Transcript

and I am the Chair of the Housing Overview and Scrutiny Committee. So members of the committee, I will now call your name in alphabetical order. Please switch on your microphone and confirm your attendance. Councillor Austin. Present. And we have apologies from Councillor Ayres. Councillor Kishane. Present. Councillor Mrs Graham. Councillor Gavindya. Present. Councillor Macleod. Present. Councillor Rigby. Present. Councillor Tiller. Present. Councillor Varafaraj. Present. And also would like to welcome Councillor Dickinham, who is the cabinet member for housing, and Mrs Price, who is the deputy chair of the Borough Residence Forum. And also we'd like to also welcome representatives from the Social Housing Regulator, sorry. There they are at the back. Hi. Great, yeah, OK. So first item is the minutes from the 3rd of October 2022. Are there any objections to confirming the previous minutes of the 3rd of October? You're OK. OK, so item number two is declarations of interest. Are there any decorations of either pecuniary or other vegetable or non-registable interests? I'll just start myself. I'm a member of Community Renewable Energy, Wandsworth, which do have dealings with the council, but I abjure no financial benefit from my involvement. So Maurice, sorry, Councillor Macleod. I am a council tenant in Wandsworth. Councillor Tiller. I am also a council tenant in Wandsworth. And I'm a council leaseholder. Is it Goshein or Goshein? You can skip the H in the middle. Skip the H, right, OK. So Councillor Goshein, sorry, I've been calling you Goshein all this time. OK, so the 3rd item is the Borough Residence Forum report of the meeting held on 20th November 2024. So, yeah, if we can remind members to give attention to view to the Borough Residence Forum when considering related items on tonight's agenda. And Mrs Price, would you have any comments? No, thank you, Chair. The meeting accurately represents the items that we discussed as part of the housing committee tonight. And I am here to answer any questions that members may have. Are there any questions? Councillor Varafraj. Hi, Marlene. I was just wondering if you could tell us a little bit about how the Tenants Conference went. The Tenants Conference, I think we had about 80 members. The thing about the Tenants Conference is it's difficult to choose a day when it's convenient to everyone. Because if you do a day during the day, then people have to take time off work to come to the conference. If you do it in the evening or weekend. So I thought this year we had a really good turnout. This year as well, the housing management listened to us from the last years, because the last few years we had TPAS delivering the conference. And we weren't happy with how TPAS was delivering the conference. Sorry, Mrs Price, can you tell us what TPAS is? Tenant Participation Advisory Service. Sorry, I apologise. So we knew that the officers could do a better service. We asked for the officers to do a better service and they did. We also had the fire brigade who pointed out the difficulties of communal areas having plants and bubbies and everything in it. It showed quite clearly how difficult it is for them to get up if there's a fire and get out. We also had the social regulator come and talk to us, which was also really good. And that's about it. Does anyone else have any questions? Thank you. Fantastic. OK, so can we note the report for information? Brilliant. OK, so item four, the Grenfell Tower inquiry paper and phase two report findings, which is paper number 24-350. And is it going to be Mr. Stewart? Mr. Stewart, OK. Thank you, Chairman. The final report into the Grenfell fire was published in September of this year, over seven years since the tragedy in which 72 residents lost their lives. The report is predictably critical of all the parties involved, including successive governments, the council and the TMO, the London Fire Brigade and all consultants and contractors responsible for the design and installation of the cladding system. Particularly, criticism was reserved for the manufacturers of the cladding and insulation materials who appear complicit in promoting flammable products for use in high rise properties. The police, in conjunction with the CPS, will now decide if criminal prosecutions are to follow. On a positive note, the report made no specific recommendations for social animals, and it should be noted that the thousands of blocks still with flammable cladding, the vast majority to be found in the private sector, with nearly all social housing blocks now remediated. In the area of building and fire safety, the council has been extremely active over the past six years, working to comply with new requirements and making our blocks safer and our residents better protected. Notable pieces of work include the stripping and successful re-cladding of the three non-compliant tower blocks in Wandsworth at a cost of 18 million pound. The fitting of premises information boxes and new way finding signage to all high rise blocks. The retrofitting of sprinklers to sheltered housing schemes and hostels. And the procurement of fresh fire risk assessments and establishment of an in-house building safety inspection team. Turning back to the report, background is given in paragraphs one to eight with specific recommendations relating to building safety in paragraphs nine through to 17. And more general recommendations around emergency planning within local authorities in paragraph 19. Key recommendations include the possible redefinition to what constitutes a high risk building looking into its occupation and use, as well as the design of the building itself. Wandsworth has 148 high rise buildings currently in scope. Each requiring a building safety case report to be produced to the regulator on each. A possible reconsideration of the state put evacuation strategy with a possible move to a partial or full evacuation strategy for some blocks. However, this will be difficult and costly to implement for existing blocks. Revisiting the issue as to how residents with mobility issues can be protected or assisted in the event of a fire. And the possibility of licensing contractors working on high risk residential buildings and the mandatory accreditation of fire risk assessors. Further reports will be submitted as these proposals are developed and I'm happy to take any questions.

Fantastic, thank you Mr. Stewart. So would anyone like to ask any questions? Councilor, Mrs. Graham? Thank you, thank you, Chair. In paragraph five, page four, you have mentioned TMOs and what they picked up, poor working, door closers, etc. But I have no information here as regards to scrutiny of what you've done with the, you know, the basic ten cooperatives, TMOs in Wandsworth. You know, what has the management and maintenance been investigated? So that we are sure as counselors what is in place, respects for flannables and fires, an e-bike now can start a fire. And fire brigade, and also most importantly, the training of staff, which I feel is integral for the confidence of the staff and the reassurance and the confidence that residents know that they feel safe. Thank you, Chair. So we- Sorry, sorry, Mr. Crawley's. So the co-ops, the management of those is overseen by the area housing teams. And the resident participation officers will undertake a quarterly monitoring check and report with each of the co-ops. And we altered that post-grantful to include more points in relation to sort of health and safety and fire safety to help provide that kind of monitoring and reassurance. And then there's an annual monitoring report as well where those issues are addressed with the co-op chair. And also overseen by the area housing manager within the area team. And then we have quarterly co-op forum meetings as well, where those sorts of issues are discussed. And we work really closely with the co-ops. So if they do have concerns about fire safety or have any questions for us, then they will liaise with our building safety inspection team or with the area team to get advice on how they might deal with individual issues affecting their blocks or estates. [BLANKAUDIO] Sorry, and just a further point, there's also fire risk assessments, obviously, for each of those blocks in the same way that we have fire risk assessments for the blocks we directly manage. So we monitor to make sure that the actions and issues raised on those fire risk assessments are addressed. And that's what's monitored through those monitoring reports, as well as the routine inspections that are undertaken. Do you want to follow up, Councillor, Mr. Graham? [INAUDIBLE] Do you want to follow up the question? Yeah. The most important thing, and it's great to know that tenants want to manage their properties. You, as officers, are confident and have great knowledge. And when you actually see the areas that have not been put into place yet because of government regulations and checkings. How are you actually keeping them abreast separately to the management and maintenance so that they feel confident and it's reciprocated and residents feel safe on? because there are 3,000 units, which is a lot. If there are regulations that we need to act on or enforce or changes to how we need to manage those properties, then that's communicated to the co-ops as well, so they do the same. In some cases, we would do those tasks for them to make sure that they're done, because ultimately we're the freeholder. So we're responsible for those blocks and there are tenants in there. It's just obviously the management that's devolved to the cooperatives. And so I did forget to come back to you on the training point. We offer the same training that we provide to our staff, to the cooperative staff as well, to try to make sure that they're obviously know what they're doing. And as I say, if they were ever unsure, then there's that relationship where they would come to us and ask questions anyway. Councillor Gavino. Your Chair, my question really is about common parts. Both in terms of final risk of stuff in, stored in common parts. It often happens, people leave all sorts of things, including kind of a shoe rack just outside the front door, because that's what they prefer. But some of them could be fire risk materials, but also obstructions. And as Councillor, Mrs. Graham mentioned, e-bikes and e-scooters, which have a tendency to blow up at times. So what are we doing about sort of making sure that they are inspected, inspected with care? People advised about what to do, what not to do, and then giving them some sort of alternatives where some of those things can be kept. So our state services team and the building safety and especially they undertake regular inspections of our blocks to kind of pick up on those issues. So it's not just, we deal with them in a reactive basis. We will go there, we will look around the block and see if there's any kind of issues like that that we need to address. And what we tend to do when those items are sort of found is we will write to residents of the block, sometimes to an individual resident if it's clear that there's lots of items outside their particular property. And we will explain to them that those items shouldn't be there, that they're causing obstruction or they're combustible, and then expect them to clear them. We usually give them a deadline by which to do that before we clear them ourselves. But as part of that communication, we'll often, I think we always will, explain to them that there's the option to rent a store, a little garage, and to contact us if they've got any sort of queries or concerns. because you're right, it's difficult with particularly something like a mobility scooter. We wouldn't be demanding that someone remove that and saying that we would remove it if they didn't. It'd be a much different kind of process in terms of how we would liaise with that particular resident. And also, we take a fairly pragmatic approach as much as we're able to in the sense that if people have done things that are clearly designed to just improve the feel of the communal areas, such as some plant pots or door mats, that's not the sort of thing that we'd necessarily make people remove. It might be that we might ask them to move them to a slightly different location or to use a different type of plant pot. But we wouldn't sort of just say you have to clear everything from the communal area. Do you want to follow up? It's not a follow up, it's slightly different. Okay. >> One of the things that, on things like fire safety, and in fact anything that comes as a new measure to be introduced to make people feel comfortable and safe and so on, is that authority will go at great guns and sort everything out, introduce new regimes and so on, and everything works fine. But it's about also keeping pace, keeping it updated and keeping people informed and so on. And particularly things like safety of fire, fire-related safety measures. What have we got in place which says, well, residents will have a refresher every whatever, that blocks will be inspected every six months, eight months, ten months, two months, whatever. So what regime have we got in place that keeps this both us on top of the thing and the residents fully informed of what's being done for them and what they can do to assist themselves? Ms. Willman. So on engaging with residents, so there's a couple of things. We've, since Grenfell really, after Grenfell we had a fire safety sort of specialist version of home life to give an update on everything around fire safety. And then since then, in every edition of home life, we make sure that there's something in around fire safety, and it's included things like e-bikes, charging. And we've also worked over the last maybe two years to always have something in for the borough commander. So he feeds into what's in that article. We also cover some of that in the annual report to residents, so there's some issues around fire safety. And we've kept residents informed of things like the building safety inspection team. And we've had articles saying, you may notice there's boxes up in your communal areas and this is what they're for. So I think home life is a great way of doing that. And also we've set up a fire safety steering group, so that's just for those living in high rise buildings. And we had our first meeting in September, and then through the residence conference we've also had a few more people who said they want to be part of that meeting. So we're going to use that meeting to create things like a residence portal so they can access information about fire safety in their block, things like their fire risk assessment. And also to help us about how we make sure we engage in the best way possible with those residents, so they're kept informed of all those things. Council Dickerton, do you want to add to that? No, okay, so Council Rigby. Yeah, hi, because the previous administration were quite anti-bike hangers, we are starting from years back in where we should be. There are still estates that have no bike hangers. There are still estates where people are having to carry their bikes upstairs and attach them to railings. There's not enough bike hanger provision to take away the risk that people are going to be taking them upstairs. I would urge you to do a full audit of the estates and check, is the supply meeting the demand, because I really don't think it is. Yeah, I mean, our colleagues in the transport strategy team, they are in the process, I think, of doing that audit as we speak. And they have a plan and sort of program of when they're expecting to install more bike enclosures on the estates where they've identified as there being a lack of supply. And so, that issue is in the process of being addressed at the moment. And we're always open to putting in more bike hangers where we can and where people want them, either through small improvement budget or from external grant funding. Okay, so follow up to that, could I, so that audit's happening. Could I ask that the transport team email all the counselors to ask them which estates they think are missing hangers? I mean, I could reel off quite a few that aren't even in my ward. And also, I think we need a plan for when we've got to the point where every single tenant who needs a bike space has one, and that is something that we keep up with. I mean, we've got, the one estate I'm thinking of has like 150, I counted 150 car parking spaces and not a single place to store a bike. So, we, I know we've got a lot of years to catch up with because of how it was treated in the past. But we do need a plan for it. Yeah, of course, I will speak to that team and feed that back to them. Mr. Price, did you want to, about this subject? Yes, thank you very much. Those that have got residence association know that part of your tenant's agreement, your tenant's and resident's agreement is that you're not allowed to have any things in the corridor. And it's, and the management, the area housing managers do, when they do a walkabout, put notices up, say please remove this. When we had the fire, then we had the tenant's conference the other day, the other week, sorry. The fire brigade was talking about having things in the corridor, and somebody mentioned we can have a plant pot. And I calmly reminded them a plant pot with plastic plants is very dangerous, because it's very flammable and it could damage the burning plastic. Contrary to what Council Rigby has saying, we do not, and housing management does not allow bikes to be hung on railings. So if your residents are doing that, please advise them, they cannot do that. Another thing is, most residents association that have, that attend meetings, they can apply to sibs for bike hangers. And quite a lot of residents association have got bike hangers because they've asked for them. If a resident's association asks for a bike hanger, they can apply to sibs at the area housing panel. Thank you. Please do not have your residents doing hanging bikes on the railings. Thank you. >> I don't think Council Rigby wants that at all. No, that's the thing I'm absolutely saying that we shouldn't have. Some of the places I'm talking about, they don't have a very active association, so they don't know who to ask for. So there's like a barrier, they don't know that there's funding available, and that's why they need help from the officers to do it. But I absolutely agree, we cannot have bikes hanging on railings, they need a bike shed. Yeah. >> For the second half of the year, the first half of the year, it's only residents associations that could apply for sibs. The second half of the year, any residents association, any estate can apply for sibs. And that's done by the area housing manager or the resident participation officer, bring projects forward. So they only have to ask. Yeah, I think a lot of it, I mean obviously we don't have a majority of estates with residents associations. So it's those- >> I thought just the second half of the year. Yeah, but it's those who don't have the residents associations that really need to be alerted and really need to understand they can apply for this and do it. And if there's a little bit of proactivity around that, I think that would be what Councilor Rigby, I think, was pointing out. Councilor Farrafraj. Thank you, Chair. I've got a few questions, but the first one kind of links to the discussions that's been going on. When a new tenant is moving into a tower block for the first time, do they kind of get an introduction to what it means to live in a tower block, such as like how do you use the community spaces and what can you put there and not. I know you mentioned like a tenant's portal, but is there like an initial introduction into living in a tower block? Yeah, so I mean, regardless of whether our new tenants live in tower blocks or not, they're given a home safe booklet at sign up, which is a really kind of extensive detailed booklet about living in that building and the sort of things they need to be aware of, what they do in the case of emergencies, etc. And that's just being revised at the moment, actually, to sort of take into account anything new and things that have changed. So yeah, that's handed to every new resident. There's also obviously the regular features that we do in home life, so there's kind of those reminders that come to residents about what we do and what they should do in the event of a fire or another emergency. And obviously there's, as Ms. Will mentioned, the Fire Safety Steering Group, and we've got quite good membership of that now. But we're always looking for more members to join that, so we can learn from residents, I suppose, about what they want to hear from us about the building and what information is important to them and interesting for them. And then obviously, yeah, apply that. My other question was kind of going back to- Can you pull your mic down a little bit? Sorry. Just going back to the report, obviously the recommendations for impacting the social landlords, all of the recommendations for higher risk buildings. So obviously that definition said that any building above 18 meters or seven stories indicated a higher risk building. Is that the only indicator or the only kind of factor that kind of makes a building a higher risk building? Or is there other factors that are kind of taken into consideration when determining that? It's, apologies, it's currently defined by height. But as I've said in the report, they're going to look at other factors such as the use and occupation of that building. So the profile of the residents, for example, sheltered housing, which is low rise, will get a higher risk because it's sheltered housing, you've got vulnerable tenants present. So that's what the government are signaling that they're going to be looking at and not just have a addition of high risk just based on height. I'm sorry, just my final question is, in Wandsworth we have the highest number of tower blocks for any local authority in London. So can this committee get regular updates on how we're performing in terms of fire safety? I think we've been quite good at briefing this committee since Grenfell. We've heard about ten reports come here and we'll carry on as things develop. Okay, Councillor Tiller? Thank you, Chair. Grenfell was a horrible charity and shows how important fire safety is. And I can absolutely understand people wanting a zero tolerance approach after that. But I think there is a risk of reacting so harshly as to create other problems, especially considering the low incomes that many state residents are on. And the feedback I've been getting from many constituents is that officers have been overzealous in removing items that were not an obstruction from communal balconies or items that were only there temporarily. And there have been quite long petitions to that effect. So for instance, one resident lost several hundred pounds worth of building materials this way. Building materials that were obviously new and going to be used on the same day. And we can debate about plant pots, but some people were very attached to them and enjoyed having them on their balconies and were upset to have them taken away so quickly as these swoops by officers have done. And so can more balance be brought to the issue of dealing with abstractions or just items in general, not necessarily abstractions on communal balconies? I think some staff have been overzealous and applied a zero tolerance policy. We'd expect them now to be more pragmatic, and I think training has been given. So if you look at the means of escape itself, if it's fully enclosed, it's much more risky to have flammable items or obstruction, items obstructing that area than an open balcony. So it's regrettable if some people have lost possessions, but we should generally be putting a notice on all of them before we remove any. And certainly somebody who's storing a large amount of building materials, I wouldn't expect them to be removed without a warning. So we'll continue to monitor it, but I think myself and Mr. Crawley expect our staff to be pragmatic and sensible in their approach. Yeah, because some of the communal areas can be really well decorated and work really well looked after by the tenants, and they're very proud of that. So yeah, I mean that's a really good idea, sorry. Sorry, no, no, Councillor Mrs. Graham, sorry. Thank you, Chair. Just following on from what Councillor Rigby is saying, and following on from what Mrs. Price was saying, and Mrs. Price was exactly right. Sorry, Councillor, Mr. Graham, can you pull your mic down a second? Following on from what Councillor Rigby was saying, and Mrs. Price is exactly right and correct, estate residence associations do have that opportunity, they have the voice. But also those estates who do not have residence association do have their council estate manager. And they should be really tuned in to knowing if they're working hard with their residence. And of course, as the training is going to be taking place further, this is something following the discussions here tonight. And in any case, that would be taken care of. But my question is, item 11 and 12, basically, it says, following from what Mr. Stewart was saying, the report said it wants to have a definition widened to take account of the nature of its use, which is very sensible. But how long is time? We really need to know how long time is. And the second one is, and it's very worrying for especially those on high rise or in any case, when is the next review of official building guidance going to take place for stay put because the 1960s buildings were concrete and safe, but with the new materials. It's a timing issue, really, and how we can get that information. Thank you, I'd like to hear, please. I'm not aware of the timing at the moment, but we are a member of London Council's Fire Safety Group, so we are in touch with government. And as things develop, we will come back to you. But at the moment, all we have is the summary of the Grand Final Inquiry Report, the final, and these are the recommendations. So they will be looked at. Some may come to be legislated on, others may not. But we will keep the committee advised. Okay, Council Cavinio. Thank you, my reading of the paragraph nine where he talks about peeps is that that regime is yet to be introduced. So could you just give us an indication as to when that regime might come in? And then within that, what measures will be incorporated so that the individual plans are updated and kept? How does conditions change, and therefore, how do we ensure that those will be updated and be appropriate? A short summary of the peeps issue is that when we had wake and watch measures in our blocks that we had to remediate, Sudbury House, Castlemaine, and now Elliott and Wentworth. Part of that requirement is that you assess the residents within that block to identify those with mobility issues who would struggle to evacuate in the event of a fire. Because you've got wake and watch measures, which requires a 24 hour, seven day a week presence in the block, you have a control. So you are able to assist those people to evacuate, in certain circumstances, in the event of a fire. As soon as staple is introduced again, those fall away, so the peeps aren't required and we don't collect them. And the previous government tried to look at this and there was a lot of pressure from disability groups, saying that disabled people were unfairly treated and at a significant disadvantage. And I recall that quite a lot of people who died in the fire had mobility issues in Grenfell. So they want to revisit that. The previous government couldn't square that particular circle, and this government is trying to do the same. But it is very difficult to assist people if you don't have a presence or control of the building, as you would in an office or a hospital, for example. So I think what it's going to be focused on is not evacuation but making vulnerable residents with mobility issues safer within their properties. So looking at measures to keep them safe in the properties and await evacuation by the brigade. So that's the way I think the thinking's going to go, but it's been reconsidered. Thanks, Chair. In a sense, I was reading this in conjunction with the vulnerable person's policy later on. And in a sense, if you're going to have one policy says, we're going to identify all the vulnerable people and do all sorts of things for them and with them. And then on the fire safety, we'll sort of say, we'll wait for measures yet to be introduced and so on. And its issue is about vulnerability. And having assessed vulnerability, what measures should we put in place that the information available is up to date as vulnerability has changed, as people's conditions change? And I appreciate that in case of a waking watch situation where you identify who might need evacuating and what method of evacuation might be most suitable for them. But this paragraph nine suggests to me that this is like an across the whole portfolio. The council would be expected to know who might need assistance in evacuation and therefore presumably have that information shared with the other blue light services. So they are aware of who is vulnerable, where are they, what are their vulnerabilities, and what are their evacuation needs. There's quite a lot of work, but he's just saying, well, when will it come in and how robust will both the regime be? And then our implementation of the regime be? So I don't want to jump the gun too much in the later paper, but the later paper, I hope, and we were discussing previously before this meeting that that is the first implementation of that cross departmental. You start with the housing team so that that is being flagged constantly, even if you're just calling about a minor repair. The paper, we'll come on to it, I don't want to jump the gun again, but then we think about what can be shared in between departments. So this paper starts with the housing department. We can discuss when we come on to it what is possible to share between departments. I think when it comes to PEAPs, the key thing is that there is a clear record that has been shared with both housing officers who will be the first respondents and the fire brigade. So that for me is almost baked into tonight's committee is that process towards identifying those vulnerable residents. Which as we'll come on to later is a broader category than just disabled residents. And while I'm on it, I was going to come on to the question of how we manage both the enforcement and the, because rather you raised the same point as Matthew has. Looking close is like the main example in my inbox at the moment, which is a very heavy-handed approach, which has upset residents who rightly feel like it's an overstep. And obviously the Grenfell report, there's a bouncing act within, the horrors of Grenfell is that what happens when you don't listen to the tenants and they don't feel like they've got a voice. If we are then enforcing fire safety a bit like some of the battles we had two, three, four years ago. If we're enforcing it without that resident voice and then feeling that they're taking part, we're kind of undermining ourselves on some of the spirit of the learnings from Grenfell anyway. So please send those cases through. And like I say, we have now notified and responded on the example of working close, whereby we did go a bit too hard. Thank you. Any more questions? Councilor Austin. Thank you very much, Chair. Just going on with regards to the recommendations again. There's some things that are going to come in and plan a lot like secondary fire escapes and so you're needing two stairwells on buildings. And there's other recommendations that have been made as well. As far as us as the council are concerned on these recommendations, are we going to commit to, and what is our policy? And are we going to commit to implementing these recommendations in full on all new build council buildings going forward? We are required to comply. These are suggestions at the moment. I'm not sure how many of these will come forward. But as they do, we will prepare for them. But we don't want to get ahead of ourselves and do abortive work, which could have happened with further recommendations from the interim report. If we'd have done some of those things, it's not been followed up. So we will comply and we will report back here regularly on that compliance. Councilor Mr. Graham. Following on from Councilor Austin, in a way I'm looking at page six, licensing regime for contractors on high rise buildings. It's very important that contractors working on high rise buildings should be licensed and come under some scope of the new regulator. But the concern is this may narrow the pool of available contractors. Increasing the price and should increase assurance over the standard of work. So when you have the new development or when there is major works, naturally you'll have to put this in the specification. So that's going to be quite hard when you're looking at new major works going forward. So when does that come into place, unless I've missed something? Is it sort of the same as Councilor Austin? Yes, it's a recommendation. I mean, the government will be aware of the problems if they start licensing contractors. That there'll be a catch up period where contractors need to get themselves licensed and that can affect the work. But I'm sure that the ministry will be aware of that and will take that into account. So, again, with all the others, we don't know when it's going to come into effect, if it does. Could I just follow on? I mean, with new specs going forward, that surely would be in the spec. That the flammables and the fire safety is, I just wanted reassurance that going forward with new developments and major works that this would be in the spec for any going out to tender. Licensing wouldn't be because it's not a requirement, but there's an understanding that the building regulations would be adhered to by all parties. Did you want to ask a question? No, okay. No, I was. Yeah, go on, if you want to. I was going to say for Councilor Graham's comfort, if I may, for new bills. I'm a resident member of the Building Safety Regulator, and one of the things that's happening with new bills, it has to be signed off by the Building Safety Regulator towards the planning stage. So that's a bit of comfort. That's for new bills only, going forwards. Not bills that are taking place now, because the regulation only came in last year. Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay, Councillor Mcleod. Thank you, yeah, like I'm sure everyone else in the room, I've sort of read a lot of this with humility. Looking at all of the sites on our thousand homes, the ones that we're planning that are already in the making. Are all the ones over 18, I've got a number of questions, are all the ones over 18 floors going to have dual doors? I'm making sure that we're, sorry, dual fire escapes, dual staircases, that's the words I'm looking for, thank you. I'll do them one at a time, just want to make sure that nothing we're planning is going to get overrun by sort of regulations that might come out later. I don't have that information, but I'll have to come back to you. I can jump in on that, which is that, so we haven't got to planning stage on any buildings over 18 meters yet. But we would, and on one of the buildings that we are planning, which is 14 story, we went back and have now implemented the two staircase rule, because it is part of the regulations now. So, yeah, so the Thousand Homes team is absolutely kind of up to date on these changes. And that covers not just fire safety on taller buildings, but also all fire safety to do with low rise and materials and balancing the lessons learned around insulation and things like that, while meeting net zero targets. So it's key on the development team's agenda. Councilman. Thank you for that. And so another question, on the personal, I'm trying to get the correct, the peeps, basically. My understanding is that people, maybe with mobility issues, can request having a personal plan made for them, a personal fire risk assessment made for them. Which is wonderful, but I would imagine quite costly if loads and loads of people come forward and say they want this, do we have money put aside, will we be compensated by government? How will we pay for this if lots of people want support? Right, and the PEEP is a personal evacuation emergency plan, just in case. That's the evacuation emergency, I think it's the other one that I was talking about. Right, okay, so it's the person sent at fire risk assessment, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. We haven't yet done any. So we're watching what the government requires us to do. And then we'll cost them out, and we may do them in-house, or we may get a consultant in. And then there's always a push for new burdens funding, but we will resource it as necessary. So this is a, it's not a peep, it's the other suggestion, which is a person centered fire risk assessment. Which is not about evacuation, as I said, it's about making people safe in the property. Wonderful, thank you. Yeah, I suppose I was just thinking, because that's a bit of a, we don't know how many people might. If people have the right to ask for them, we don't know how many people might ask for them. And I was just making sure that we thought about how we might pay for it if we had to. Okay, and then the third one was about a single regulator to oversee the construction industry. And I was just wondering what we will do in the meantime, before this is in place, before this exists. What will we do in the meantime to make sure that any new sites are okay? I mean, that's not really my area of expertise in those bills. There are, there's gateway processes already in place that have already come. And there's gateways for development in occupation. So those processes already have to be followed. So they wouldn't get the right sign off if they weren't following those processes. So we just need to make sure that they're doing those. And on our Homes for Wandsworth and also our major works, we are dealing with consultants around those different gateways and how to navigate them. Might just come in because it's a running theme tonight. I could get planning officers to write about new builds, regulations to be sent around to this committee. Because obviously, a lot of the social housing that we sign off isn't necessarily being built by the council. Affordable housing paper later is going to be section 106, so planners will be able to write down how it currently functions. And what the rules and regulations are around building safety and spectra when it comes to new build housing because I mean most of the housing association products that we're going to be talking about later will have gone through that process. So I can get that sent around. Any more questions? Okay, we're happy to receive this report for information. Brilliant, okay. So on to paper number five, which is tenant's satisfaction measures submission data, and it's paper number 24351. Sorry, 351, yeah. And Ms. Wilwin? Thank you. So those of you who've been around as long as I have will remember, we used to produce the AQPR, which was the Annual Quality Performance Review. And that was a requirement to government, and every department did it, and it was basically an annual performance report on how you've done. And that was mainly around housing management for us. So the requirement for that stopped, and we stopped doing that some years ago. But since the introduction of tenant satisfaction measures, which you'll remember, I produced a report, I think maybe in the summer, where we talked about the role of the new social housing regulator, what requirements are going to be set out. So this report is a sort of hybrid of an update on the tenant satisfaction measures and sort of going back to the old days of the AQPR where we can give an update on our housing management performance through the last year. So you may have seen that the TSM benchmarks came out yesterday, which is a bit late for this report. But in future years, I'm hoping we'll improve this report, and we'll be able to do national benchmarks and all that kind of information. So for now, I'll just wither through some parts of the report. So if you see in paragraph seven, that sets out the themes of the tenant satisfaction measures. So they are keeping properties in good repair, maintaining building safety, respectful and helpful engagement, effective handling of complaints, responsible neighborhood management. And I think this is different to that by the paragraph number, isn't it? I don't know, sorry, I've got sidetracked, that's paragraph 13, isn't it? And then it goes on to talk about what the TSMs are. So there's 22 satisfaction measures, 12 of which are satisfaction measures. So they are what they say really, they're based on an annual perception survey. So things like satisfaction with the landlord, satisfaction with repairs, cleaning and maintenance. And then there's ten management measures which are around fire risk assessments, water risk assessments, asbestos assessments, gas safety, those sort of measures. So I just wanted to highlight some areas of good performance. So we've got 64% for our overall satisfaction. So that has been a significant increase from 54% in the previous survey. But also there are some areas where we weren't in the position we wanted to be at the end of last year. So measures such as in paragraphs 20 to 24 around some of the building safety measures. So for example on the water safety assessments, we weren't where we wanted to be at the end of the year. But we're now over 95% now. And what I would say about the water risk assessments is we've always done water quality testing. And we've been at 100% on those tests, so we're always ensuring that our water is safe. But we weren't in the position we wanted to be on the water risk assessments. But hopefully with some of those figures we've added in, you can see the reassurance that we've had a real push. At this point in the year, we're in a much better position, and across the border in the 90s. So that was all I wanted to say on the report. Apologies, I got a bit lost there somehow, but then just open to any questions really. You're covered admirably in this case. So if the committee would like to indulge me, just so if I can ask the first question. But our tenant satisfaction is down at 53% on repairs. And that's dropped from 57% last year. Could you, I mean, is this a worry? Yes, yes it is. I mean, as I think you're aware, we put a significant amount of work into improving the position in relation to repairs and repairs completed within target. So that did improve quite significantly from 22, 23 to last year. And we were expecting to see an increase in the satisfaction with repairs as a result of that. And the latest figures we've received on that measure suggest it's now at 58%, so there has been an increase now. But it's not a big enough increase, and it's still not where we want it to be. So there's a lot of work going on at the moment, undertaken by me in terms of the ongoing contract monitoring. So that's looking at the repair satisfaction measures that we received from the transactional survey. So that's when a repair is completed, a text message is sent to the resident, and then they say how satisfied they are with that repair. So we're looking at those figures that we get on a kind of ongoing quarterly basis, and then raising them with this specific contractor. And if there's issues, obviously working with them to see how that could be improved. But more broadly, we obviously want to speak to residents and find out what their concerns are, why there's this discrepancy between the repairs completed within Target and then the satisfaction. So we'll be talking to BMG who undertook these surveys for us to get a bit more data from them, a bit more information. BMG. Sorry, they're the surveying company who undertook these for us. And then we'll also have a focus group next year where we talk to residents about essentially why they're not satisfied and what we can do to alter that. The air repairs contracts run until October 26, so part of those conversations I think will be looking at whether the model we have at the moment is the right one and whether it's serving our residents' best. And we'll take our residents' views and that will help inform what decisions we make in terms of the next round of repairs contracts. So first hand I saw was Councillor Goshane. Thank you, Chair. My first question really is about the overall satisfaction metric and the rise in that. Because that may be the metric, which is the headline metric that this administration could use to say that things are getting better. But it's quite a vague and nebulous metric really. I mean, what does overall satisfaction mean? It means different things to different people. So for example, a refugee family that's been recently settled in the country and are grateful for a roof over their head. Obviously, you've got to see things very differently, let's say, from somebody who's been a tenant for 20 years and has been paying rent and is concerned about value for money. So even though it might be used as the headline metric, it's really the most meaningless metric of all the metrics here. And I think, yeah, if we dig down further into the measures, those are the most important metrics. I mean, I'm a lease holder, but lease holders share many of the same concerns as tenants. The two most important ones are repairs and maintenance and complaints. And those are the two areas where the council has been performing at least well. I suppose Councillor White's partly stolen my thunder, but why are we falling back in those measures? So you partly answered regarding repairs and maintenance, but what about complaints as well? The complaints figures, obviously, are another one that stands out as being not where we'd like it to be. And again, it's one where I could speculate about why it might be the residents aren't satisfied with our complaints sort of process in the response to those. But I think the way to look into it further and improve it is through speaking to them and having those focus groups next year. I mean, again, the latest figures suggest an improvement to that area, I think it's up to 22%, Ms. Wilma, correct me if I'm wrong. But that's still too low, it's still not as high as we'd like it to be. And I think the work that we're doing with the Housing Ombudsman reviewing their kind of spotlights that they do on particular areas. And the learning from complaints that we receive, whether that's cases of maladministration or occasionally the odd cases of severe maladministration. It's working out where we've let residents down, compensating residents appropriately. And then also looking at what we can do to stop that from happening again. And sometimes that's changing our policies and procedures, sometimes it's training issues. And they're the kind of things that we've been much better at over the last year, 18 months, two years, than I think perhaps we have done historically. So I'm expecting that to continue to improve, but like I said, we're not going to rest on our laurels. We know it's not what we want it to be. So we need to speak to those residents to actually find out what they weren't happy with about that process. Thank you, I think part of the explanation might be difference in expectations between what success means to the council and what it means to residents. And I imagine some of that sort of opportunity for feedback that residents are given will help to sort of fine tune that. So that the council and residents see things from the same perspective. As Elise told, one example is, for example, with lift repairs. I once put in a member's inquiry regarding the success rate or the number of days that lifts are operational in the borough. And I think the success rate is something like 95.2% or something like that. I can't remember the exact figure. Which that figure was presented to me as a successful one. And in most walks of life, you get 95% out of 100, it's good. But if you think about it in terms of lift, that's two weeks of the year when the lift isn't working. And that has a huge impact on people's lives. So could the problem be that perhaps the expectations that the council has for its own performance doesn't really match with residents? Can I ask, okay, Mr. Crawley. Ms. Ormond. Well, I was just going to say on lifts, I think we're at 98% now. But yes, I agree with you. It's difficult, isn't it? Because we might say we're at 98% and it looks good. But if you're the resident who's then got the lift that's not working, it doesn't really matter that you say it's at 98%. So I think all these overarching percentages, while they're useful, as well as overall satisfaction with the landlord, you're right, their perceptions aren't they? So some people will answer us as the landlord. Some people will answer us as the council. So I think these are just one part of reviewing our performance. Because residents' experience, they're not necessarily interested in that big overarching number where you say, well, when I add it all together, the percentage is X. So that's why we've got lots of other areas in place where we're inspecting the lifts, for example, to make sure they're working. And we do work closely with residents if lifts are out in those blocks of making sure they're aware of what the issues are. And putting in adjustments, for example, if we do major works and replace the lifts for those who require the lift to get out of their properties. We may even move them into temporary accommodation for the times that we're working on those lifts. So I agree with you. I think satisfaction and overarching percentages are useful, but they're not the be all and end all. Councilor Dick? Yeah, I don't know whether you're going to be happy or disturbed that the exact same point was made by Councilor Hogg today. Regarding lifts in our actual interview with the regulators, so I'm sure we're all very happy to hear that. And so we actually have a paper that we want to bring forward which goes into that specific detail. Because we have done a deep dive on the lift performance, whereby we've worked out that the measures by just going off of the timing of how long the lift has been in service is not a useful measure in terms of repairs. So we can definitely bring that forward. And I was just going to come in on the point you made around satisfaction with a landlord's approach to handling complaints. Because exactly as you had framed it in regards to how people interpret different things, I think we can improve on this 100%. I also think baked into this data, a bit like the question about safety in the tenant satisfaction measures is, whether sometimes the question is people are reading into it different things. So if you're satisfied with the landlord's approach to handling complaints, if you've lost your claim, you're going to be unsatisfied, right? Because you didn't, it wasn't the outcome that you wanted in the same way that the safety question is sometimes ambiguous. Because like you say, it could be read into as to do with the ASB on the estate or fire safety, right? It's a hard one to dive into. So we are aware of those ambiguities and we're trying to slice them up to think like, what would the tenant think about when they're answering that question? I think you might want to reflect on saying we're going to try and improve on that 100%. We'll improve on that because I'm not sure we'll hit 100%, but Councilor Austin. Thank you very much. I'm just wanting to, sorry, I'm going to want to drill down a little bit more on the detail and just from Councilor White's point with the 53%. Obviously, the cost of repairs has gone up over 1.5 million pounds in the last 12 months. But the satisfaction rating of those repairs has gone down again consecutively for the last two years. So when you say we're looking into measures, are we looking at performance management of contractors or ceasing contracts with contractors that are not performing? Have we got KPIs to look at with regards to the contractors and measures like that because we've got a significant increase in the amount of money we've input into repairs. But a decrease in the satisfaction of those repairs. So the two, we need to close that gap and marry them up. I agree totally. The measures we're looking at in this report were gathered early part of last year. I think this will correct me if I'm wrong. So there's a lag between, obviously, the position now and the position back then in terms of what I think residents would experience. And we know the latest figures are 58%, so an increase of 5%. And as I said before, that's positive because things are moving in the right direction, but it's not enough. There needs to be more investment there in terms of time and resources and trying to improve the position. And we are meeting with, as I say, the main contractors on a monthly basis and looking at this particular issue, satisfaction with repairs and how that could be improved. We also, sometimes things don't work out with our contractors because they can't necessarily improve to the level that we would like them to. So two of our tentative contracts did come to an end by mutual agreement at the end of September and we have a new repairs contractor dealing with two of those tentative contracts. So I'd expect to see an improvement that's linked to that as well. So action is taken and contractors are also defaulted if their repairs aren't completed within target. So there's a kind of ongoing financial penalty for them if they're not performing in that sense. But when we dig deeper into the survey results with VMG and then when we also do the focus group, I think we'll find out more about why residents aren't happy. It may be to do with things like the quality of work. It may be the fact that contractors are maybe not doing a first time fix. They may be turning up and then having to go and get materials and then come back. It could be those sorts of issues. And that's what I think we need more information on before I can come back to you and say this is what the issue is and this is what we're going to do to improve that satisfaction level further. Thank you for that. Could I just ask that once we've got that, will you come back to the committee and give us that answer? I'm assuming the answer, yes. And just two, on the overall satisfaction and on the building satisfaction, what is the satisfactory percentage? What are we trying to get to? I know 100% is the answer, but at what point do we go that's satisfactory? So on overall landlord satisfaction, that's been a key performance indicator for some years and there's one for tenants and there's one for leaseholds. So although this report only covers the tenant satisfaction, those questions are also asked of resident leaseholders. I can't, we'll come to that paper, but we have got targets. But yes, you're right. Ultimately, you want it to be 100%, but you've got to be realistic based on what you've achieved and then what you aspire to get up to. So I will come to it and then I'll remember. But it's around the mid 60s, I think, around 65, 67, based on previous targets. But yes, I think ultimately you'd aspire for it to be even higher. So Rigby. I've got three questions, so I'll do them one by one. And the first one is, so BMG did this survey and it was like 1,063 participants. How were those people selected and can we please have as an update the demographic breakdown of who those people were and how they match the demographic profile of tenants, please? So the BMG, who are a marketing company that do the surveys, they get all our resident data and they use that to pick a representative sample. So the full report has the demographic breakdown and gives the explanation for why it's a representative sample of our resident population. So that's published on our website and we also, I'm happy to send the link to that so people can see where that's publicly available. Brilliant, thank you. And so we've achieved the highest SAP rating of any London borough of a sea, which is brilliant. How difficult would it be to move to a B, and does this indicate that we would be getting to net zero? That's a big question. So I think we should take positives in the fact that we're at a SAT rating of C. And that's a sort of, it's like an average across the stock, but actually each individual property's got an EPC and we've got a system called Parity Portfolio where we are putting in all our energy data. And we've got a project at the moment where we're looking at those where we've got low EPCs or no EPC data and we're going out and doing new EPCs. I think we've got a whole program of green and sort of energy efficiency work, some of which are just ordinary three major works like roof and window renewals where that should increase the overall energy performance of the blocks. And also we are investigating new technologies like infrared technologies. We also look at solar panels on our roofs as standard when we're doing roof renewals. So there's lots of work going on. I don't think it's, it's not a simple question to answer that we could move to a B because some of our properties are old, some of them it's difficult. Some of them you get in from a D to a C, some you could easily get from a C to a B. So I think that's a longer term plan where, yes, we should be aiming to get them as energy efficient as we possibly can. Thank you. Final question. This is going to be a tough, this is a tough one. This is, so noise complaints, I think most councilors, their inbox is like heavily skewed to noise complaints. It's kind of wild that you can get graffiti removed in three days, but it's going to take five days for someone to deal with your noise complaint, which is going to have a much bigger impact on somebody's mental health and well-being. Their sleep, you know, we get people coming along to our advice sessions who, I've had a guy who lost several jobs just because he couldn't sleep. And I think we all know that the service for noise complaints is not where it should be. It's not been brilliant for a number of years. And I think it's probably because, you know, it's something that does need a bit of a fix. So it's not an overnight one, but I would like to get to a stage where you can get your noise complaint sorted as fast as you can get your graffiti taken off the wall. How do we get there? So those figures relate to the kind of written response, I suppose, to a noise complaint. So the way our system works is that if someone is concerned about or experiencing noise nuisance in their home, they can call the Joint Control Center. An estate services officer will come out usually within half an hour and be able to witness that noise. They will then report back to the area housing team. Usually the next day, report will go to them about what they witnessed. You know, whether there was noise nuisance, how loud it was, whether they think it was a statutory nuisance. These figures relate to what happens after that. So how quickly a kind of Section 80 notice is served or how quickly a letter is sent to the perpetrator to warn them about the issue and to advise them that obviously it shouldn't happen again and the consequences if it does. So I think we're pretty good at doing that quite quickly. Sometimes there can be delays, particularly with the service of a Section 80 notice. Because if it's a leasehold property, for example, and you've got private tenants in there, that notice has to be served on a named individual. So you need to try and work out who the people are in the property. And if it's private tenants of a leaseholder, we don't always have that information to hand. It can take a little bit of time to find it. So those tend to be the sort of cases where there's a bit of a delay and we don't necessarily meet the target. I think in terms of serving residents better, to an extent, it's about what happens after that. You know, that's just the initial report and the initial kind of response to it. If it's an ongoing noise nuisance issue, it's about how we support that resident by giving them a nuisance diary, by speaking to them relatively regularly to kind of let them know what's happening in relation to that case. And if they're really suffering and they're, say, for example, a vulnerable resident, it might be appropriate that we do a risk assessment and we do also an action plan with them to, say, set their expectations about what can happen and when. Because a lot of the times with noise nuisance complaints, it's also a bit about managing people's expectations because it isn't something you can necessarily resolve immediately. But in many cases you can because you just warned someone they don't do it again, particularly if you kind of scare them with a Section 80 notice. But there are lots of cases where you will have someone that which perhaps, you know, might be their children playing or it might be everyday living. They would guard as everyday living noise and the other person might not regard it as that. So it could be an issue to do with floor covering. So they're often complex cases and sometimes they do take a long time to resolve. But as I say, I think it's more about making sure we communicate effectively with residents and we manage their expectations about what is going to happen and when. And a Section 80 notice is? Apologies, it's a notice under the Environmental Protection Act of 1990 essentially warning the perpetrator of noise nuisance that they could be fined and taken to court. Thank you, Mr. Crawley. Councilor Givindia? Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I think the TSM regime is an innovation and I think a good one in that we'll have a national benchmark in due course. I think it'll be one where everybody will have a clarity as to how well their authority is or is not performing. So that's to be welcomed. I hope that it's going to be an ongoing review of what are the right measures and what are the right ways of doing it and so on. So I think that's, I hope we will have some input in that process in the future. One I was confused about this paper was that the data was collected between April 23 and March 24 and submitted afterwards. And then was found to be not as good as it should be and then we corrected it very, very rapidly. And it seemed to me to say, well, if it was so easily correctable, why the hell did we get it wrong in the first place? So it's a kind of a question that I'm sure Mr. Worth and his team will have asked. On water and asbestos, for example, I mean, they're both critical things and we corrected them quickly. So it's in a sense, it's not like it was a mammoth task. It seemed to be a manageable task. But then, so I want to know where the data we submitted is the data with that snapshot as of March 24? Or is it the one after the remediation on water and asbestos was done? So in a sense, which is the data? And then moving forward, next year when we get the annual report and subsequent years, what's the kind of time table we're looking at? Will it again be April to March data collection analysis and perhaps the first autumn post recess meeting? We will have a TSM submission and therefore, we'll know what is what. And each year, it'll be a kind of September, October thing. And his regulator also going to, in a sense, release his information at the same, roughly the same time in the year. So that we are in, we're not sort of, there's not a time lag between data and analysis and so on. So that's my kind of first kind of question. But the other is that 50% of our stock is occupied by leaseholders. And I know we do similar kind of assessment of leaseholder satisfaction as well. Would it actually make more sense to have the leaseholder satisfaction results and tenant satisfaction results in the same committee at the same time? So that we are actually looking at people who live on our estates to whom we have varying degrees of responsibilities and duties. And that we read the needs and wants of both those groups at the same time rather than do it a bit. So I'd hope that's something that you'd consider. There are whole series of areas where there are kind of, we find wanting or whatever. And I think these analyses are always problematic because this is a snapshot and there's a perception. Individuals will have a different perception. And of course, if you are at the receiving end of the poor repair, then you're going to give zero out of ten. And even if you get a good repair, chances are you're not going to give ten out of ten. So in a sense, that's the fact of life I've set in your place looking at these figures and torn my hair out occasionally. But what I am hoping we're going to do is certainly, just to recap, tenants and leaseholder data together and add some clarity on the timetable of when we collect, we release, and we discuss the TSMs. I can confirm that my hair has been pulled out. Do you want to talk to me? So these are from the end of the last financial year from perception surveys we carried out last summer. And then you submit them in around June. And then the regulator has to sort of approve the figures and undoes a bit of auditing of the figures that have been submitted, I think especially this year because it was the first year. So they did some auditing and querying of different local authorities and providers figures and how they've calculated them. And then I'm hoping it won't be as late as November when the figures come out next year because they're learning like we are about these submissions of data. I agree with you, I think generally our annual reports tend to go in September. And I think September makes more sense because it's less of a lag, isn't it, it's closer together. And I also agree with you about tenant and leaseholder satisfaction because we asked the survey at the same time. Obviously, a couple of the questions are different, but they're mainly the same. So yes, next year's report we'll have tenant and leaseholder together. Just to get my, in the sense of the dates right. So summer 23 is when the data was collected. And June 24 was when it was submitted. Am I right? So yeah, June 23, well it was around June, July, we did the perception survey, which was the satisfaction survey. Then the management measures, which were around water safety and asbestos, they were an end of year figure. So they were as of 31st of March, and then you had to submit them by June. Yeah, so there's a bit of a lag, but it's sort of up to us. At some point in the year, you have to have done that satisfaction survey. And we choose to do it at that time. Okay, Councillor Farrafrage. I've got a very specific question on mold, which is referenced on page 23, paragraph 37. We all know mold is a significant problem. I'm sure the councils across the table get a lot of case work, especially for me when I'm doing walk arounds on the Henry Prince Estate. It's almost guaranteed there's going to be at least one resident who's kind of bringing me into their house and showing me all the molds. There's often infants and children, they say that somebody from the council has come out, the mold's gone away, but it's come back. And obviously, it's great that we've got an introduction of the mold removal team and that 364 washes have been done. And whilst washes can eliminate mold, it's sometimes just temporary. So are we taking any other measures to permanently remove the molds? Thank you. When we established the mold removal team, obviously what we didn't want to do is what you described really, which is just do a mold wash and then leave it, and then obviously that mold would come back without the other kind of measures that are needed. So the way we set up the process was that the mold removal team would go in and remove the mold. They'd provide some advice at the same time, but what would happen after they've removed mold and taken before and after photos is that it would automatically start a process whereby the estate manager would then visit after that to the property to speak to the resident and to look at the other elements of the property, whether that's the ventilation or the heating. And the setup there, and basically give some more advice, but also to make sure that the extraction fan is working properly, or it's a humidistat fan, for example. Or the heating system is working properly and is being kind of used correctly. So there are other things that follow on afterwards and should follow on afterwards. And even when you do some of those measures, mold does still sometimes come back, because particularly if you've got an overcrowded property and it's very difficult for the residents to sometimes manage the situation despite us having extraction fans, etc. So if it does come back again, that's the sort of stage where we would then think, well possibly something like a positive input ventilation system might be the answer. Which generally speaking when we put those in, even though they're quite expensive, they do tend to resolve the situation for those residents. And then I think something that we need to improve on and we are going to improve on is there's post inspections after that work's undertaken. But it's also then following up with the residents to make sure that the mold hasn't come back. And what we're looking at at the moment is perhaps a kind of automated text message that goes, say for example, six months after the mold's been removed to kind of check in with that resident, say, contact us if the mold's come back and if you still have issues in your home. Most of the PIV systems are, you described it as expensive, but it's a lot cheaper than mechanical ventilation, heating recovery system, or something like that. Yeah, and cheaper than keep going back to remove mold and exactly, yeah. Ms. Graham? >> Thank you, Chair. Yes, indeed, mold, it really does come back. And what you're saying is, and in previous papers, that you've got your contractors to get rid of the mold, which goes. But then you, of course, it could have been by extractor fund non-working in the kitchen. There were heavy, there were a lot of people, and lots of washing and stuff like that, also central heating. I think that the lack, the lapse of time that takes place in somebody coming and checking the windows, like the maintenance, as well as the central heating. I think if there was a timeline quicker, so that they could actually be in place, rather than where the resident's saying, I've been told there's an extractor fund. But when is it coming, and did they begin to ring up? And I think that is possibly where the council, sadly, is falling down on its response time. I think that comes back to what I was referring to earlier about our repairs completed within target figure, which I think we would admit wasn't where we wanted it to be in sort of 2022, 23, but has improved quite significantly. So I think residents now will find that they're getting a much quicker response in terms of those sorts of repairs being completed after the mold wash. Occasionally, there's still going to be the odd issue, whether that's with contract performance or possibly with access to the home and the type of works that are being undertaken. Unfortunately, we do have cases where you have solicitors that are acting on behalf of the resident, who aren't keen on letting inform, ill-advised the tenants so they're not keen on letting us in to undertake those sorts of work. So sometimes, it'd be a bit back and forth with solicitors where we want to get in and do the work. But perhaps, it's not as easy to do so as you might think. One more question. We've talked about TSM's, but you haven't mentioned old TMOs. So what kind of process or what kind of review or training do your management for TMOs? And how do they get the feedback, and do they get the feedback and send it back to you as regards to going forward? So TMOs are supposed to carry out their own satisfaction surveys. But I'm not sure how consistently that is done. So what we are moving to from, well, actually we've done it because we've already completed next year's survey this year. That has included residents of TMOs, so we will have that information. And also, within our report, we can break it up by leaseholder tenant. We'll also be able to break it up by those in co-ops and their levels of satisfaction. We have, in the past, specifically done satisfaction surveys of TMOs, co-ops, RMOs. We call them everything, don't we? And we've gone to the co-op forum, and then we've presented those figures. So we have done those things in the past. But yes, I think consistently going forward, we're going to make sure that they're included in all these satisfaction surveys. Any more questions? I mean, I'll just come in and say that for me, how these interact with our KPIs is how we're going to measure this, right? So on repairs, the last two years on this committee was speed of repairs. And now we're on to quality of repairs, right? And we can measure that in our KPIs. And if that's reflected in the tenant satisfaction measures, then it means that they are a useful sample. And I think it's that interaction that is the one that is going to be most important. Because if our KPIs are completely out of whack with our tenant satisfaction measures, then there's something going wrong. And that means we're not capturing what Councilor Galindya has said is not a perfect snapshot, but a useful snapshot. So hopefully your experience on this committee has shown that there is an interaction between that. And yeah, I mean, I think repairs is certainly the issue that we have the most conversations about. And the one that comes to this committee the most is probably the ones that we have the most conversation with officers around. And yeah, I mean, insourcing is, as you know, I'm a fan of his LinkedIn council and its in-house repairs. And that is a model that we are very interested in following up on. And so there will be lots of discussions going forward around this because I think it is the quality of repairs now is where the next six months to a year looks like. So we want to be going in the right direction on that. Okay, so can we note this report for information? Yes. Okay, excellent, okay, so moving on to item six, which is the vulnerable residence policy which is paper number 24-352. And it's Ms. Wilwin. Hi, so this report, well, this policy is really an overarching policy of lots of approaches and processes and procedures have already got in place for dealing with vulnerable people. For example, we've got joint working protocols with both adults and children's services around safeguarding and dealing with those vulnerable people. So this isn't our first stab at how we deal with those who are vulnerable. It's putting that into one overarching document where we can show how we would make reasonable adjustments. And I think perhaps the nature of calling it vulnerable people is a bit misleading because in some ways as well, it's just about knowing where people require reasonable adjustments in how we communicate with them. And those people might not necessarily consider themselves vulnerable, but they might have an adjustment that they need us to make. So paragraph 13 of the report just sets out some of the instances where people may be vulnerable. So it's not suggesting that you're automatically vulnerable if you fall into one of those categories. We're not trying to say being over 70 means you're vulnerable. But what we're saying in paragraph 13 is these are some of the factors that might lead to vulnerability. Paragraphs 21 to 22 talk about how we'll manage that information on the system. So we, at the moment, we are able to manage vulnerability information in a number of ways. So that'll be when they first approach the department for assistance as homeless. Also when we sign up new tenants and their household members, so we can record vulnerability information in lots of different ways. Both in W2, which is our document management system, and also in NEC, which is our housing management system. And there are currently multiple places where you can record that information and we want to move to a position where we're recording it in a central place. So within housing, a resident doesn't have to keep ringing up and saying, well, I've already told so and so. That I need everything in large print or I need people, I need contractors to wait at the door for longer because it takes me longer to get to the door to answer it. So we're moving to that approach where within housing, we've recorded it in one place that we've all agreed is the same place. So those people don't have to keep reiterating the same information to us. And we're doing a lot of work on that. We're working with our front line staff. And once we've got approval for this policy, we will do some training for staff around how to record that information. So just any questions, really? Any questions, Councillor Gavindya? So on the first point in paragraph 13, it's perhaps not explicit. It's not referring specifically to the tenant. I suppose it is all household members, but it doesn't really say one way or another, does it? So it could be clearer. On the equality impact needs assessment, yes, I agree, that should, where we can, that should have thorough demographic information, so I'll get that reviewed with my team and make sure that gets added in. Councillor Kishore. Thank you, Chair. Nobody around this table, I think, is going to argue with the sentiment and aspiration of the policy. But I think politics would be an easy game if it was all about the aspiration and sentiment. At the end of the day, this is something that has to be delivered and there's nothing in this paper. I mean, it may come in a later paper about how this policy will actually be measured and evaluated in terms of its effectiveness. Because without that, I mean, how do you ensure that staff are remaining compliant? I know you spoke about additional training and how staff are going to be held accountable. Presumably, there'll need to be accountability mechanisms in place to ensure that taxpayers' money, which will be funding this at the end of the day, is, yeah, it's being spent wisely. Sorry, I'm a bit slow to answer that question. Mr. Wolf has asked whether he could take this. Okay, yep. Thank you, Chair, just conscious I've been quite quiet so far, so I thought I'd try and contribute. So it's a fair question. I mean, as Ms. Wilmer has said, part of the actions falling out of this report are we will put on our system what in the jargon we call a flag. So it's always an alert that flashes up on the screen the officer accesses. It will say what the vulnerability is, what the adjustments are. And linking back to the previous paper, when we get a complaint, if a feature of that complaint is that this policy was not adhered to, then naturally the relevant manager would be talking to the member of staff, clarifying the training needs. And ultimately, hopefully very, very rarely, if the breach of this policy were serious, with serious consequences to the resident, then we may have to have recourse to the formal HR codes. Obviously, that's not an outcome that we want, but it's one we're prepared to take in an appropriate case. So what I'm saying, really, is compliance with the procedure will, in many respects, be done by exception, or looking at the complaints, making sure that the management team, the wider management team, have got an awareness of this. And that they've got it in the forefront of their mind when they're dealing with complaints. I don't know whether we would be able to do something that's more systemized around that. But we can certainly make it a point that where managers are looking at kind of performance in the job as a whole through the appraisal system, the compliance with the policy, the frequency with which they're flagging vulnerabilities, just picked up day to day, what should be a feature of the appraisal process as well. Did you want to add to that, Mr. Morel? No, sorry, I knew it was in the report somewhere, but in the summary, the last paragraph talks a bit. But it's really what Mr. Worth said about periodic audits of how vulnerability information is stored. And also learning through complaints and tracking complaints where vulnerability is highlighted as an issue. because obviously that's come out in the Housing Ombudsman, one of their spotlight reports, not specifically for Wandsworth, but around complaints and vulnerability. So we would track that, and where vulnerability is in a complaint, we will make sure that we're recording it in the right way and make sure we can learn from that if we're not. So I guess we'll get periodic updates, future committees about the effectiveness of the policy and how it's been implemented, yeah. Okay, thank you. Councillor Tiller. Thank you, Chair. It's good to bear in mind reasonable adjustments with regard to risk assessments and accessibility of information. But can such reasonable adjustments also be incorporated into other situations, especially when disputes arise between the council and residents with regard to something other than accessibility? I've had several pieces of case work where a resident with clear vulnerabilities has been the subject of inflexible, unfeeling bureaucracy. For example, in the case of housing benefits overpayments. It's difficult for me to comment on the housing benefit overpayment sort of scenario, because that's not an area that sort of comes under my management. But I certainly would say that there's one part of this policy and what we're trying to do, which is about recording the data and making sure that we have that information on our residents. That we understand what their needs are. But in many ways, the kind of more important part is what you then do with that data. It's about making sure that officers, whatever department they work in, but obviously I'm speaking on behalf of housing department officers, see that data and then acknowledge it and then act on it in terms of the adjustments that they make. And it's difficult to say kind of what hard and fast rules there should be about what adjustments you make. But part of the training that we're going to do that will follow on from this policy being approved is about that. It's about what you do with the data. It's about what officers should do in certain scenarios to make sure that residents feel supported and that they're getting the service that they need because of whatever vulnerabilities they may have. Councilor Mrs. Graham. Councilor, I think, Sir, one on a tour with me, please. Listening to what's being said, the residents say, I've got to go and see the doctor. And that's another medical certificate. And ultimately, if somebody's got Lyme's disease or unseen disabilities or ME and also suffering cancer. How is that going to be sort of taken into consideration with the adaptations and stuff like that? That's really one of the issues. But also, will you actually inform the medical profession? That there is not as a change, but you are looking at different ways of investigating health of the client or the resident. I think to an extent, we're always going to be reliant on residents telling us what their vulnerability is. And also maybe how it affects them so that we can understand that and then respond accordingly. because obviously we have good data on when a resident becomes our tenant. But obviously things change over time. The examples you gave are things that might not affect someone when they became our tenant, but might do years or months later. So it's partly about them informing us of that, but partly us recording that properly. It's about talking to them about how it affects them and what issues they may be in terms of adjustments in the service we provide to them. And that's really, I think, what this policy is about. I think basically what you're saying is that the doctors check the medical certificates, don't they? Do you have doctors coming in and assessing and- We have a council medical advisor. So where there are, we're provided with medical information often by the resident. Sometimes we receive medical information from their doctor. But we also have a council medical advisor who can provide us with advice. Sometimes we might decide to make a referral ourselves, because we have concerns about a particular resident. Where we would want to make sure that they're being kind of responded to and acted on. Council member Faraj. You might not have this data to hand, but do you have a rough idea of how many of our most regular contacts into the department actually kind of fall into this fundable residence group? I guess the short answer is no, I don't know the data to hand. But I'd imagine it's quite a significant number. And in some cases, it'll be the case that those more vulnerable residents are the ones that contact us perhaps the most often as well. And I think that's what's quite positive about the system that we have at the moment with each resident has an estate manager. So that they can contact really quite easily. So with that estate manager hopefully being there for some time, they build up a relationship with those particular residents. And understand their needs better than perhaps if they were speaking to someone in a call center or they didn't have that relationship with them. Thank you, is there any more questions? I might come in and say that I guess what good looks like is someone not having to tell their story over and over again. Particularly if it's one that's a difficult story. But it can never be too much, because this will be in many ways, and correct me if I'm wrong. This will be information that will be accessible by quite a number of officers, because it will be throughout the department. So it can't be the super kind of deep dive into more complex issues. But I think it is an important part of the way that any interaction with the council service, having something that is flagged. If you've got one of these vulnerabilities down and you book in repair, they might ask you a question about how they can meet the requirements without you having to constantly explain those requirements over and over again, which can be very expecting for our residents. But it's also a means to which we can offer and signpost to other services whenever we're doing routine calls as a housing service. Because we want to be able to signpost people to say cost of living if we know that a certain person might have a likelihood to be in fuel poverty or be able to access some of the cost of living services. So it's helping us move in that direction, which is that kind of seamless ability to give people as tailored an approach as possible. But there will always, I guess, be limits on it. And some of, I mean, on your point, Ravi, about the children. I mean, children serve at the safeguarding element on some of the stuff that we, because at BRF we talked about how it would co-create with children's services. And then some of that data obviously can't be on this kind of level. And there might be a note which is contact children's services or something like that, you know. Sure, can I, I think it's quite, welcome what council just said. Because I think it's right that we don't collect all data and everything about our council tenants. Because you and I don't want to readily give our data to everyone. And I think tenants should have the same sort of chance to say no. But what is important is that in so far as the housing department and the council needs access to somebody's home. Then they know what to say and what not to say, in a sense, how to be careful and not be careful. But I think there is a loss of information in people's home life that it's no business of authority to know. Any more questions? Okay, can we support recommendations A and B for this paper? Yep. >> Yep, okay. Okay, so on to item number seven, which is the ones with corporate plan actions and KPIs. The performance report and the paper is 24353. And who's going to introduce this paper? We don't normally introduce this paper, I just haven't left because I've got the paper after, sorry. It's just been amazing. Okay, okay. Okay, question for officers. That was almost your big moment, baby, sadly taken away. So any questions for the officers? Councilor Gavindya? We've questioned officers, but perhaps also a question to the cabinet member. Because there is nothing in this paper about when Stanley York wrote. We discussed it two committees ago. We came to some views and discussions, decisions there, and there is complete silence in this paper. Now I appreciate the nature of the issue, and I'm perfectly happy to have that information shared with me separately and outside this committee. But I just want to register that it should not be forgotten. But the question to officers is, there are several places here where we are quite close to the deadline. I'll just illustrate one, the Lavender Hill hub where opening is likely to be between December and March. We are three days short of December, so perhaps there is a sharper window there. Perhaps you could give us that sharper window, something like quarter three and four. Well, we are at the end of quarter three, and so clearly it's now going to be quarter four. So in some ways, nobody has gone through this paper, if I may be bold to say that. To say, we are not very far from some of these deadlines, and can we make sure these deadlines actually are either real or updated? I mean, there's one where the tenant's conference, which already happened, and it is yet to happen according to this paper. So really, I do think that some of you ought to have read it more carefully before it was published. Thanks, yeah, thank you, Councillor. Part of that, and taking the Lavender Hill hub as an example, is the leading time for the paper. So when this was drafted, sort of four or five weeks back, it was possibly fair comment. I'll take your point, they should have been updated, and just on that one, we're looking towards the back end of that time scale, rather than obviously two or three days' time, so. One, if I may indulge myself, Chair, which is on the Daha, it doesn't say why. It says it's going to be delayed, and so on, but it doesn't say why this has happened. So what is the point of, in a sense, an updated report which doesn't give us the full story? I can, sorry, that's my fault, I could have put those explanations in. So there's two reasons. One, unfortunately, the main officer who was leading on it went on jury service for a long period of time. So that meant we delayed it. And then, of course, we're currently being inspected by the regulator of social housing, so we've asked to delay it then. Yes, yes, but also, with Daha, I think they are so busy that often the delays come from them as well. So it's, I think, two very good reasons, a bit unusual. And Daha is domestic abuse. Housing, yeah, housing alliance. Okay. Paul is helping the viewers at home, big time. I was going to say, you're right, this is the hardest one to monitor for tenses because it's a live document, and it's like our manifesto basically written into a corporate review. So we're constantly adapting, I mean, on the hub, I mean, on Monday, so it will actually be in December. We're doing the first of the, you'll be interested in this, you're doing the first of the neighborhood engagements with those residents who came to the original one who were upset about the planning process. So it is a bit of a live document, so apologies, we'll try and keep up. But the way that it was written and the way that it then has to be amended is a bit precarious, yeah. I mean, corporate plans are entirely driven by the manifestos of the administration. But the report back, I mean, then they become the council's responsibility, and they become part of the administrative machine. And I just think that ten days before tonight when the publication date was, somebody could have clearly gone through it and said, well, and changed those. And it's just a point worth making so the next time it doesn't happen. Taken on board, and the point about York Road is I'll, because of the commercial sensitivity of it, I'll talk to you afterwards. But I completely understand it and we are desperate to bring something forward when we can. Could I ask a question quickly about the house purchase grants? There seems to be low take up of the house purchase grants. I mean, how does it compare, for instance, to right to buy? Is it higher than right to buy, that we're having the numbers? Or do you think that the money available is adequate? In terms of the house purchase grant, the take up to date for the current financial year is, We have a target for 40 properties, and excuse me, I'm just going to find the relevant section. So yes, so during 2023, 24, the council received 70 applications resulting in 26 moves. And a further 30 applications carried forward to the current year. And the target for 24, 25 is to complete 40 grants. And just for information, the current position on the house purchase grant year to date is six completions with 31 life cases, which are either applicants looking for properties or going through the legal process. Is the target 40, are we talking about 24, 25, because the target seems to be 20? Yeah, in the paper that I've got, I've got a value of 26 for 23, 24, quarter to 17, value for the quarter 24, 25, 12, and then target of 20. [INAUDIBLE] You need to come to the microphone, baby, this is your big moment. It's just to clarify that all these targets were set in June this year. So that was the annual refresh of the KPIs and the corporate plan actions. And so this was the target that was provided for the house purchase grant. So that's the target that's set for 24, 25. Yeah, thank you. Well, sorry, I'm going to clarify that. Sorry, that's the target, that's the profile target for this mid-year. This is a mid-year report, it's a six month, it's the profile target for mid-year for Q2. So the target, I'm going to make sure I look that up. Sorry, we've made that answer as complicated as possible. Sorry, so yes, the total end-year target is indeed 40. Yeah, the total end-year target is indeed 40, the mid-year target halfway through the year is 20. Thank you very much, cheers. Just to answer your second bit around right to buy. The house purchase grants, the levels have always been loosely related to right to buy discounts. Obviously, right to buy discounts have reduced, and we've had a big influx of right to buy applications in the hundreds. But I think those are all, because the discounts are reducing, and therefore it's difficult to predict, but we imagine those numbers won't be that high. But I think it'll be a chance to look at the house purchase grants and say, well, should they be changed to meet the right to buy, the new right to buy discounts? Or should they remain the same because it's still cheaper than building a new home? So there's all those things that have to be looked at. But given this is happening just at the moment, really, we haven't had a chance to review that. But I think that'll be something that'll get reviewed in the next financial year. Excellent, thanks, Ms. Willman. Counselor Farid Faraj. You're good, okay. Counselor Austin. Thank you very much, Chair. Just on page 61, first bits with regards to the 1,000 new council homes. On the fourth paragraph, it says the council has been allocated 16,588,500 to acquire a total of 56 properties in the borough for temporary accommodation relief, local homelessness, prejudice, and properties. So far, no, I'm going to say was that 56 is the whole year target or the half year target? Suddenly, because I've now confused myself, which might change my percentages slightly. And so far we've purchased four. As somebody who runs, also, so firstly, where are those four and what were they? Were they flats, were they houses, and which wards in the borough were they, and were they one, two, three, four, how many bedrooms? And secondly, as somebody who runs an estate agent, if you were to come to me with 16.5 million pounds and tell me that you wanted to buy 56 properties, I'd do a deal on the whole stock. So, why are we only at four at the half year point? So, that is the full year target. Right. So, we got government funding for some of that money to contribute towards it. And there were some delays in that government funding being approved. And that is why we've been slow on getting the acquisitions off the ground. But, as I'm sure you're aware, within VAMS, which now sits in the place directorate, they're excellent at getting those acquisitions completed. So, we're confident we're going to be able to make that target. Yeah. Sorry, so yeah, just to say, as Kay said, the contracts that we had to sign up to with NHCLG didn't actually get signed until the end of August. So, the team started acquiring properties as soon as they could after that. And so, from September, properties have been acquired and they've actually increased to ten already. Thank you. Sorry, just as a follow-up on that, what were they and where were they? Were they houses, flats, ones, twos, threes, beds, and which wards? I can't give you, I don't have that information on me right now, but we can, yeah, absolutely, no problem. Yes, of course. Okay, any more questions? Councilor, Mrs. Graham. I'm fascinated by the hub. And I remember when you first came in, you had this vision, and you were going to have doctors, all sorts of stuff. How many beds is it and how are you, I mean, there's no information here about how many will it hold or what is your vision? I know the hub has still got to be done, but I'd love to know what your vision is. Yeah, okay. Yeah, so the target in the corporate plan highlights that we wanted to get it in by December. And that has rolled back to January, and obviously in the corporate plan there's a bit of wiggle room on that. So me, Michael Shearer, who's the officer who did the first public engagement with us, are going down to Battersea Arts Center to set up the neighborhood forum. Because you'll be aware that opening a service like that where it's located has drawn some concerns from the local community. And so we're doing our first resident-led engagement process with them. Last time I remembered, but there might have been a change because I know that they were creating a female-only space within the hub as of about a couple of months ago. But there's roughly 12 beds between 12, and like you say, a number of services. So give credit where credit's due. We're learning that the purpose of the hub is to learn from the experiences of what took place during the Everybody In program during COVID. When your administration has given us the central government funding to end homelessness, we can do it. We learned from the pandemic it's possible homelessness is a political choice. And why that was so magic is because our officers had a fixed abode for a number of rough sleepers who were really able to get back onto their feet through getting medical, banking support, drug and rehabilitation, and it was an incredible pedagogical experience basically for the team. Then that funding runs out, then the hotels reopen, we don't have that local space. So in many ways, and Dave can jump in as well here because he's obviously the expert, is that re-bringing that what had existed during COVID into our own in-house service. First in-house service in the borough, primarily targeted at those rough sleepers who are trying to get back into settled accommodation. So you'll know around Cuffin Junction there are some kind of what we would describe as long term rough sleepers who aren't quite in that place yet, and require quite a lot of work, and Spear and the outreach team do a lot of work with them. But this service is for those who are looking to try and get into excess accommodation, and some of them won't be in that journey. And I think where resident concern has been is that we're opening a kind of hostel, which is for that very sharp end of rough sleeping. And instead, this is much more of a kind of giving someone two, three, four weeks to get back on their feet and get access to our services so we can start that journey towards settled accommodation. Thank you, Chair. If I could have another quickie on another, as Mr. Worth wants to say something. I was just going to add, Councillor, that yeah, as we said at the Planning Applications Committee, the intention here is to be a good neighbour to our neighbours, and Monday's event is the start of that dialogue. We want, and we will have regular access to the premises by the neighbours. We want them, likewise, we want them to be our good neighbours as well. So you're right, we are pulling in a range of agencies who will be based at the hub. So part of the setup, for example, is really boring domestic stuff, like working with IT to make sure that all those agencies can actually print documents there. Whereas a council setup, you've got to have a council ID, so we're sort of innovating around that. And at the same time as our contractors are fitting out the building, we are assembling the team. So we've just appointed our hub manager, we're just about to appoint the deputy manager. Michael Sherwin-Weller and Chantel Condesora are pulling together the other agencies, and they're all mobilizing towards opening. So it will be something that there are similar schemes in London, there's a couple of them that I know, one up in Westminster and one down in Lambeth at Vauxhall Bus Station. But this kind of breaks new ground beyond what they do, so it is an exciting project. We are definitely going to be good neighbours to our neighbours down there, and being listening and cooperative where we have problems. Just to echo Councillor Dickerton's comments, this is not for what somewhat unkindly can be called chaotic rough sleepers. This is for people who we will risk assess, and we want people who are there to benefit from the multi-agency support that will be provided. And we don't want this clogging up, so we want people with fast throughput, and we want people to move in, identify a pathway, get them into a different housing solution, and importantly allow them to tell their story once. Going back to our earlier discussions, so I'm sure once it's open and up and running, we'd be more than happy to invite members of the committee down for a visit. I'm sure you'd be fascinated to see how it's working. Yeah. And there's also an effort to address drinking and drug issues as well, most of them, yeah. Me again. >> Councillor Scrian, yeah. Yes, actually following on from what Councillor Galindo was commenting on about the KPIs tonight. I'm looking at solidity and promoting the temporary accommodation forum. And I would very much like to know a little bit more. It says cabinet member for housing meets with cross section of temporary accommodation residents. But it's around three times a year. When is your next one? What is the outcome? How does it come to committee so that we can share what you? Yeah, so this is where we allow, we want people to be able to hold us to account. So the Southwest Legal Law Center, I think got some funding for trust for London to have a kind of community organizer to organize residents in temporary accommodation to make sure that their standards were up to a good standard and make claims against us as a council. And I met with, she's called Rhiannon, and she's an organizer in Croydon as well as Wandsworth. And we as administration really struggled with the politics of the fact that we are responsible for tenants who don't have a vote in Barra because of occasional out of Barra placements. Not a large amount, but Lambeth and Croydon host Wandsworth residents. So they don't have access to the same democratic structures as our tenants and leaseholders would through our residence form and things like that. So that democratic deficit exists across London, and we've had a problem with that. So we have started working with Rhiannon, and we set up this temporary accommodation forum, which is where the residents that she works with at her workshops as an organizer, as an activist, are invited into meetings with Dave, Giselle, myself, officers from the temporary accommodation team, to talk about their lived experience in Wandsworth TA. And that is throughout either council controlled TA, a private rental placement, or a placement outside of Barra. So the various different types of TA, be it a kind of, we've got, we have residents who have come from Nightingale Square, we've had residents who have come from our decanted blocks. If you would like to come to one of them, I'm sure you, I'm not going to invite everyone, because I do want it to be a space where they kind of are the main players. But if you if you're interested, I can send you much more information on it. She came for a speech, didn't she? She spoke here a long time ago. Yeah, yeah. And I think she's doing, I think Southwest Law Center are doing something in your ward soon, a kind of workshop with with a similar, they work out of Ronald Ross sometimes as well to speak to parents there. Yeah. Council Rigby. Yeah, it was on the subject of the hub. Last night at the health committee, we had a really good paper presented. It was the first time in about 10 or 11 years there'd been any assessment of homeless health. And a lot of the findings in this paper are driving what's actually going to be offered at the hub. So I would like that paper to come to this committee because it's it's so informative. When was this week? I can make sure. Well, thank you for making us check our inboxes a bit more in detail because I didn't catch that. Yeah. I think if people didn't receive it, if you can contact me and then make sure that you can get that. Brilliant. Yeah, I miss that. So I mean, I'm glad. I bet that was Michael. He's very good. Any more questions? Councillor McLeod. Hi. Just a fairly straightforward ones, I think. So I'm looking at the rents are concerning, of course. And I think we've got a figure of about seven and a half thousand homes in sort of arrears. I just wanted to be clear about what what counts as arrears, because I've got one of those letters and I don't actually feel for once. I'm not that skint. But what happened was that my my letter came in a couple of days before a couple of days before I got a job. A couple of days before, you know, 15th when we get when we get our pay. And so there was that there's a full sort of, oh, my God, you're you're six weeks over. Now I'm about to pay five of them or four of them. So I'm just wondering how how we're calculating that, making sure that it's an actual genuine reflection of where our residents are. So that's a question and also a plea for higher allowances as well. It's a plea to fill my go fund me if you want. I can probably answer the question, but I can't deal with the allowances. So I'm Mark Davies. I'm the financial controller for Housing and Regeneration. I mean, it's littered throughout the reports tonight. There are various stats on arrears and it was brought to my attention before the meeting that you received this letter. As far as I understand, it's a snapshot in time. So they would literally take the number of accounts on a given day that are in arrears when they run that report. So if it just so happens that you were paying one day later or a payment hadn't cleared and actually registered on your rent account, unfortunately, you'll be flagged as being in arrears. We can't foresee what might come in two or three days. Therefore, it has to be the way it's presented. I mean, there'd always be an element of payments that might end up in suspense because they've come in with the wrong rent account number on it. And they'd be matching exercises done to try and get those to the right accounts. But they'll be limited in number, really. So most people have got the means nowadays to pay and have a direct correlation with their own rent account. That makes sense. Can I have a follow up? Not a follow up and another question. OK, thank you. And this isn't about rent arrears. I'm looking at our repairs and it feels like, yeah, we've put a lot of effort into speeding up the repairs and that's kind of good. But it still doesn't feel like, I know we've been talking about it, it still feels like people aren't. I'm worried that we're doing these repairs quickly, but not doing them thoroughly and then having to go back again. And people don't feel very, very satisfied with what we've done, because as far as they're concerned, it's not finished. Can we say a bit more about that? We've definitely got some good checks and balances in place in relation to that, because we have a vigorous post inspection regime. So a high percentage of orders are post inspected by officers at the council who either call or visit the property to check. The repairs have been completed satisfactorily. Obviously, that's not necessarily going to capture all of them. And there will be some cases where a resident will ring up and say that they might not be satisfied and will obviously then respond to that by sending the contractor back. I think this probably comes back to the point I was making earlier really about us working out why residents aren't as satisfied as we would want them to be repairs. Even though repairs appear to be completed, generally speaking within Target, there's some kind of disconnect there. And it may well be, as you say, something to do with the quality of the works. It may be to do with the expectations of the resident, or it might be the way that the repairs have progressed. As I say, it might be someone who has an order raised for repair, the contractor turns up, maybe they don't have the right materials the first time so they come back a few days later. So the repair might be completed within Target, but they've had maybe two visits from the contractor and that's taken up their time and been frustrating for them. So those are the sorts of issues that we will be exploring further to try and work out what's going on and how we can improve it. But I mean, sorry, I'll go further. The contract meetings that we do take place, we look at how many kind of post inspections are outstanding and then what the issues that are raised with those. So obviously, if there's a theme with the contractor where lots of post inspections are failing, then that would be raised with them as well. Thank you. That is helpful. Again, I'm not making it about my own tenancy, but I've had a number of bits of work done and what will tend to happen is someone will show up. I've got a problem with boiler, they'll show up. Really quick, brilliant, it's all done, we've let it out and I'm like, OK, have you? Great, thanks. And they leave. And then a couple of days later, I work out that it's not working and it's quite hard then. You've got to start again from scratch. You've said that there's post, you check on the contracts on a percentage of them. What percentage are we talking about? I'm trying to remember the percentage off hand. I think it's about sort of 10, 20 percent of orders under two hundred and fifty pounds. And then those percentages increase depending on the value of the order. But with certain things that more sort of health and safety related like damp and mold and leaks, we do 100 percent post inspections just to make sure that those issues are definitely resolved. This woman has no one has the exact figures. I happen to have them to hand. So up to a hundred. Yeah, up to a hundred pounds is 10 percent post inspected. Hundred and one to three hundred ninety nine point nine is 20 percent. Then four hundred up to just under fifteen hundred is thirty three percent and then fifteen hundred is one hundred percent. And then like Mr. Crawley said around leaks and repairs, it's one hundred percent. Fabulous. Thank you so much. Are we happy to receive this report for information? Yeah. Brilliant. So we're going on now to paper number eight, which is the affordable housing update. This paper number twenty four, that's three, five, four. And Miss Rossi. Thank you. So there are two elements to this report. The first provides an update on the property acquisitions program and seeks approval for maximizing future grant opportunities to expand the program. The second aspect of the report provides a summary of new social rented and affordable housing supply during twenty twenty three to twenty four and other relevant policy developments and housing initiatives over the past year. So starting with the property acquisitions program during twenty twenty three to twenty four, the council completed thirty nine property acquisitions for temporary accommodation with the support of grant funding from both MHCLG, Ministry of Housing, Communities and the Government and the GLA. As we've already touched upon, for the period twenty twenty four to twenty six, the council received an allocation from MHCLG of sixteen point six million to require a total of fifty six properties in the borough for temporary accommodation to relieve homelessness pressures. Match funding for these property acquisitions will be met with an existing approved capital budgets, as previously reported to this committee in January, which is an amount of twenty eight million pounds over two years. So property acquisitions provides an opportunity to increase the supply of temporary accommodation and social rented homes within relatively quick time frames. And this requested delegation will enable the council to respond swiftly to bid and secure grant funding opportunities and to quickly grow the number of properties acquired to meet housing needs in the borough. So moving on to the delivery update during the year, the financial year twenty three, twenty four, a total of seven hundred ninety nine new build affordable homes were completed. And these are set out in table one paragraph eight of these total completions. Forty nine percent were social rent or lending affordable rent to tenure and fifty one percent were intermediate tenure. By comparison, which is also shown in the table, the the number of homes completed during twenty twenty two. Twenty three was five hundred seventy seven, of which forty six percent were social rent or affordable rent and fifty four percent were intermediate tenure. This shows that the balance of tenure has started to shift in favor of social rented completions, lending affordable rent completions compared to the outcome position in twenty twenty two twenty three, which is reflective of the administration's commitment to increasing the supply of social rented homes. If we add in thirty nine property acquisitions, which we previously mentioned, overall delivery in terms of tenure increases to fifty one point two percent for social rent and affordable rent. And forty eight point eight percent are intermediate tenure homes. So just moving on to planning permissions during the year, a total of three hundred and seventy four overall affordable homes were secured in all planning applications and respective planning policy. A partial review of the local plan also commenced during the year. And this includes provision to strengthen the supply of homes for social rent for local people. Significantly, the revised policy will require at least fifty percent of dwellings as affordable homes to be delivered on site with a seventy thirty split in favor of social rented tenure. Just moving on to an update on other housing initiatives. We've already touched on the house purchase grants and apologies. I sort of may be confused matters earlier, but the position is there is a target of forty homes. A forty, a target for forty grants during twenty three, twenty four, seventy applications were received resulting in twenty six moves and a further thirty were carried over as I mentioned before. And so of the target for twenty four, twenty five, the forty grants, fourteen completions to date with thirty three live cases previously mentioned. And in terms of just moving on now to the council's intermediate housing policy in respect of income thresholds, there are no changes proposed. And whilst the council is prioritizing the delivery of new social rented homes, as highlighted in the above changes to the local plan, it's also necessary to ensure that intermediate homes continue to prioritize and meet the needs of residents. Therefore, there's a small adjustment proposed to the council's eligibility criteria to provide clarity for applicants. And this is the applicants must provide evidence of a residential address. So very clear that it's a residential address. So that is one of the recommendations in the report. In terms of section one is six committed sums during twenty three, twenty four. The council utilized just over two million pounds worth of section 106 committed sums to support affordable housing programs and scheme costs. And that included phase one of the [UNKNOWN] scheme which will provide 113 council homes for rent. The sort of balance of affordable commuted sums at the end of the financial year was 31.326 million. And there's a possible pipeline of just over 16 million pounds. But that's subject to completions and various trigger points being met within the section 106 planning agreements, which means that these payments need to be made. The remaining balance of funds is fully committed to schemes that continue to support provision of social rented homes through the Thousand Homes Program. But there's also an amount for supporting developers to improve their provision of affordable homes. And social rented homes in particular through the planning process, albeit that's subject to the financial liability process. So just to summarize briefly before questions. The requested delegation, as I mentioned, is intended to enable us to swiftly move to secure grant funding from either MHCLG or the GLA for future property acquisitions. And also just to note that the social rented homes during the year also increased. And we also ask for the recommendation to make that small amendment to the intermediate housing policy in terms of eligibility. And I'll take any questions that members might have. Thank you very much. Questions, so first hand I saw, I think it was Councilor Austin. Thank you very much, sorry, and thank you. Just on point four, the same question, if you could provide that as well with the 39, thank you. Of course, yeah. I sit on transport and strategic planning as well, so I've already had the meeting on the local plan. And there's a discrepancy here, in the paper here it says it says 50% of dwellings. Whereas in the local plan paper in transport it says by habitable room. So which is it, dwellings or habitable room? Apologies, it is habitable rooms, yes. We'll make that change. That's defined by GLA, isn't it, by actual rooms, yeah. Yes, yes. Councilor Cachane. It takes some getting used to, yeah, well. It's only been two years, yeah. It's a question about tenure really, I mean there have been various papers that this community has been stating this council commitment to mixed tenure. But at the same time, putting the priority on increasing social rent in particular. And I understand the arguments for that, there is a need for more social rent homes, and I can understand that this is perhaps an area that's been neglected in the past. So there's a balance to be regressed. I guess my question is what happens when the balance is regressed? Because it's not just about these thousand homes, the national government will want you to build a lot more homes than a thousand homes over the coming years. What happens when you reach that threshold, whatever that threshold is, or however you define balance, at that point do you start to focus the same energies and resources on promoting home ownership, on promoting private rent, or do you continue as you are now prioritizing social rent to the point where we have some kind of socialist nirvana where that's the primary, yeah, see the race face there, the primary type of tenure. So yeah, that's my first question. Socialist nirvana sounds pretty good. So I'm up for that. What I'd say on the tenure balance is it depends on what you're talking about. So are you talking about private sites, are you talking about council sites, are you talking about negotiations in section 106, right? So obviously on council led delivery, it's unlikely that in the next decade or 20 years we will be building from a council delivery perspective at the same scale as the private market. So it makes sense for the council when the council is using its own funds to build social housing, public housing. So that's where we think it makes a lot of sense for the council to be building social housing. When we come on to our private sites, so the negotiations on section 106, your leader at conservative party conference describes shared ownership as hell. So it's not just me on a panel, so I wouldn't say it's just me that has some misgivings about some of the products that were built in very high numbers under your administration. The balance, how long it will take to rebalance that is roughly from our estimates on the policy that we want to change, there's a kind of missing 4,000 social units that we would want to try and get back and that would just be lost units, lost in the decade in which negotiations were being led by the conservative party. But even if we got to the hitting our absolute maximum targets of delivering 70/30 split at 50% within a private scheme, that's still leaving the other 50% as market homes to be built and to be sold. I think there's a kind of misnomer here, which is that we are somehow going to build too much social housing within this administration or the next administration or the administration after that. The project that I believe in is trying to get back to the levels of social housing, which are the levels in which my parents benefited from it, and that is going to take a long, long time. So I'm not nervous that we're overemphasizing in one direction. Private sites and the private market will continue to build homes that are the most valuable in terms of speculative return. We can't control that. What we're doing is we're making sure that if private development happens in this borough, it delivers a public good and a social good that is accessible to both those at social rent at 70% and then 30% to the intermediate affordable housing that is part of the LGA's plan. So I hope that's a full enough answer for you. Smells like left-wing teen spirit, doesn't it really? I guess the answer that I want and I guess the answer that I wanted for the time that I've been on this committee is what this council is going to do to promote homeownership and what message it has to aspiring homeowners. I mean, there's something that's sort of curious and it sort of struck me, you know, attending these committees. You know, at the beginning of the committee, we declare our interests and it's the same thing, you know, we've got two members of this committee who are council tenants and, you know, absolutely legitimate choice and, you know, myself, a council leaseholder. But that leads me to assume that the majority of you aren't, you know, people who benefit from social rent. You benefit from a choice of different types of tenure. So I'm wondering, you know, why you don't believe that ones with residence should benefit from that same level of choice that you, as members of the council, do? I mean, I benefited from social rent and it wasn't a choice by the time I got to the point where I would live in my own home. So because of the sell-offs right to buy, that choice no longer existed and I think what Councillor Dickerton is saying is that we're not even approaching the levels that we used to have. So that choice no longer exists for a hell of a lot of people who desperately need homes at the moment. Yeah, I mean, that's the point is that the choice is non-existent. Those who have choice are those at the top end who can afford to buy or own multiple properties and therefore rent it out to other people, mostly my generation, right? So like, if you want my personal circumstances, right, in order to afford to stay in Wandsworth, I rent the downstairs part of my mum's place, right? I'm going to turn 33 tomorrow, right? That is not the ideal housing, thank you very much, yeah, you know, the housing crisis is one in which like my life has been shaped, it's not the ideal situation, in order to fulfil the, you know, fulfil life decisions in my life, it has had a big cost, right? If I could have access to social housing, that would be the tenure, I would have no problem with having that tenure because it's secure, that you know, you're not going to get a £250 rent charge 10%, 15%, 20% at the end of the year, so the idea that there's choice I think is, or that it would be possible under the current market conditions to offer that level of choice to the many and rather than the few, I don't think is possible at the moment and I think the best way of trying to tackle it is to start with trying to rebuild that social housing base which gives people a real choice and then the bit that is left of the market, the bit that is about, you know, because I know what you're getting at, right, you're saying that like what is the offer to someone like me who is private renting and paying large amounts at the moment and like I say, I think we've got the balance right because the market will still build homes for sale, sadly I don't think those homes will be the homes that the people privately renting will be able to get access to, so the bit that the market is in charge of is the bit that isn't going to solve the crisis fever. If I had my way in a magic wand, and I think we're getting really close there with the Renter's Rights Bill, protecting those who are currently in the private rented sector and making sure that they get longer tenancies that aren't changed every year and that the rents aren't increased constantly means that people can save up for a deposit. Yeah, I think there should be fewer landlords. I think there should be fewer landlords. See, that's where you're wrong because I think when a landlord sells, that's a supply into the market of the kind of people that you think want to get access to the housing market. So, think about the hundreds of thousands of people currently in the poor quality private renter sector and temporary accommodation. If those people were all adequately housed in good quality social housing, there would be hundreds of thousands plus properties in London which would be available to either renters or sold by those landlords to first time buyers, right? So, you have a kind of trickle down mentality. We lift everybody up by freeing up at the lower end and it's more equitable because those at the sharpest end get access to a tenancy that otherwise they don't survive in the market. You know, like, it's not nice for me but I can survive in the market. There are people in temporary accommodation who aren't surviving in the market at the moment and so that's why the priority has to be at them first. And then you unlock the possibility for people to say, you know what, social housing isn't for me anymore. I'm earning enough money. I'm going to try and move on to another another tenure type. And frankly, you know, with the changes to right to buy, the social contract says I will leave that social rented home and I will enter to go buy another place. I won't buy that social rented home because my issue with right to buy was that it wasn't replaced. We get to a stage whereby we replace every council home by two to one, fantastic, but we're not there yet. So, you say those who have the means can make the choice to enter into the market but we need to look after those who don't have the choice. That is the political position of this council and my politics, what has led me to the decisions. That was a very long ideological discussion but that is, yeah, yeah. I think choice exists for people with the resources and in a market with... I'm not against choice, I'm very pro-choice. No, that's right. But that exists for those people with the resources and in a very tight market like housing, that choice is being reduced every day. So, you know, what we're doing in this council is trying to push people without resources to be able to have at least a small choice. Councillor Rigby. Yeah, actually well, we're on the subject of like changes around housing and helping people. Could the cabinet lead just talk about some of the changes that are coming in with leasehold because obviously one of the barriers to people buying a home is because so many are getting ripped off with these annual fees they have to pay. Could you talk about how that might help some of the private renters? Yeah, so service charges in private rented blocks are a perennial problem. I get lots of case work about it and it's quite a hard one because the council can give advice and give support. If it's a housing association shared ownership we can get more directly involved because we have relationships with housing associations. Our service charges have gone up but they remain incredibly competitive compared to the private sector. There is inflationary pressure in service charges and I've written personally to all our leaseholders to explain the position we're in. I know the other side would be facing the same challenge that we are on that but we are as transparent as possible, we explain what's going on, we try and consult early particularly on things like major works. But if you're in some of these kind of private management organisations where the developer has kind of checked out, given it over to a management organisation, maybe moved further away, it was once an affordable scheme but now the service charges are almost like a rental cost. There are some places where it's like £9,000 a year. So that aspirational point about having home ownership becomes false and I think that's what your leader was talking about at the conference was that shared ownership had become hell because the affordableness of it was no longer affordable because of those additional charges and the model wasn't working anymore. That's the thing. In the housing crisis there are currently no winners. Mortgages are going up. If you're trapped in a privately rented shared ownership or lease or block you can be hit with very hard service charges. It's why I think a mass social housing building programme is a way of trying to level the playing field. So three separate questions here. Firstly on the delegation, was the delegations agreed? Will we be informed of the bid when bids are made because I'd like to be told that the bid's been made etc. I'm not stopping the bid from going but I want to know that it's been made and scale and all of that. On the question of the amendment conditions, the applicant must provide evidence of a residential address. Does it have to be a ones with address? And if it does, do you not think that condition should be made as clear as possible so it isn't any of residential address? And my third point, this is about the house purchase grants, and that perhaps is a question to the cabinet member. You see the demand is quite significant, 70, and your target is 40. And in a way it seems to me that it's an area where you might well consider changing your target from 40 upwards so that it genuinely reflects what the current demand is. Otherwise, there is a real risk that people get excited about putting the bid in and then they're told to wait forever or whatever. So there are three separate points. Do you want to take the first point, Ms Rosario? Yes, so in terms of updating on when grant funding is received for a new program. Yes, so when the bid is made, this will be reflected through the corporate plan updates. So those updates on when we bid and been successful. Maybe it's something for Mr. Worth to take a stand on that. It's just the saying as an opposition spokesman, I'd like to be told that the department has made a bid and this is it and this is the amount we are seeking. I'm not stopping that bid being made. I am just wanting to be in the loop that the bid's been made. And it's just a way of sharing that information. All our GLA grant bids. Yes, it's a bit basic. We are being asked to delegate to officers the right to make the bids. And I'm just saying that when they have exercised their delegated power, I'd be told that they've exercised and this is the amount they're seeking. If we're successful or just if we've made the bids. These are making a bid. It says knowing knowing that you've bought a lottery ticket is just as well as knowing that you won the lottery ticket, because I think when you won the lottery ticket, we'll find out anyway. I might have to come back to you on whether, you know, because every time we fail a bid, you're kind of is it we're going to play politics with bid making? I think it's just no, no. Yeah, actually, I could end up asking you. Yeah. Okay. You just want to you just want to know. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I don't see a problem with that. I was just going to add that, you know, just through the course of the committee's normal business, we we regularly update the committee on, you know, the amount of grant funding that comes in through papers like this and so on. In terms of like a real time update, we're all happy to take that away. I personally don't think that's a difficult thing to achieve. So yeah, if you leave that with us. So it's the second part of the question. So the second part of the question, that should be more than the financial address, whether we should make it very clear. That's the ones at the address. Yes, Councilor Govindia. In the first instance, absolutely. There's a cascade process for eligibility and the amount of time that properties are marketed to residents of Wandsworth and then it cascades out if there's no demand. So for a set period of time, the eligibility criteria states that these properties must be marketed to residents within address within the borough. The rationale for being very clear about the residential address is that some applicants have tried to apply and make the case that they have an address in the borough, but it's not a residential address. And that is something that we want to be very clear. It must be a residential address, not, for example, a hotel. Is it a borough residential address, or can it be a residential address anywhere even outside the borough? It's a residential address for the application, and residents outside of the borough can apply, but their priority is lower than if they live within the borough, and the process of marketing those properties will go through a cascade for set periods of time which are agreed during the planning process. So the Section 106 agreements will require that a marketing strategy is agreed with the council, and then the properties are marketed for set periods of time and there's a priority and a cascade. But everybody has to have a residential address, and that's the key to the request here, that it must be a residential address and not any other type of address, because we have had situations where people are sort of staying in hotels and that isn't really in the spirit. Could we add what Councillor Gwynne is getting at, which is to just clarify that priority is made of for Wandsworth residents, because I think that is important. I do agree with you, yeah. Yes, so that's set out within the intermediate housing policy that the council has, but we'd be very happy to review that and bring that back to members. That's something that we would be happy to do, yeah. Your target of 40 upwards to reflect the demand for home purchase grants. Happy to take that away and come up with a target that we think is better, no problem with that. Any more questions? Councillor Austyn. Thank you very much. As the cabinet member alluded to earlier, I'm a fan of buying stock, I'm back. It seems on this that 56 properties seems to be pretty ambitious and I was trying to get my head around the cabinet members thinking about levelling everybody up and I'm trying to work out, I think the way he was doing it was by crashing the property market and bringing the property prices down to meet the people that he's bringing up. But there is a serious point here, which is we don't have a supply issue. We have an awful lot of stock on the market, on the open market and we have a very big checkbook. Why don't we go and acquire some of that stock? We could get 250 units and we could get 1,000 units. We could buy entire buildings in the Bassey Power Station development. There is still 42 flats available in Riverside Quarter, which is a building that was finished four years ago and they still remain unsold. We've got the New Acres site, which has got 400 flats coming online. Shortly, I know they are PRS. Why can't we buy more stock and solve the crisis more quickly? I've just done a quick maths. That's like £300 million and then you'll be complaining about us borrowing loads of money. We voted on a loan of £450 million, so we've got the money. Yeah, but that's building council loans, but you want to loan another £300 million, is that what you're telling us? So, £300 million is fine, but for £450 million, it's leaflets going about. We've got available stock, why don't we buy it instead of build it? So a one-bed studio apartment in Bassey Power Station goes for £1.2 million, so I wouldn't say that that is the best value for money. You're literally in the power station at that point, not around the power station. I've never heard someone ask me to buy market sale flats around the power station. That is an interesting one. I think you must declare your interest in that. I wouldn't say that would be the best value from taxpayers' money if we were to do that. So when we do buy back units, it's based on an evaluation around the cost for us to build and we factor in the land price, so the Thousand Homes Programme, we're not buying any land, so that's why it's a very effective use of public money, because every pound is spent on bricks and mortar. Now, the rough cost to build a council unit when you're factoring grants, so without grant, just raw cost at the moment, but we obviously get grant from the GLA for building it, which reduces the cost. So the balance between where we buy back and the Thousand Homes is a balance between cost per unit and obviously the like asset that we're gaining. So we will often buy, you know, leasehold flats that are being sold on our own estates. That's a very easy way of getting a buyback. We did that the first year we were in office, we got GLA grants to do it, but for a similar price, you know, there are some units that are going for 350 or 400,000 pounds on our estates, dependent on the bedroom sizes, and, you know, we'll buy those when we're being offered grant, because then that will lower the grant, but then when the grant's gone and we're just buying at market. Now with the Thousand Homes, like we are building assets that on market sale, you know, we're building them for 400,000 pounds, that's not including grants, obviously there's grant and obviously there's variation and I don't want you to use these exact numbers in your next leaflet, but you get, you know, we're building homes that are, you know, some of the market value of these homes are going to be like, you know, 800,000 pounds. They are green, brand new, highest space standards available, often built to the needs of existing, we're not selling them off. No, I think like the value of that asset that we're building is like so much higher than we could, yeah, exactly, I'm trying to speak in the language of conservative party members. It's so much higher. Yeah, exactly. It's so much higher. No, no, but the quality and the value of that asset is so much higher than what we can buy on the, buy, you know, back necessarily from our own existing stock. So, you know, we're talking about units that can be wheelchair accessible for two people with like four other people living in those properties, like really difficult properties that you cannot find on the open market. We're talking about homes built specifically for down sizes, so that have a garden or on the ground floor or one beds we're talking, you know, I was on the fontany way, which actually is one of your schemes, Ravi, and on the balcony and the builder said, so that's a, that's a 2 million pound view from this balcony, you know, that's a beautiful view of Richmond Park, that's council housing, that's yeah, yeah, high quality, really, really high quality housing. So I think it's completely like it's comparing apples and oranges to compare what we can buy and what we can build based on the factor of using every pound that we spend every pound that we spend because it's public money has to be the most bang, most bang for buck, most bang for luck. And so the thousand homes program is on our own land, no land price and incredibly valuable bespoke high quality asset that we're building for local people that will be owned by them for a hundred years compared to, compared to getting grant to buy back old properties, which are, we can use and which are also a very important strategic arm, but they cannot be compared in the same way. They, they just can't, they are, they are adding to the supply of social housing, but if we were to take all the money from the thousand homes and just go on a buying spree, you know what would happen. You're an estate agent, then there would be a run on the market, right? That one's a, one's accounts is about to splurge, then prices rocket up, you know, the market better than I do. Right. So, so, you know, that would not be a smart thing for us to do as a council. And that's why we do a mixed thing. We do, you know, we do a mixed economy. I'd say, you know, I know it's a, it's a, it's a radical idea, but we're getting, we're getting discounts for building quality homes from the GLA. So, I mean, just, just think about why would they sell at build cost? Why would a developer sell to me at build cost? Unless there was a balance sheet. Oh, okay. If I can find, okay. If I can, if that's true, that's true. So if we find blocks, if we plan and this, you're totally right. If we find a scheme that is going under that, um, wants to sell to us at build cost with their, um, uh, building contribution added in, we've done that. And we did that on the Higgins site. We flipped, we flipped homes that, uh, private developer on one of your schemes into social rent houses at a very, very good deal. And we intervened in the market. We're happy to do that, but I can tell you that those chances are not, uh, they're few and far between. That is not the norm that developers in Wandsworth with land values and house prices in Wandsworth, the bar that has the most houses valued at over a million pounds in the entire country. It is not often the best, the best option for us. And the homes are going to be a massive legacy for, you know, for, for the future for Wandsworth. Whereas, you know, if we're buying older homes, there's a bigger maintenance cost, there's a bit, you know, there's, uh, also that they might have to be torn down within the period of time, you know, that these other houses, the best benefit is speed. The best benefit is speed. So we, the reason why we do do it, because that's what I'm saying, we're not saying it's not a bad model, but the best benefit for us is speed because you can, you can, you can get houses much quicker than going through the entire planning process. So we, we're doing, we're covering all our bases, we're happy to go and allocate money to, to purchasing more. If you council Austin, if you have loads of secretly, uh, cheap properties to sell us at discount price, you know, I, I, you know, we, we speak to abdas the lawyers and we make sure you're conscious of interest, but we do want to, we do want to purchase. Yeah, exactly. We do want to purchase, but what I'm saying is it's, it's, Wandsworth is a very, it's a very, it's a, it's a very tight market, you know, I think we've gone from the housing committee to a game show very, very quickly, but is there any other, is there any other questions? Is there any other questions? Fabulous. Can we, can we, uh, can we support the recommendations A and B for this paper? Yeah. Okay. Brilliant. So onto item number nine, uh, I know, yep. So the housing services activity update, uh, number, uh, paper number 24, three, five, five. We've only got 15 minutes to go. So can we go straight to questions with this as okay. Fabulous. Um, so any questions [inaudible] Any other questions? No. Okay. Well, Molly's taken over the chairing of this. Um, so are we okay to support this for information? Brilliant. Okay. Sorry. It's a decision paper. Sorry. Yes. So we're happy to support the recommendations. I am. Okay. And then we're on. I kind of think you should discuss this paper. I'm just saying as the cabinet member that I would, I think you should cause it's for decision. Marlene's looking daggers. Yeah. Oh, are there any questions? I'm hoping to see what is different from the paper that was presented in couple of cycles ago. When the only difference I see in the figures is a, the date and the reasons for the 56 properties. But the rest of the table is exactly the same as it was before. Am I, am I missing something here? I think that if that's right, and I'm not saying isn't, that sounds like too big a coincidence to be right, if that makes sense. So I want to go away and check that. Paper 24267 has all the figures the same apart from the date and reasons for the 56 properties. Right. If, if, well, apologies on the assumption that there's been a error there and the wrong documents been attached, but we'll certainly check that for you. And said corrected appendix. Yes. Thank you. Any more questions? Okay. Um, so can we, uh, support the recommendation? So can we vote? Yes. So who's in favor? Okay. Who's against and who is abstaining? And then we, sorry, Mr. Cho, but, um, it's been, yes, there's been no, uh, questions unfortunately, I feel, I feel awful, but yeah, but, um, but yeah, it's next time, uh, Ms. Worth said it was a good experience. Oh, sorry, we got, sorry. Sorry about that. So, um, so sorry, moving on and we're being told now that you can stay on for the next one as well. So, um, so, um, so item number 10 housing, uh, quarter to budget monitor report. So paper 24 dash three, five, six, um, and, uh, Mr. Davis, I'm happy to take any questions on this one. Um, basically the position presented is showing a 5.187 million overspend, uh, for, um, services under the remit of this committee. Um, and as we didn't discuss in the last paper, it's for the reasons that are set out in the previous paper. So I sort of stole my explanation a little bit. Okay. So, um, any questions on this one? Uh, Councillor Kivvina. So therefore, my question really is, is the, the forecast of 5.187 realistic given that we have hired and drifting numbers, upward drifting numbers in quarter one and quarter two and the prospect of that ebbing isn't there, previous people didn't suggest that. So all I'm saying is, is that a realistic forecast or are we going to say in the end of quarter four, uh, that we missed the revised forecast by X again? Um. Okay. Thanks, Councillor. Just to say that the, the numbers in this paper have been based on the revised forecast just, just dealt with in the previous paper. So it's reflecting the latest numbers. It's also reflecting the, um, latest unit rates and applying to those an assumption of continued inflationary, um, increases over the balance of the year. So using that methodology and, you know, everyone around this table understands, I, I, I know they do, that this is a very dynamic thing. We've got a raging homelessness crisis across London as the previous paper said. So, you know, I can't give you a cast iron guarantee that these numbers are going to be the year end numbers, but they are based on a different methodology to previously and on our latest forecast. So hopefully they're reliable from that perspective. Second point, which I was back of six, I mean, I made this point last time, which is about the language about increasing competition from central government seeking house to house asylum seekers. It's the same language again. And I, I really, I mean, I, I, I know what it is saying and I just do think that this is an area of sensitivity, uh, which perhaps we could try and make it less overt as, as it states here. That's just that. Yes. I think, uh, um, firstly, an apology for, for not picking that up from the previous comment. I think that's valid and we'll look to do that in future updates. Any more questions? Do you want to speak on that? I, I, I, I just think because the other two, I know it's late at night, but the other, these two papers are very serious, but they're, they're very important. They are significant overspends on a statutory service, um, based on a, uh, large increase in demands that was not factored in at the, the, the July numbers that we got, which shows that the demand for temporary accommodation has gone up in a way that we hadn't planned for. Um, and you know, I, I, we just had a big discussion about why we're doing all the things we're doing and is largely because of the unprecedented pressures that are being placed on this statutory service. So the, the paper prior reports on the fact that our preventions are going down. Uh, so a lot of our staffing, a lot of our, a lot of the reforms that we've done to try and tackle this are being, they are effective, they are working, but the scale of the problem is, is going faster than we are able to catch up with, and you know, that, that is not a place that we, we wanted to get to. Um, we will be bringing forward options and ideas of how we can reform further. Um, but like I say, the previous paper highlights all the areas in which on performance grounds, we should be getting on top of this, but the scale of presentations in August was higher than any previous time in the 18 months, right, which was meant to be a low period for us. So you know, this is the reality of what we're dealing with. This is why, you know, we, we, we just had a back and forth on social and this is why that supply of social housing is so important because currently this is a lot of money being spent on temporary accommodation that is just public money being taken into unproductive rents and often outside of, outside of Wandsworth. So you know, it's a, it's a, it's a serious issue and we take it very seriously as a council. And I just wanted to have that on record because I even, even though I know it's late, I think it's important that we recognize that I think those preventions were going up rather than down. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah, it's like, so for once I actually agree with you, I mean, it's an important matter of taxpayers money that we're discussing here. Um, isn't there an argument for having a paper like this earlier in the committee? Yeah. So the, it was because we, um, we, we knew we had company who don't actually cover housing services. They just cover the tenants issue. So it was almost like a courtesy to them that we would cover this a bit later on. What I can say though, is that this paper is informing you of the challenge that we are now facing at a period when we didn't think we'd be facing it. And so papers will be coming forward with reforms that we're coming up with to try and tackle this overspend and also get on top of, um, you know, while, while I say things are going in the right direction in terms of the service provision, uh, how we, how we really deal with what is a major financial challenge to the capital. Like in Wandsworth, we are in a place whereby this isn't an existential risk. There are other councils in London that are not in that place, right? Like this is general fund spend. So this is, this is bigger than Wandsworth. And so we want to be a council that leads on this stuff. And so we will be talking in that spirit and coming up with reforms, but also working with colleagues across London to how we can get on top of this. Cause this is a, this is a crisis that, that, that must be solved. We cannot have this number of people entering into temporary accommodation at this, at this, at this rate. It's just not sustainable. I'm sorry, cabinet member makes a point about, um, general fund. Well, of course all homelessness is on general fund and all boroughs have the same thing. And in fact, there are boroughs in the worst position than us, us and, uh, and in fact the way in which the, this borough has historically discharged that statutory duty is largely within its own geographical boundaries and if not very close by. So in that sense, they've got an enviable record compared to the rest of the thing. I think one of the things that neither of those two papers to kind of talk about is, uh, is in a sense, um, arresting the, the, the flow of homelessness and, uh, and, and the success, we've got staff to do whatever's work, but we don't get the full flavor of exactly what is it that's happening, it's trying to do it and how much, I mean, there's a piece in there about, uh, uh, people, uh, like to be homeless, but, but staying with friends and family clearly there is, there is more to explore. For example, in that area, uh, there is perhaps tougher gatekeeping to explore as well because there will always be cases where tougher gatekeeping might, might, uh, at least delay or avert the issue and, and a greater engagement with private landlords where, where, where there are sometimes, uh, you know, Section 21 notices without, without much regard and, and all of those things. And I know we've done that in bits, uh, in the past and with differing success and perhaps what time has come for actually a, a paper that pulls everything together and say what we've done, uh, how successful it's been, how it can be further tightened but improved and so on. So there is almost a kind of a, a need to say do a complete audit of what was done and then what are other options available and of course before, before long what we're doing, somebody else is doing and somebody else is doing, we need to do, so we need to learn from that as well, um, and there may be a solution which is not just a borough solution but a, but a, a, a regional solution or a London-wide solution and, and there have been in the past and certainly I, I, I know of it and was involved in it but London-wide conversations about, about creating stock or, or certainly creating TA stock, uh, in, in a way that was both of good standard and, and, and easily, uh, sort of serviceable. So perhaps that's a paper that is worthy of producing and that's a paper worthy of a debate. Just to, uh, try and reply to that in a sort of general sense, so you'll, you'll be aware and some of this is obviously politically controversial, um, this paper references the Renters' Rights Act, it was mentioned earlier, this paper mentions the turbulence that almost certainly will flow from that reform, it's the biggest reform of the private rented sector for 30 years odd, um, more, more widely, so, uh, but once that is in, the hope is given that, uh, section 21 no fault evictions are 25% odd of our presentation, there'll be a benefit. The size and scale of that we don't know, but what it did want to say is on Friday I attended a meeting, um, which brought together and was the first sort of tangible sign of the new government's, um, intention to, well, they've done it, to create a, a cross departmental, uh, working group and, and approach to managing homelessness, 'cause a lot of the issues that drive it are structural, um, and, and not within the control of any council, they must rest with central government. So there are encouraging signs and I think the, the things that you mentioned there, Councilor Govindia, are things we're happy to come back and report on and pulling it all together as you say, within what we control we can do, but a lot of the solutions have got to be, you know, the structural problems in the housing market, uh, some of which we've touched on today. Thank you. Is that last question, you wouldn't like to add anything to that, Ms. Cho, just so that everyone has had a go tonight, so. Just to say really in regards to, um, some of the things just mentioned, we're trying to coach and train our staff on the front line 'cause, um, I don't know if you're aware, but, um, homelessness, uh, finding people with homelessness experience now is, is like gold dust. So we're having to recruit and when we are, um, we're training them in regards to learning about the act and applying the right principles in terms of prevention, um, and we are actually now doing a rolling contract, uh, where recruitment, uh, where we're looking to get people in. But as soon as we have recruited into the post, we're taking, going back out on advert. So just to give a bit of flavor in the last recruitment round that we did have, we had 18 shortlisted staff members, um, only, well, but I think, um, 20% of them had homelessness experience. When we did interview, there was only six candidates that were selected and we ended up recruiting three of them because 50% of them got jobs elsewhere. Um, only one of those, um, offices was, had previous homelessness experience previously. So it's, it's just to give you the sheer size of what we're having to do and the things that we're trying to embrace with them, the prevention agenda and trying to get our numbers up in terms of helping support, um, the residents of Wandsworth. Thank you so much. Mr Joe. Is there any more questions? And I hope there's not because it's half past 10 are we okay. Okay. So can we, uh, note this report for information and for, and thank you so much for squeezing everything in within the, uh, a lot of time. Thank you very much. Thank you. [BLANKAUDIO]