correct, 59 properties have been sold over the last 18 months through the right to buy, we've purchased nearly 300. A lot of those have been three and four bedroom accommodation because Councillors wanted regular updates on that and that's pretty good. They don't have the right to buy on those properties we're buying because the temporary accommodation for homeless households. Thank you, Councillor Turbinoff. Thank you. Section 5.2 sets out some joint approaches which housing and children's services are going to take and in particular it highlights being vigilant to the risks and impacts of child sexual exploitation, which I welcome. However, there's obviously multiple types of safeguarding risk which housing could have an impact and implication for, not least seriously violence or child criminal exploitation. So I would just like to see those acknowledged in there so it's not just highlighting one type of risk but it's naming some of the other risks which poor placement decisions could heighten. I think that's an excellent point. I can certainly include that within the revised document so that you are a work Councillor. We're going through a restructuring housing management and in housing needs. Every one of the new JDs requires safeguarding to be at the full utmost importance for those job descriptions and it's contained within that so we can certainly put that in this document. Thank you. I think members of the committee have covered some questions that we've had. Are there any other questions? Just a quick one. Family lose their home, divorce, man, woman with child, obviously the woman with child gets priority to be housed. Where does the man sit? So how we adopt it within Islington is whoever gets the child support will get the accommodation requirements for that child. So that's predominantly the female. So if it is a female with one child, they would be allocated to two bedroom property, the male or same sex female that may not have the child support would be allocated to one bedroom property because it always goes on the child support, not on who said, she said, what said. Thank you. Again, thank you so much. I guess, is this going to be an ongoing or is this the part that stops with us for now? If Councillor Cinco, you know, ask me to write another. I think next time. Well then yes, but hopefully no. I think next time she would have to come through the chair. Can I just say I've made a mistake. I've circulated the presentation slides and you've already got them for the Home Office hotels. I didn't say in the email it's confidential and I sent it to members in this room. So please keep that confidential. Thank you so much again. Thank you. Right. That's that. I work on. I'm Councillor, you did flag something to me. I just keep my mind, but I don't want to miss. I just note that we agreed at the last meeting that we'd receive an officer update on proposed changes to communal heating hours. I hope we can find time on the November agenda for that item. Yes, we will. And who's going to bring that for me? Yes, the report's actually going to the executive, I think in November. And we're happy to bring a copy or send a copy for your next meeting. I would have thought should work. I mean, I think going forward, I think what my colleague was raising, they should have come here first. Right. Before going anywhere else. As long as we get to see it. So I think it does. I think your next meeting is before the executive meeting, albeit they're relatively close. And we are somewhat dictated to by the by the sort of cycle. So when we have to take those decisions, I think it does come here slightly ahead. And so you would have an opportunity to provide input comment. We do encourage your team. Everyone's doing a great work. We do encourage certain things to be brought to our attention. You could make executive calls on what does it if you're not sure. Happy to just ask me or something and then or whether the chair is. But I think it would be welcome. There are certain pieces of work that have come to us and having to feed in rather than just by the time we get to the execs. Thank you so much. Oh, the end show. I don't know if it's part of the thing, but while we've got the wise men of the mountain of the council, can the people of Andover Estate know what's happening with Osborne's with all them brand new empty flats sitting there? I think that's like any other good, good, good observation. And I guess that's from on the ground in this conversation. It would be good that we actually know what's the update on that. Has there been an uptake on all of that or I wouldn't want you to have an answer now. Sorry, is this the Osborne, the new build that some have moved into blocks and some haven't? Yeah, Osborne's went in liquidation, but they built the new build on the Andover. We have informed all the residents and the board councils. We can get an update. I'm mindful of that. If you have the information you can send to us as a committee, but definitely at the next committee meeting, it would be great that we actually have more concrete information. Thank you for bringing that to our attention as well. Well, if there is no pressing matter, I would like to bring the meeting to an end. Thank you.

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