Transcript

Good evening all, thank you. Good evening and welcome to the Housing and Regeneration and Scrutiny Subcommittee meeting tonight. My name is Councillor Badr Chowdhury and I will be chairing the meeting tonight. This meeting has been held in person with the Housing and Regeneration and Scrutiny Subcommittee members along with key participants present in the meeting room and joining remotely online. Only the Subcommittee members present in the room can vote. Should a technical error occur that prevents remote attendees from participating, I will decide if and how the meeting should be processed after taking advice from the officers. This meeting has been filmed for the Council's website for public viewing. Those participating in the meeting will be included in the footage. I would remind members at the meeting to only speak on my direction and to engage and speak clearly into their microphones to ensure that the contributions can be properly recorded. Can I remind the members to switch their mobiles on silent mode? Thank you. With the exception of Scrutiny members, only turn on your video cameras when speaking to save. Scrutiny members are encouraged to keep video cameras turned on and if members and officers joining remotely wish to speak, use their raise hand functions. Please do not use the remote meeting chat function as it will be seen by those of us in the physical meeting in the room. We will now go on to the apologies. Justina, do you have any apologies? Thank you. Yes, Chair. I have two apologies. The first is from Councillor Amina Rahman. Councillor Hossain is substituting in his place and Councillor Ahmadiyya Kaveer has sent his apologies as he has had to attend another meeting. Thank you, Justina, for the update. We will move on to Item No. 1. Committee members, introduce yourself, followed by a declaration on whether you have any DPI interest to declare. Anyone? Thank you. On my right, Councillor Chavri. I am a social housing tenant. I am a tenant co-opty, local resident. Councillor Esmaa Islam. No DPIs. Thank you, Chair. Good evening everyone. I am substituting for Councillor Rahman and I have no form of interest to declare. My name is Susanna. I am the leaseholder representative of this subcommittee. I have nothing to declare. I am living in a largely council block but as a leaseholder that has now moved back from Tower Hamlets Homes to the council. Thank you. Thank you to you all. The next item is to approve the minutes of the previous meeting. Do members have any comments? Thank you. Thank you. Our first item of this meeting is to review the actions, log of outstanding actions. Can I now welcome Paul Burgess to provide us an update on this? Thank you, Paul. Over to you. Thank you, Chair. So the scrutiny action log has been circulated to the members. I am receiving updates even today. So I do have two very slight additions to say in terms of the responses. For item 2, the request for the Mayor to meet with the Minister for Housing regarding THCH performance, we did send a further correspondence to the Mayor on behalf of the Chair. So the Chair directly asked for a response. What I have had from the Mayor's office is an acknowledgement of our emails to say that they have been received but they are still waiting for the Mayor to respond. So we have had an acknowledgement of the receipt of the emails but not the responses. So that is a slight addition to that. And then the other thing was that the last item on the second page where Paul Patterson just before he left said he was going to send an update on the structure chart. I have been informed by the Strategy and Policy Team for Housing that because of a few changes with a new corporate director in place that that is not yet available but they are going to be submitting it to David and Councillor Kabir for approval so that should be coming along very shortly. Other than that I am happy to take any questions if there is anything that needs clarification. Thank you Paul for the update. Councillor Asma, thank you. Yes, just to say that we requested for the structure plus also the information was asked so that Councillors know where to direct questions, their inquiries, so if we can make sure that is actually part of the inquiry as well. Yeah, I will make sure, I will send another email to them to say that that information, that can be included as well. Thank you. Thank you. Suzanne, thank you. Thank you Paul for circulating the number of affordable units which is one of the action. Is there any possibility of dissecting that further into a socially, what is the number of units that are socially affordable and rentable? I can now, as they sent that information today, if you would like I can send a follow up question asking for that breakdown, certainly. Thank you Paul for the update and we will move on to our first item of this evening to review the progress of housing, sorry, bringing housing management services back in house. I would like to ask Councillor Kabir Ahmed, cabinet member for regeneration, inclusive development and house building and David Joyce, director of housing regeneration present this item. Councillor Ahmed, can you introduce the item and David please feel free to have your input into it. You have five minutes and Councillor Ahmed, thank you very much, over to you, thank you. Chair, I will try to be brief and assume that the handout that went out has already been read by members of the committee. Just in terms of background, last November, 2023, we had the Almo town hamlets homes to be into the council. So the council took direct ownership of housing delivery, sorry, housing management. As stated on the paper, included 550 staff and various contracts, over 20 plus contracts which we then had to shift through. In terms of key achievements to date, there is an ongoing saving of 1.7 million to the housing revenue account, cabinet has approved 140 million pounds worth of capital works to improve stock and address building safety issues within the MTFS. We've reviewed around 70 contracts with merging of the six contracts pursued, termination of ten contracts. ASB has been brought into the wider community safety team and integrated with our FIO service, which has created a saving of around 300,000 per annum for residents. In terms of improved services, we've got single specialised housing policy strategy and regulatory compliance division, which is headed by Karen Swift who is here. Additional resources and service integration, improving complaints performance. So we've employed a number of individuals who have previously worked for the Ombudsman service to specifically deal with that, because we know there was a gap in that service, which you'll probably hear later on as well. In terms of strengthening governance and assurance, external audits were commissioned from Pennington's and HQN to identify performance and compliance gaps, housing management improvement plan developed and agreed at cabinet. New strengthened governance arrangements agreed, including establishment of cabinet housing subcommittee, which I addressed last week. Also we have resident engagement, comprehensive review and transfer of THH and housing options website pages, considering regulatory standards. Tenants' voice has been set up, which is an advisory body that's been established. Tenants and leaseholder engagement strategy was also agreed by cabinet. Audits and self-referrals, really important to understand that we, as all elected officials, have a responsibility to make sure our residents live in safe homes. Unfortunately, as we investigated into these issues, we felt it prudent that we refer ourselves to the housing regulators and ensure that the testing we do isn't backwards and isn't just benchmarking with local authorities, but it's held us up to a proper regulatory standards of the housing regulators. As I mentioned in cabinet last week, there is only one local authority in the country which has a C1 rating, and that's Barnsley. But that's the target we want to head towards. To date, the housing regulators have had good communication with us, they've had meetings with the Chief Executive and our Corporate Director for Housing and Regeneration, David Joyce, who's also here. A lot of the investment we've put in will have to look at building safety, fire safety, and remedy works around the housing estates we have. And I'm going to be absolutely open and transparent about it. There are a number of blocks which are of concern. The most recent one was Randall House, which is in the Poplar Ward, which had ACM cladding within that building. The council previously had certified it as all ACM cladding had been removed, but since these inspections have gone on, we've identified ACM cladding. So we've put an immediate package together and we've brought in contractors. There are some gaps in how fast we can remedy it, because there is permission needed from TFL and other operators within the surrounding areas to give us permission to put scaffolding up and so on and so forth. But we are actively working with them right at the top levels and the Corporate Director is very actively involved in that. In terms of other buildings, you'll know Johnson House. We've got a waking watch in there because we identified some fire safety risks. There's also Latham House, which has had, I think, over £3 million injection put in because of huge building safety issues and concerns. So as we're going through this process of identifying, we're also trying to put remedies with proper frameworks in place so that these residents can live in safe homes. But in the interim, we are putting things in such as waking call watches as well as direct telephone lines, if there are emergencies, and setting up those emergency evacuation plans in order to deal with that. With that, I'll stop. Unless you have any specific questions, we are happy to answer it. We've got a full team here. And sorry, I forgot to mention, Darren's over there as well. Darren's doing a lot of the grafting around working with Karen around compliance and fire and building safety regulations as well.

Thank you, Councillor. We will now move on to the questions. I will take two questions at a time. Susanna, your question, please. Thank you. Firstly, I compliment the Council for putting yourself and referring yourself to the housing so a regulator. I think it's quite important. I think when I read the news from as a TRA chair, I actually welcome that transparency. It would be quite nice to know some of the details that the report has uncovered because some of the blocks you mentioned, it's just I'm hearing it for the first time. So my question is what details can we get? Is this going to be a published report that we could assess? And that's number 1. And then the second part of the question, are residents going to be informed if they are living in a block that is going to be unsafe? >> Do you want to answer that, Councillor? Thank you. >> Thank you. It's a really helpful question. And I think the first part of it is about the fact that we have self referred, which is best practice as a coregulatory model. So we're not meant to wait until the regulator comes to us. I think it's really important that we through our sort of external audits we identified some areas where we didn't feel we were meeting the standard and we went to the regulator. In terms of the detail of what the self referral covers and the findings, you will find them in a cabinet report that we took last week which set out all of the issues that we self referred ourselves on. So, for instance, in terms of compliance, it was around completing fire risk assessments. It was around Legionella tests and lift testing. Now, I'm pleased to say on all three of those, we've already done a lot of work to catch up with our program around doing those compliance tests. We still have more to do around the remedial actions that fall out of those testing. But we have been really transparent about the numbers around all of that and it's all included in the cabinet report. We did also find a number of issues around the transparency standard as well. And one of the things was about having a really clear engagement strategy and as to set a suite of options for how tenants and residents can get involved and Councillor Ahmed's already set out that we actually agreed that strategy last week at cabinet. And we also agreed the setting up of a new cabinet subcommittee on housing management specifically to address the issues around the transparency standard. So there were a number of issues that were part of the self referral which set them all out in the cabinet report, but I'm happy to the team as well who are happy to take further questions. Sorry, if I can also come in. In terms of notifying residents, that's one of the main priorities. So Brendan Louse, for example, as soon as we found out the very next day, you know, so the corporate director found out through the reporting mechanism, I was notified the very next day. And there afterwards, the day after that, we had called a residence meeting which was attended by around 100 residents and we were open and transparent with them about the measures that we were going to put in immediately, the medium term measures and the longer term measures as well in relation to that. Thank you. Thank you. Councillor Asmaisola. Thank you. There's a few questions, if you can write them down. I wanted to ask about frontline services as part of the stock coming in house, the caretakers, how is that working, if you can give us an update. I'm going by what we know with the ombudsman and some of the weaknesses that we recognise as a council. So if you can talk to me about how we handle complaints, especially emergency ones, what are the actions that we put in place after some of the findings. Repairs, obviously repairs is one that we know we need to do a lot of work. Can you talk to me about the contracts with MERS and are we exploring any other ways to improve that. The bit about ASP and community safety and having a shared service. Unfortunately, that's not one that's that at the moment, it seems from what I hear from residents and in different estates, it's actually got worse and where Talhamnet's home was actually aware of some of the situation, there seems to be a lag and the pace hasn't been picked up and I'll give Granby a stay as one. Lastly, TRAs, in these plans, can you please explain how TRAs are going to fit in. I know we need to set some up and some aren't active, but then you've got really good ones like the boundary TRAs, how are you trying to engage them and have them part of the improvement journey. There's quite a lot there and I suppose, Darren, you have to come in part of it. From an overview, in terms of caretaking services, we absolutely support the caretaking service and we want to in terms of the ASP, there are spikes and troughs when it comes to ASP because sometimes it does move across and Granby estate specifically you raise. I'm very familiar with the issues, but sometimes it also has to do with things like tenancies and cuckooing and sort of issues related to that and there's also the element of criminality also which is involved. So we have to work in partnership with both the police, the courts, because when you're looking at eviction orders and so on and so forth, there's currently a number of cases that we are not only dealing with directly by ourselves, but also other local authorities who've purchased properties in Tower Hamlets and have placed residents in those properties. So I know David has taken a very proactive role in contacting other corporate directors as well where it's their residents that are the core of causing the ASP and the nuisance that's there. So from a housing management perspective, we have to investigate the matter, we have to sort of put the resources in in order to identify the issues. Unfortunately it's not an immediate process of evict this person and just kick him out. It's a medium to long process unfortunately because you do have to go through the courts in order to evict somebody and that's if they're your own tenants. We've got a number of tenants who are also, as I said, from outside the borough who have been placed there by their borough of residence in temp accommodation and again we have to work at a high level with the corporate directors in order to get those enforcement actions put on those individuals. There are multiple cases both from our ward as well as other wards where these issues have taken place. In terms of the ASP and the transference over of services, as I understand a number of the staff who worked for the outsourced service have actually two peed into the council to provide those same services. In terms of the numbers increasing and the prioritisation of it, again we will be working on hot spots and heat maps in order to deploy staff around those ASP areas around the times that are necessary and that's where the wider service from the council can provide more wraparound support in order to deal with it. It's still at its infancy because a lot of staff have been recruited but there's things like clearance, DBS checks and the training they need to go through. So hopefully within the next six months you will see a direct shift and more presence in the wards of enforcement officers. David if you can come in on repairs and complaints process if you can come in on that Karen. Just on repairs, we're in the midst at the moment of an end to end service review of the repair service which is work that's underway. What we're looking at is how to reduce the volume of calls coming into the housing service centre and how to take it to improve repairs diagnosis by the call advisors in that service centre because I think what often goes wrong is that we categorise the issue incorrectly at the start and then people have to go round the loop maybe two times or more and so what we're looking to do is really kind of improve that diagnosis stage. We're also trying to develop better communications and governance between the internal teams who are dealing with the repairs process by kind of reviewing all of the current processes and hand-offs and coming up with a better process and also looking at making sure we've got the right skills in the right places. So all of that work's happening at the moment. I think the bulk of the work is concluding this month and then we can start moving towards implementing that new service model but also looking at how can we really kind of use our kind of contract management functions with mayors to make sure that we're getting the most out of that as well. Karen, if you could come in on complaints. Yeah, I think it's also just worthwhile saying just picking up the repairs point as well that we're going to be reviewing the repairs policy. So when mirrors go out, they go out and deal with repairs as directed by us in our policy. So it's about whether we have the right categories of repairs, you know, in the urgent repairs, they will always take precedent over repairs that are booked in, sort of like the scheduled repair appointments. And if we're getting a lot of urgent repairs, which may not necessarily be urgent in the summer, they might be urgent in the winter but they might not be urgent in the summer, that they are then causing cancellations of sort of scheduled in repairs. So we're looking to see whether we've got the right sort of policy, because mayors will just be using the policy to direct where they put resources. So I think that goes alongside the sort of end to end review. In terms of complaints, in the slide pack you'll see that we put some extra resources once we'd in-source THH into complaints, because they weren't necessarily being, the time taken to respond was not where we wanted it to be. Darren emailed me this morning about a huge effort that had gone on with the team over the last couple of months. So reducing the number of stage ones that were overdue to 20 and reducing the number of stage twos that were due to 10, that's a massive, massive effort. And once we get through those 20 and 10, we will be responding to complaints in the timescale. So those additional resources have really got stuck into that backlog and will be operating within normal timescales, I would imagine, in a couple of weeks. So I was just going to address the issue around the TRAs that you raised. So again, all the TRAs that were there are still there, and the housing management team will continue to work with the TRAs as they did. So they will feed into the wider tenants' voice. But that's, again, that's another area of our housing officers as well as housing management team continue to engage with the TRAs and support those TRAs. I think more recently there was another TRA established over at Latham House, which was without a TRA for quite a while. And again, our housing management team worked with residents of Latham House in order to set that TRA up. Chair, I'm just requesting further information on just one thing. The ASP, if we as a committee can have in written form what that process looks like from start to finish, how it all fits in, so that we're able to best inform our residents. And regarding, I'm not fully convinced or I understand there's a delay, but with Granby Estate, the reason why I took that as an example is because it's one that doesn't actually meet those reasons that you set out. It's the location, and if you're going to bring Tara Hamlet's home in house, it means we're now responsible for that. The last set of action plans was under Tara Hamlet's homes, and neither one of those things have been actioned apart from the gate that was put into the estate in order to block people coming in from Chilton Street, like the cameras, the lighting, none of that, because a lot of it is about designing out, because it is bricklaying and it is external factors that are affecting that estate, and it is an estate that houses some of the most eldest and most vulnerable residents of this borough. So that's why I raise it again, and I'd really like it if you would put that in written for me, so I'm able to then have something to test against next time we're having a conversation on this. So, if I may, Chair, I'm happy to deal with, if you give me those specifics that you've raised, I'll be happy to address that with the housing management team and the corporate director. Do you still need specifics? I just explained. Sorry? Do you still need specifics? I just explained. Yes, if you can, I know you just explained, but if you can give me that in writing, we will make sure that everything is ticked off specifically in relation to what you were asking about. Thank you. Councillor Iqbal Hussain, your question, please. Thank you, member, for your presentation about the financial position and improvement plan around the housing issues. I would like to know, is standing-in compliance been identified, and if so, how long would it take to address the non-compliance-been-identified specific timeline? Thank you. So, I mean, as David explained in Cabinet last week, it's difficult for us to identify the specific timeline, because we've just submitted. The housing regulators had set a due date for inspection of Tower Hamlets in January, so they were actually quite chuffed that we had approached them, and the level of detail that we provided within the report that we had given to them. So once they come, then we can identify a timeline and the sort of specific areas that would need dealing with, and the sort of level of challenge we face as a local authority. David, you want to add anything else to that? Yeah, no, that spot on the timeframe for the inspection that they will now do is basically January to March, although they've already started collecting some sort of contextual documentation from us. And during that period between January and March, they will also do some field work where they come on site to the Town Hall, probably in February, and interview and meet with key stakeholders, including people like the Chief Executive obviously, and the Mayor and others. But all of that will happen in that January to March period. Thank you. Councillor Chaudry. Thank you, Chair. You mentioned of 1.7 million savings. So my question is how these savings will be made, and how will you guarantee that savings do not negatively affect housing services and maintenance? Yeah, so the initial is around the posts of Chief Executives and certain directors. So when you insource it in, you don't need two Chief Executives, and the Chief Executive's office as such. Then we had finance directors for Tower Hamlets Homes. We've got a finance director within the council and a corporate director of resources. So that role wasn't needed. And then there was various other posts within the structure that is a duplication of what we already have established in the council. So the approach we had was we pepper-potted certain departments like HR, like finance, and ASB, for example, within the wider council structure that we had. And there were some other areas which were specialist roles, such as legal and so on and so forth, which again, the council's already got a legal department. So you don't need that level of heads of services and directors covering those particular roles. So they were the immediate efficiency savings, because there was a level of duplication there. But there's also other areas that we feel there is a need to enhance and boost, and we put staff into those areas. And complaints is one of those areas where we've recruited more staff in order to tackle that. Karen, do you want to go into the specific details? So on the first slide it talks about 226(k). So that was directly from the executive management team salaries and the termination of the contract. So those were the three director posts that didn't transfer over. And then on the second page, there's the 1.7 million that was taken out the base budget. So that was for the deletion of the THH had a contingency budget. So the council had a contingency budget for the HRA, so it was felt that the THH contingency budget could be deleted. There was also THH company operating costs. So if you're a company you need auditors. So lots of the operating costs that relate to you being a company fell away. There was also a corporate -- there was a health and safety post. The health and safety team moved into the corporate health and safety service, and there seemed to be capacity there to carry on that work. There was also some duplication of the HR IT systems so that the THH IT systems were switched off. And THH had their own graduate traineeship and apprenticeships. Well, the council has one of those. So now apprenticeships into the housing management service come through the council's graduate traineeship and apprenticeship. And they made up the savings of 1.7 million from the base budget. So I think going forward, so we're still reviewing a number of other contracts, things like horticulture and other joined up services, services that the council already provide. I can't go into specifics of individual contracts, but in a general sense where there is duplication and the council has existing services provided, then they will be sort of drawn in house. In terms of staffing, we're not envisaging sort of getting rid of staff, but it's about better managing contracts we have. Thank you for the response. Mahbub, your question, please. Thank you. Hi. I think David, thanks for -- you talked about the self-referral. And in the report it was quite light. He talked about safety and quality and transparency and so on, and you mentioned that it was you detailed in the cabinet report last week, isn't it? I think two things would be useful. One would be if the cabinet report can be circulated after it's given as a public document. And B, in terms of I think from there, what are the kind of key risks or key issues that was flagged up with the regulators? And I guess secondly the process around now that the council has self-referred, what happens next and how do they kind of get back to us as in, you know, what happens and when do they get back to us? And we also have our next scrutiny committee on 25th of February. Can we by that stage get an update on where we are with it as well? Yeah. Thank you for that. And I'd be very happy, we'll circulate the cabinet report that sets out the full detail of the self-referral. But also at cabinet I did circulate a tabled briefing based on the meeting that we had with the regulator that day which set out what the process will be around the inspection, what will happen when and what the time frames will be and when we will find out the outcome and the judgement which we expect to be the back end of March, April. So we can share that note as well that will give you all clarity on exactly what's going to happen and when. Okay. Thank you. Any more questions? Susanna, thank you. >> Yeah. Just a quick one. So you mentioned in January you're going to have the regulator going out to do an assessment. So how are you picking the assets for them to assess? Like can we, for example, offer up our estate as part of the assessment? >> So during the fieldwork the regulator will attend key meetings that are already in the calendar. So I would expect that during the period they will attend this forum, for instance, they will attend our cabinet meetings and so on and so forth. During the fieldwork as well they'll want to meet some of the involved residents. So people like DRA chairs or town and vice forum, all of those things. So we will schedule all of that through. They will probably we will give them the list of everybody and they will probably select who they want to speak to. But they are definitely going to want to do that. They will want to speak to residents, they will want to speak to key players like the chair of this committee and so on and so forth. Thank you, once again, Councillor Ahmed and David for your update. Thank you very much. Now we will move on to our next item, 4.2, tenant satisfaction measures. I would like to once again ask Councillor Ahmed to present this to us and if David would like to have any input into it, please do so. You have five minutes, Councillor Ahmed. Thank you. >> Thank you, chair. Once again I'm going to assume the report is as tabled. Just I'll pick out the key areas. I just want to highlight the independence of the satisfaction survey. So this wasn't done by the council directly. This was done by a third party who surveyed a thousand residents randomly. There was translation services offered for tenants who don't speak English. We did better than our neighbours and again, you know, the benchmarking we want is to be the best. We are in the London upper quartile, so comparatively speaking Hackney are at 59, Harringay 47, Newham at 59, Waltham Forest at 61. We're at 65. In terms of London median, it's 59. In terms of London upper quartile, it's 65%. In terms of overall satisfaction, it has the trend is going upwards. I'll just focus on the ambers and the reds, if you don't mind, because the greens are positives. So in terms of emergency repair targets, we're on amber, but the direction is heading up. In terms of nonemergency repair targets, again, we are slightly off it, but the direction is heading upwards. Then you've got gas safety checks. Unfortunately, there are some properties that we can't gain direct access to. It goes to a point where we have to get a not court order to gain access to certain properties. So it's slightly, we put it green, it's out by 0.1%. I think it's just the one property which we're still awaiting to gain access to, otherwise we'd be on 100%. Fire safety checks, we're at 99.9%, and it's one block that we're out with. Asbestos surveys, we are at amber, but the trend is going up. There's 143 checks that need to be done, and then water safety checks. Again, we're up. That's at amber. There are six blocks still left. Lift checks, again, it's at amber. There are 16 blocks left. The trend is heading in the right direction for that. Satisfaction, that view's taken into account. Again, we're at amber. It's slightly gone down, but we're hoping the changes currently made within the department will boost that up going forward. There is a red, though, and I'll focus on that red. This is stage two responses. So although the trend is going up, the target was 12%. We're at 7%, but again, that's an area where we've brought specialists in, former employees of the on-woodsman service, so we can get that. To be honest, we don't want it to get to stage two. We want to deal with it at stage one. So we're trying to kind of divert complaints away from stage two by dealing with it at stage one. Satisfaction with handling ASB, again, it's amber. It's slightly gone down, but with the implementation and integration into the wider community safety service, we're looking at hopefully going forward that will overcome into a green. In terms of conclusion, there are many positives that have happened. There's also challenges we face as well, which are set out there clearly. Darren, would you like to add anything else? >> Thank you, Councillor. Yes, so definitely complaints is an area where we need to improve, but our queue-free performance is trending positively, much more positively in that regard, but I think what we need to do with complaints is take the lessons from them and implement learning, so it's not just about getting complaint responses out. It's actually getting to the root of the resolution for residents, but then applying that and service improvements. We also know we've got some work to do, as mentioned before, around ASB. That service is being -- we are doing a process review like we are with repairs at the minute on ASB, so we recognise where the improvements are and what we need to do to get there. Another big driver of satisfaction is the performance of our contact centre and how easy it is for residents to get through on the phones. We know there's challenges there and we're taking steps to address that, to reduce wait times, but yet as Councillor has outlined, when benchmarked against neighbouring boroughs, our overall position last year was positive and it's trending positively this year, but we know we've got plenty of improvement work we need to do. >> Thank you for your providing the information to us. We will now move on to the questions. I will take two questions at a time, and if I could remind you all, brief with your questions and also to the cabinet member and the officers to be brief with your response. Thank you. Susanna, over to you. Thank you. A quick question. It says that you will review your repair system, so can you just tell us some of the steps you will do in your review and what outcomes do you want to achieve? So I think it starts with the policy and having a real clear framework for emergencies. We are again a bit of an outlier in the amount of emergencies we raise, about 40, 50 per cent of jobs are emergency, whereas sector average is about 15 per cent, so we need to look at, well, what's driving that, are we diagnosing the repair correctly at the first point of contact, so then we are actually delivering a proper service for residents, so I think that's a key piece of work that will come out of the review. There are some - we have found some stuff around contract management that we need to strengthen definitely, but I do think the policy work that Karen mentioned earlier is important and the diagnosis work as well, training the officers, improving the communication flow, and then finally what we need to do is look at more complex works and how we manage them and actually manage them via a slightly different process. That's quite typical in the sector to look at disrepair and damper mould cases slightly different, manage them differently because they are more complex works, so you need to manage the communication process better with residents, because we know one of the main reasons residents contact is to chase us about existing issues, so we've got to get on top of that. So I think one of the other areas is around pre and post inspection in terms of the works that happen in terms of repairs, so that's another area we're kind of looking into. And lastly what I'll say is in terms of the vast volume of repairs that are done, usually it's

• the ones that aren't done correctly are the ones that are picked up by the counsellors, by the TRAs and sort of the complaints are made about. So on the whole, that experience changes from resident to resident in terms of how that delivery is made in terms of the repairs. Thank you. Councillor Iqbal Hussain, please, thank you. Thank you, Chair. As you recognise the resident satisfaction is dropping, I know you have addressed and touched this one. I would like to know what steps, specific steps will the council be taking to improve its response to complaints. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry, Councillor, I'll take one more question. Mahboob, your question please, thank you. Thank you for that report. I actually played a role in the formulation of the TSM. I was on what was at the time DLAC's social housing panel, so I played a role in the foundation of the TSM as well as the Social Housing Regulation Act. I think it's two things. One was I think my critique at that time even at DLAC was the TSM excluded lease holders and so I guess my first question is around when we're doing these measures, are we focusing on just lease holders, sorry, tenants or are we also incorporating tenant lease holders because we've got a stock of 22,000 of which 50% is lease holders and I think we should kind of, even though we might not be from a regulatory compliance perspective, we might not be required but I think we should look at the data for all our residents. And the second around kind of the building safety, kind of the slides around maintaining building safety and we've got a number of issues around kind of amber at the slide, I think seven or eight around fire safety, asbestos and so on and lift safety checks. And I think some of those things that might be out of hand, things like gas safety we don't have access to, others like kind of lift safety checks and so on, we probably need to put a bit of priority because these are regulatory issues and compliance issues rather than kind of discretionary services. So I think again an update on where we are with those kind of issues would be quite helpful. Thanks. If I come in with Councillor Iqbal's response to Councillor Iqbal and in terms of the technical stuff, Darren and David, if you come in. So in terms of resident satisfaction, we're in the upper quartile and overall sort of resident satisfaction, these slides aren't numbered, but on the handout if you go to, you'll see that the overall resident satisfaction, we're just below 68%, which was last year's levels. So what we're hoping to do is with the new investment that's going in, as well as the tighter monitoring of contractors and the greater service delivery we're looking at and more resident engagement with the resident engagement strategy, hopefully going forward that will change. So these are some of the measures that we're taking in order to tackle that. David. Just on the question of the building compliance results, and I think you alluded to the fact that some of it is a little bit out of our control, so on gas and fire now I think we've just got one block where we've been unable to do it and there's been sort of problems with getting access and those sorts of things, so we do try and work through that as quickly as we can. You could say we're maybe a little bit harsh rating ourselves as Amber with lows, but I think a reason for that is that we, you know, in areas such as gas and fire we want to be 100% compliant and that's the only standard that we'll be happy with. On asbestos and water we've had more catch up to do from a position where we weren't in the best position, but we have really started to motor through that program and the trend is definitely upward just as Councillor Ahmed said earlier. So I think we're happy that we're in an improving position but we've still got a little bit more work to do in those two areas and then I think the examples of where we've only got one block are just quite isolated issues that we need to work through, but we're definitely on top of the program now in terms of keeping it up to date. And your question about should we include leaseholders as well, I think there's quite a set standard around that, Darren, which you might want to speak to. Yeah, it's a really good point. So it's not a statutory requirement, as you say, per the TSMs, but we do collect some satisfaction data for leaseholders, but it's not submitted as part of the TSM. So I can get back an accurate figure as to what that is at the minute, I can provide that after the meeting, because I've got some stats but I'm not sure whether that's year to date or it's the last month, but we do survey leaseholders under overall satisfaction, but it's not submitted as part of the TSM because the Government don't require you to. Thank you, David. Just in order to lift safety checks, and I appreciate sometimes some of these things might fall in the capital program, and the capital program might be quite over some time, and then again, due to construction inflation, costs could go up. So I think in terms of things like that, how long will it take, and if they take a little while, are we communicating that to our local residents? The cabinet member wants to come in as well, I mean this position is really reporting our performance in terms of carrying out the tests that we're required to do on a regular sort of cycle around things like lift compliance. There are also issues around the remedial actions that fall out of that testing program, and we monitor that as well. But in terms of doing the regular kind of checks, we really do need to get to a position where we're 100% across all of the big six, that's our aspiration. We had some contracture performance issues which is why we were in the position that we were in, but as part of the improvement plan that was referred to earlier that we took to cabinet, we've put extra resource on to get to the improved position we see today, with a little more to do in probably two of the big six areas. Did you want to comment on that? Yeah, I mean, it's important to understand that sometimes, particularly with the testing times of the economic situation, there have been contracture issues, particularly around capacity and in terms of service delivery, so without sort of openly saying too much, we have reviewed contracts in order to make it more robust and for them to deliver adequately. And can I just add one other thing just to provide some assurance, which is that we are implementing a new housing compliance system which is integrated with our overall housing management system that actually, you know, flags issues in advance rather than relying on spreadsheets to monitor performance here, so it's a much more kind of proactive piece of software which I think will really kind of modernise our systems and kind of data and ability to interrogate that in this area. Thank you. Councillor Asmaisla, your question please, thank you. Thank you. So it's good to see the benchmark of the overall satisfaction and it's difficult for councillors to kind of digest that because no one really comes to us and says you're doing a great job, the council's doing a great job and everything's fine. They only come to us about complaints and that's what we usually see and hear. But, you know, when you benchmark against South London boroughs, it kind of shows us where we are and that we're not doing too badly. But I wanted to know if there was, when the stock was in Almo, would it be nice to compare internally what our satisfaction rate was a year ago, two years ago, just so we know how much more we can improve. Because if we go by these records like this, it doesn't, as a councillor, I don't get to feel that when I get complaints from residents and there's always room for improvement. So that was the first thing. How we set our own standards so we can set that really gold standard for our residents, our tenants. Second thing was the trend. How are trends calculated, how are you predicting those? There's a bit about the ASB which kind of touches back with what I was saying earlier and what tenants are also saying. And lastly, LIFTS services. How does the contracts work now because we had issues after Brexit and how is that working for us now that it's in house and we have to manage those contracts ourselves? Darren, do you want to come in? Thank you, councillor. Yeah, so in terms of comparing to THH, the difficulty is this is the first year we've done TSM, so the methodology is different. So I believe that under THH it was high, but the methodology was different and it included neutral responses as well, as satisfied, so that's why it appeared higher. Whereas under TSM they're quite strict in their methodology, it's determined by the RSA, so it's not really, I know it sounds like we're sort of trying to divert, but it really isn't comparing like with like. In terms of the trends, so what we're looking at at the minute, so we've included our year end on slide two, which is 65%, and then the 62%, obviously we're looking at Q2, so we're halfway through at the minute, and we as a general, look, this is only the second year we've done it, but from experience of other perception surveys, they have a sample, they've got to hit 1000 surveys by the end of the year. We have an independent company that does that on our behalf. So the trend in terms of it going up is because of its increase from 57% to 62 in the quarter, but generally as a trend, because they recycle the sample, you tend to get more disgruntled people responding in waves one and two, so we're hopeful that the trend will continue to be positive. Of course we don't know, it's a perception survey, and it's, you know, we have to let the process just go through, you know, and it has to be independent, but also what we're trying to do is influence that result, you know, and we can, because we're only halfway through this year, so there's another 500 odd residents to be surveyed, so it goes back to making it easy to get through on the phones, responding and resolving to complaints quicker, and improving the repair service, those are our big free ticket items to drive improvements in satisfaction. Sorry, can I just understand that, so the trends are set by the wave of the response and where we are in the marking, and not, I thought it was where we are as far as what actions we were doing, and therefore we were expecting it to go up, because we've done X, Y and Z initiatives. So the figures that are presented here are based on, they do four waves throughout the year, so we've just had two waves or quarters of surveys, so quarter three will be going on now, so residents will be contacted throughout the quarter, and the same up to quarter four, to get, you have to have a representative sample size, so for us that's about 1,000 tenants. So essentially, where we see areas of concern and issues as a service, we need to focus on improving those areas, and if we improve on those areas, then, you know, it will reciprocate by more tenants having better satisfaction outcomes. Sorry, Councillor? On the lift contract, we don't have that darwin from the housing property services teams here who probably managed those in more detail, so we can get you a more detailed answer on that, but I do know there was a number of issues around the lack of capacity, you are right, after Brexit, there was far fewer players in the supply chain, which led to a lot of social housing landlords, and actually just any organisation with lifts falling into issues in this area, but we can get you a more detailed answer on that. >> Thank you. Councillor Mohammed Choudry, your question, please, thank you. I have a very small stock in mainland ward, and the main feedback I get from the residents is regarding the repairs. So are you using the same contractor used by tire homeless homes, and for the repairs, and if this is the case, then what's your plan to improve around repair service? >> So in terms of the contractor, it was the council who did the vetting and the issuing of the contract for the main contractor, but there's also other smaller contractors who operate for specialist works, so although the ALMO was the management organisation, the contract was issued by the council, so in answer to your question is yes, it's the council contractor, and that contract has continued, but in terms of how our memorandum of understanding and how we operate with the contractor and how we contract manage them, that's changing, particularly with David and Karen, Darren, and the whole housing management team, identifying where there are gaps in that service delivery and how we can reinforce our authority as those who have contracted that service. David, do you want to add? Yeah, I mean, I suppose just to add to that, I think if you walked into any council or any registered landlord board, repairs would be one of the biggest issues that they're dealing with. We are no different. I think the advantage of our position is that we do think there is quite a lot we can do to improve our processes, to, you know, improve the way that we handle repairs calls, to improve the diagnosis stage, to better manage the contract that we've got, so it feels like there is quite a lot we can do to improve the position, but there is also just a general sectoral issue around access to skills and, you know, having the workforce that the sector needs to deal with the edge of the stock that we've got, and we're no different. I'm sure Andrea is here from a registered provider will recognise some of this in terms of pop the hark a bit. If you go into any housing association or council, this is probably going to be the top issue at the moment. All I can sort of reassure you is we're absolutely on it and looking at how we can improve our own service. Thank you, Councillor. I hope it answers your question. Thank you. Thank you both once again. We are grateful for your presentation and providing an update. This is a significant priority for this council, and we look forward to inviting you both back for more discussions on the progress. Thank you very much. Thank you. We will now move on to our next item, social land performance. So with this brief introduction, I would like to invite and welcome Karen Swift, director for housing, and Andrea Baker, housing forum chair. Thank you. You have five minutes to introduce the item. Please consider the slide that's taken as read by the subcommittee. So highlight any relevant key areas the subcommittee needs to be aware of, and then we will move on to the members' questions. Over to you. Thank you. Thank you, chair. I'll just do a very quick introduction just to remind members that the registered provider forum, of which Andrea is the chair, and includes all of the housing, the large housing associations in the borough, the majority of them, that they agreed in April 2003, they agreed to adopt 17 key performance indicators so that there was a commonality of sort of measures, and that information will be provided consistently to this committee. So those are sort of set out at the bottom of page 46. And the report here just gives you an update on the performance across those measures that were agreed by the registered provider forum. I'm more than happy to pass over to Andrea so that she can give you some of the highlights of where performance is above average and areas where we all need to focus on. Just bear with us for a minute. Sorry. Just bear with me. Councillor Abbot, if you wish to stay, you can stay. If not -- I've got the next item, so I'll be around. Okay. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. I'll go through the quarter four report for the landlords within the borough. So starting off with decent homes, we have a compliance rate of 100% for the following RPs, Peabody, one housing, Spitalfields, Harker, Gateway and Providence Row. Tower Hamlets Council, we had the highest percentage of non-decent properties, but we have obviously looked into that and we've explained that in the previous agenda item as well. For the number of complaints received, London quadrant had the fewest complaints per 100 properties. This was the case for last quarter as well. And Notting Hill Genesis, Spitalfields, Clary and Harker had under two complaints per 100 properties. Swan had the highest number of complaints for quarter four which was over six per 100 properties. For safety checks, it's just to note again that the majority if not all properties will have 100% compliance, however, not 100% of these will be certified predominantly due to the lack of property access. So for water safety checks, London and quadrant have not submitted data due to the challenges they face with submitting the data and they've also noted that it's not a legal requirement for them to provide the data. So for water, only East End Homes, Tower Hamlets Council did not achieve 100% compliance. For lift checks, Clary and Spitalfields, Providence Row, Gateway, THCH and Notting Hill Genesis achieved 100% compliance. For fire safety assessments, all providers were over 97%, eight of the 12 providers reported 100% compliance. Gas safety, all providers again had a compliance rate of over 97%, 11 of the 12 providers reported over 99.46% compliance. For ASB, all except Tower Hamlets Council had fewer than two cases per 100 properties. I'll just go on to the final part of this which is the areas improved on from the last quarter. So decent homes, Peabody, One Housing, Spitalfields, Harker and Providence Row achieved 100% decency rate. For emergency repairs, Providence Row, Swan, Notting Hill Genesis, Notting Hill Genesis, THCH achieved 100% on-time completion rate. For non-emergency repairs, Swans, Spitalfields and L&Q had over 93.5% completed within the target time scale. And finally for relit times, 10 of the 12 providers had an average relit time of below 100 days for standard relits and 12 of the eight providers had an average relit time of below 100 days for major works. Thank you. Andrea, did you want to add anything? Thank you, Chair. Just to say I'm not going to be able to answer detailed questions about individual RPs apart from Poplar Harker, but I can try and add some context. Certainly I recognise what David was saying about repairs. It always has been a challenge, but more so I think more recently, the age and type of stock into Hamlets I think is particularly challenging and where I think you see the benefit of very experienced staff coming through who know the stock, you'll be looking at your planned maintenance as well as being really important elements that aren't necessarily picked up here. I think the report, we still struggle with some of the definitions, which is why the TSMs and maybe comparing some of the TSM data may help the Committee, because those are statutory defined definitions that we all have to work to, whereas still some of the definitions for these KPIs can be interpreted differently by different RPs. But I'm happy to try and answer any questions the Committee has got. Thank you, Karen. Thank you, Andrea, and Mabin, Chaudhary, for the overview. I think it was very useful to us to get a sense of our position, and I will now move on to the questions. Susanna, your question, please. Thank you. Yeah, I think for many months, almost a year now, some of us sit here and we look at the TSM findings and we don't feel very convinced with them. On the 22nd of November on BBC, I don't know whether you watched that programme, the Leasehold Trap, it was mentioned Tower Hamlets, it's not the Council, it's the Tower Hamlets Homes, THCH. So they interview residents and it looked really damning to actually the borough, even though it's about the social, the housing provider, it's not the Council. So it was a BBC programme and the residents were interviewed, and this same group of residents came in last, the last meeting, very aggressive, very emotional, because they were affected. So we sit here every quarter looking at the TSM that seems to have very good ratings, but obviously self-marked report card is not working. I don't have the solution, but I just want to make a comment and listen to what you think about this, because it doesn't look very good on the scrutiny that we keep looking at data that doesn't seem to say the right thing. Thank you Suzanna, good questions. Please, thank you. Yeah, so specifically on THCH, the committee has taken a lot of time to hear from both the residents and from the executives over the last two meetings. The organisation has admitted that there are difficulties, they are working through those and that's still in progress in terms of, I think both boards have recently said that of Hyde and THCH have agreed to progress the merger, which hopefully would mean that residents can see a turnaround there. Statistics are always open to interpretation, which is why we have consistently said to the committee, using the TSM definitions and the TSM data, which is now in the public domain, may give you a better sense of how different organisations are operating. Simply because the definitions are set, there is huge amounts of technical guidance and they do cover most of the areas that the committee already looks at, but in a different way, because those definitions are set. I think the difficulty we would have is probably with some of the providers that operate across different boroughs, possibly not being able to separate those out, but it may be useful for the next performance report to focus in on the TSMs rather than just the local performance indicators. Thank you. Councillor, your question, please. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. First of all, I would say I couldn't find any data for Metropolitan Things, really. There's a housing association, they own some buildings in my landlord and it's really poor in terms of repairs, so that's not present in the report. Number two, in terms of decent home standards, I'm quite sceptical about the validity of the decent home standards, you know, the facts, because it's saying Hawker, my ward is mainly Eastern Home, Hawker and, you know, Tarham's Homes. So, in terms of Hawker, I know it says 100% and I can't really agree with that. And also Notting Hill Genesis is 99.8, close to 100, it was only 0.2. So, there's a few properties in my ward which is owned by Notting Hill Genesis but managed by Hawker. And since I have become a Councillor, I could hear Hawker will take them to the court or will take very strong action and there's been about two and a half years, I'm very sure that's even older than me, a Councillor. So, you know, saying this is 100%, I'm not, because these buildings need major repairs, there's major repairs issues. Another building is about 90 plus flats, it is the lift, it's like every other week there is something with the lift and sometimes the lifts are not, you know, working for weeks. So, based on that, how do you measure these data that these buildings are decent? So, if you please put some light on these. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor. Thank you. So, the decent home standards is a statutory standard that's defined by government. So, it's got a checklist against it that says if it's X, Y and Z, it is compliant. If you don't comply with those issues, it isn't. So, that's how we're judging ourselves. That's against a very specific defined standard. I understand the government is in the process of reviewing that standard at the moment. So, again, strictly against what the standard says, that is how we're reporting. In terms of the block, and I know the block on Thomas Road that you're referring to, we are leaseholders in that block. So, the tenants are our responsibility. The freehold is owned by Notting Hill Genesis. And as you know, Councillor, we have had legal action there. We have tried to get Notting Hill Genesis to comply with their obligations as the people who are responsible for the block and the structure of that block. It's a roof issue. It's leaks coming through. So, we're talking about slightly different things. But I very much appreciate that if you're a resident who's struggling with the repair issue or with the block, as far as you're concerned, your home doesn't meet your decent standard. But the decent home standard is a very specific definition. Please, thank you. Thank you, Councillor. Sorry, David, I missed you. You had your hands up. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. And I think it is a really good question. But as Andrea has alluded to, I think the decent home standard is quite a superficial standard in some respects. It's about components, about windows, doors, kitchens, bathrooms, have you had those replaced? But often some of the fundamentals and buildings, you know, like the services and the drains, all of those sorts of things are not covered. And damper mould, I think the government is reviewing the decent home standard to propose, including damper mould has been one of the things that will assess whether a building can be decent or not. But unfortunately, what we've had today has been quite a kind of superficial standard. So I think that feeds into some of the disconnect that you're seeing and some of the scores that come through. So if I may request that, you know, that if we can get the data about better building things, really, I think that's missing. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Iqbal Hussain, your question, please. Thank you, Chair. Could the lead member or officer present confirm how many landlords private or RSL have been penalised in the past year for not being compliant over repairs? As a counsellor, I have cases, I started when I became counsellor, repairs, mould and condensation and I've been, after two years, I've been dealing with the same cases. Obviously, I can't specify the cases, but I want to see how comes it has been using its law and power and force power and its law against those irresponsible landlord. Thank you. So from a counsellor perspective, we're quite limited and that's why you have the housing regulator and you have the onwardsman services that residents can go to directly. So we can only pretty much look at our own housing stock in order to improve performance and that was the purpose in that service and that's why we've self referred to the regulators. In terms of individual landlords, we have had numerous meetings, well, I have had numerous meetings as a portfolio holder over the years with numerous RSLs regarding specific issues in particular estates or their whole estate. We can play an advisor role, we can try to put pressure on them in terms of as a council, but to enforce, we're quite limited in order to enforce direct action. David, do you want to comment? Yeah, I mean, that's absolutely right. Sorry to interrupt you. I'm sure council has been a better role or effective role than just being advisory. I want officers to shed light on this. So I think just to reiterate the point though, first of all, registered social landlords are accountable in their own right to the regulator of social housing and they do undergo their own inspections. Like us, there's a co-regulatory model, so there's an expectation for them to refer themselves to the regulator where they need to, or they can be referred to the regulator by other parties as well, but the bottom line is they're accountable to the regulator for social housing in their own right. It's not the council's role to kind of do that, to manage that relationship. We do also need to encourage, where residents are getting a pure service, we need to encourage residents to exhaust the complaints process of their landlord and ultimately the housing ombudsman where they're not satisfied with the response they get and that's really important because that's the most likely way that they'll get to getting the answer that they want. The other thing though that I think is really important, and we've got the chair here tonight, we've got the Tower Hamlets Housing Forum, which Karen's very engaged in, and that's not the place to kind of hold individual housing associations to account. We do talk about strategic issues that we need to address across the sector, topics like disrepair and how we get on top of that, and in fact we've got a session coming up on void management for instance at a forthcoming meeting of that group. So that is an important forum, but Councillor Ahmed is right, the council isn't here to sort of replace the role of the regulator of social housing or replace the role of the ombudsman. Thank you. Andrea, you would like to comment on that? Thank you. Yeah, just to encourage the councillor to encourage residents to use the processes that are already in place. So if they are unhappy with the response from any of the RPs, to use the internal complaints service of that RP, but then to escalate it through to the housing ombudsman and to the regulator. So there has been a huge amount of scrutiny, rightly so, in terms of damp and mould. We've all been reviewing our processes, reaching out to residents, so if we're missing something, if residents aren't getting the response, certainly if you want to share those with me, I will take it up with the individual landlords or if it's my organisation, pick it up with my technical team. But the amount of scrutiny in terms of damp and mould, I would be surprised and really disappointed if residents are getting no response at all on that issue. Councillor, I hope you've got the relevant answers. Are you happy with those, councillor? Thank you, chair. I've been confirmed by both lead members and the officers that council do not have any enforcement power to deal with those landlords not being compliant with their diligence duties towards the landlords. The problem with some of the tenants we have, not a significant number of tenants who are facing those problems are not computer literate. They just can't go through this process. It's a quite complex process to go through the investment and others phase by phase, so they're not literate and they don't have any support to get their voice heard through the process. So they are stuck in the middle and they are not getting help from their landlords and I think they have just been left out. Thank you. Thank you, councillor. Karen, do you want to come in, both of you? You go first. Andrea wants to go first and then I'll... Fine, thank you. If you could be brief as well. So under the housing Ombudsman's new complaint handling code, any expression of dissatisfaction should be picked up by the organisation. So if you as a councillor are raising a member's inquiry, certainly in Poplar Harker now, if a member's inquiry comes in that complains an element where the resident is unhappy with our service, we have to log that as a complaint. And if that's not happening in other RPs, then again if you share with me not the details because there may be confidentiality and date protection issues, but if you let me know the landlords, I'll get them to reach out to you on that. Thank you. Councillor Asma Islam, your question, please, thank you. Thank you. Oh, sorry. Sorry, I just wanted to... Councillor Karen, please, sorry. Councillor Hussain. So David was saying that we don't have any regulatory power over housing associations, but we do have enforcement power. You mentioned enforcement when you came back, you said that you understand the council has no enforcement power. We do have some enforcement power. So in the Housing Act 2004, the council is under an obligation to keep all homes in its borough in good condition. Now, that's a tall order. And what often happens is that manifests itself in us making sure that those properties in the private sector, mainly the bed-sit type of accommodation, your HMOs, that we're keeping an eye on those, because those are where most of the poor conditions are. So that's why we have a licensing scheme, that's why you have a private sector scheme. But the housing, but that team can pick up for disrepair or issues in the registered provider sector. Now, we don't like to do that that often, because social landlords have social in their title, because obviously they get on with it and they do things when they go wrong. In very rare occasions, we have issued an enforcement notice against registered providers in this borough, where we just have not been getting any traction or the tenant has not been able to resolve their issue. But with the strengthened regulatory system and the Ombudsman, we would always suggest that that is where the issue is taken up. But it wouldn't be wrong to say that we don't have enforcement powers, but we'd rather be using them in areas where there is a lot of disrepair and the landlords are very absent. Thank you. Councillor Isla, your question, please, thank you. Yeah, a bit of a statement and then a suggestion. We understand that this is regulation change, legislation change that is needed. I'd be extremely surprised if we don't get some level of change in the next five years. But the situation that we're in now is across the UK, across London as a whole, Tower Hamlets being a very dense borough and having a high level of high-rises and Maldon's amp. I think what councillors, not just in this committee, just across the board, across parties in this council, what they want to see is they are fed up of having to hear the words and hear the sentence that the computer says no. Because we sit here and we watch those residents have to struggle through that process and not having anything done. And actually, the only time they do get something done is when they go to a journalist. The number of journalists that have covered stories in Tower Hamlets and the campaign of Kwajale, people like that, the amount of exposure that we've had in Tower Hamlets. I want to know, as a council, how we're collecting data, how we're sharing information. Because you touched on a point about exhausting the complaint procedure, going to the ombudsman. But actually, the language of this council doesn't display that. I'm sorry to say this. Our officers don't actually go and put that out into the community. As councillors, some councillors have started to learn and we have level of experiences. But actually, where's the briefing for the councillors to say, this is what you should be saying to residents? That's why every time I'm in this committee, that's exactly what I'm asking for, is direct us to which office or which place so that we can best support our residents. Because I told you before, people who are fine are not going to come and tell us that they're fine. They're going to come to us when there's a problem. The TACA, Spitterfields, all our local housing stock here, people have lived here for decades and have watched council stock go to housing association, then to a bigger housing association. And every single time, they don't see improvements and they see their politicians, their mayor, this council, not be able to say that they're on their side. I think we've got to a point where I think almost everyone in this council understands that we don't have the powers to take it over or have the power to find a fix. But we definitely have the power to be the bridge and to be able to understand what our residents are going through and put at least a level of information out there. I'm sorry, the forum doesn't do it and we don't do it. And I don't think we hold people accountable. TACH is going to be taken over by a bigger organisation, housing association, but the same people are going to be in charge. So who's held accountable for all the bad service that the people have had to go for over the last two or three years? These are the answers that people want to hear and I just feel like we've always been told that there's only so much we can do. Actually, we all should be using our platform. And David, I would say one thing. You mentioned one thing about a colleague, a Labour colleague of mine, a leader of Southwark, when they put that report together. That was them being proactive. That's them collecting data. That's them thinking ahead of time to be able to lobby to the government that this is what's needed. Where's our part of that? We've got the highest growth, the most dense, we need to be actioning and we need to be proactive when it comes to things like this. Thank you, Councillor. Carol, thank you. So I'll just pick up the second, the last point you made about the Southwark report. So we were part of the Southwark work, so we sat with Southwark colleagues. There was 100 local authorities that signed the Southwark report and we helped shape some of that report with them. And we were there at the launch event in Westminster when the, so we're right behind Southwark. I don't know that you've noticed, but in Chapter 6 of the Southwark report talks about the value of social housing. We're picking up that chapter and we're going to run with it alongside Southwark to actually push that argument ourselves. And just on the complaint side, you're absolutely right about what the council can and can't do. So David and I met with the team that manage the contact with Housing Association, so Charlene and Tracy, who Andrea works alongside. So we met with them to talk about how could we better encourage Housing Association tenants who come to you as members about their complaints. And there is a member seminar organised for January. David and I saw the sort of slide pack that they're going to present to members and this is about how you can be equipped to help your Housing Association tenants to get the action that they need. Because the key thing, as David said, is if they're not reporting it in, if they're waiting to come to see your surgery, then delaying the time in which the Housing Association can actually do the repair. And if they're reporting it to you, it's been underreported. If you're getting the action done, then the statistics that are going to the Ombudsman, that are going to the regulator, are not reflecting the amount of complaint that people have. So the regulator isn't getting a true picture of the level of complaints that are being made, because they're being dealt with in a different way. So the seminar is really to enable you, to equip you, to be able to push the registered provider to deal with the complaint. So you can't do that unless you know who to contact. And I know some of you will be more familiar with those key contacts in your wards, but what we're going to do is work with the registered providers to make sure that members have a member information pack that they can say to residents, this is who you need to contact, this is who you need to report it in. And the sooner you do that, the sooner you'll get your repair done. Now there may be cases where you may need to escalate, but the first point to call is to get the resident to contact the Housing Association for you to ask, have they done that? And if they haven't done that, that unfortunately has to be the first thing. I get that. Thank you, Karen. My point wasn't that we didn't contribute towards the subject report. My point was we as a council don't do enough to try and influence change. That was my point. We didn't lead that report. We played a part like other councils. There are examples of other councils, because of the density, because of the problems in London, especially in London, they actually lead the way and I'm saying we need to do more. That's what I'm saying. And one thing I will give credit to Poplihaka for, actually they do. Every platform they get hold of, they grasp it with both their hands and they speak every platform. It's not just about the service they provide, they also talk about where the challenges are. And I've seen that myself. It doesn't matter where I go in London, I do hear about the work about Poplihaka. I don't see us doing enough. I do want to come back on that, because I was involved in the subject work as well at my previous council and I was involved in some of the meetings and I would probably say one of the biggest contributors in the meeting was Tara Hamlets and Karen specifically. And I think they did download a lot of stuff in that report, particularly from the expertise that Karen brought to that. So I do just want to say that in terms of that report, I'm 100% convinced that Tara Hamlets played a leading role in helping contribute to it, because I saw it with my own eyes. Sorry, Councillor, Councillor, Councillor Islam. Sorry, can I have your attention, please? If you could let David finish. I will let you in. Please, please. David, if you, Councillor, please, thank you. Yeah, no, I just wanted to reiterate though that I do believe we did play a leading role in that bit of work. When I say we, I'm talking for Karen. I played a role as well, but for another council, but certainly you're quite right that we need to speak as one sector to government about what we need to get the investment required. And we will definitely be looking to be at the forefront of that moving forward. Councillor Howard. So from an administration perspective, we do have multiple meetings with the housing providers, and when issues are raised, particularly from within the community, and that usually follows multiple ways of communication. Some of it's online. A lot of it is during surgery work. Some of it's emailed in. We do raise those concerns with the providers in various different forums. At the end of the day, we don't work in a silo. We want a collaborative approach with the social housing providers. But the ultimate goal for both the social housing providers, the council, is to have residents in a safe, good home. So if anybody is under the assumption that no proactive work is done, that would be incorrect. A lot of proactive work is done in order to persuade housing providers and have multiple meetings with housing providers in order to bring up both their repairs and what some may perceive as decent home standards, essentially correcting sometimes structural work that has taken place in the buildings. You may recall that there were two buildings in Bow which had defaults within the gas engineering works by a particular housing provider. You know, the council directly stepped in there in various multiple meetings, high level meetings, in order to make sure and ensure that residents were safe. In addition to that, if there are specific issues, as lead member, I'm happy to take that up and address it with housing operators. I always promote a course of action which is initially to exhaust, and that includes the internal processes, and that includes to use an ME. If that ME fails, I always advise residents to also consider referrals to the housing onwards men and so on and so forth. And as a councillor, I will try to support as many residents as possible in relation to articulating their arguments in navigating through those processes. It is a good suggestion, and I think I'm sure we did do some proactive work, particularly when the housing onwards men came to the council in directing people into sort of taking that route of escalating complaints and the processes. But I think we can be a bit more proactive in the advertising campaigns we have in relation to promoting it even further, particularly with the housing regulators coming into effect from last year. So we'll take that back and see how we can move forward with that in terms of the channels they can pursue, residents can pursue. Thank you, Councillor, for the information. Any more questions? We will move on to our next agenda. Local government and social care ombudsman report. Can I ask, welcome, Ousmane Zia, head of information governance, to introduce the item. You'll have maximum of five minutes to provide us an overview of the item. Please consider the report and action plan as taken as read by the subcommittee. So highlight any relevant key areas that the subcommittee needs to be aware of, and you'll have we will move on to the questions from the members after. Ousmane Zia, thank you. You have five minutes. Thank you. Thank you very much. So thank you to everyone here. I'll just quickly summarise the purpose of presenting both of the reports that we have today to the committee. So these are public interest reports. We've got two of them that we're presenting today. Members and participants may recall that we were here for the September meeting to present two previous reports which were also public interest reports as well. So they presented really for two reasons. One, there is a legal requirement under the local government act to present reports that are deemed from the ombudsman to be public interest reports and as within their name. The reason they've escalated those to public interest reports is the ombudsman has felt after examining these specific cases that they go beyond a normal case investigation they may make for the purposes of bringing that learning further into the public domain so that both not just the council where the public interest report is against, but also all councils can learn from those particular reports. So both the reports within the agenda pack, if you have gone through them, you can see there's a lot of detail, there's a lot of events, and I think the key things to take away is that there were multiple faults that happened over a series of time as well and I think one of the main elements of it as well is it's where processes are obviously in place and it's not just about the failing of processes that may happen, it's about the knock-on effects when a process takes place, but where for example someone's full circumstances or vulnerabilities may not be taken into account. So you may see, for example, from the first case which involved Mr X, there were elements such as taking into account his reasonable adjustments, so it may have been a process within the council for someone to come in on a regular basis to have their accommodation extended, but was it taking into account, for example, his extended care needs when he was coming into the council, as well as that relationship with adult social care as well. Similarly, in the second case with Ms X, it's about looking at the extended elements of that as well, where you had a mother with some children and there were some outlying elements where there were some vulnerabilities around trauma and PTSD and also having the age and gender of the children as well in terms of the mixture of the accommodation that was in place, both with the bed and breakfast and also the temporary accommodation that were issued in terms of the suitability there as well. So I think those are some of the key messages from the two reports, and what we've done in terms of the information governance service, our responsibility is to ensure when the Ombudsman says that there's a number of recommendations, we accept them as a council, which we have done, and also we have three months from the final reports being issued to carry out those recommendations. So just for the information of the committee, the date where we are required to give the actions and the evidence back to the Ombudsman is the 16th of December, and I'm just here to say that we are on track to do that. The majority of the actions have been completed. Certainly all of the actions where we were due to apologise and to pay remedy payments to the complainants to make sure that that level of remedy and the Ombudsman recommendations have been carried out. The only actions that are still outstanding, there's one in - apologies for that - there's one in terms of the homeless review which we will be continuing to work on and complete and send back to the Ombudsman by the 16th of December, and anywhere we might be waiting for some information to carry out that particular action. So there was one where it talked about reimbursing or working to reimburse some parking tickets, so we are waiting for some information back on that one, otherwise the majority of the actions have been completed on time, and we will be obviously feeding that back to the Ombudsman as well. Thank you. Thank you, Usman, for the overview. I think it was very useful to get a sense of the position we are in. I will now move on to the questions from the members. Councillor Chowdhury, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for the report. I know it's very challenging, especially at this moment, finding temporary accommodation, but still we have a duty to make sure the property is suitable, so when we send people to the bed and breakfast, what is our procedure in terms of checking the suitability? Do we really check the suitability of the accommodation, number one? And number two, you know the report, it says in page 104, there's a council's suitability and risk assessment form is not fit for purpose, so what has been done or what are we doing on that? Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Chowdhury. Thank you, Councillor Chowdhury. Firstly, we totally accept what's in this report, and really I think in relation to the first case, Mr X, the complaint was originally sort of raised in 2023, but the incident started from October 2021, and it's hard to sort of fathom how this family could have gone through this process under the watch of this council. And in terms of the levels of scrutiny that's supposed to take place in, one, assessing the needs of residents, and two, in terms of how we procure property and the suitability of the property. For us, there are serious concerns that have been raised within this report, and then to go through the various complaint stages and not be picked up. What I can say is, since then, we have had a serious overview of these processes, and going forward, we have tried to put more resources in so that we can not only go through the backlog and make sure that people are allocated appropriately, particularly towards their need. I'm particularly sensitive towards those who have disabilities and special needs. As you may be aware, I have a nephew who has disabilities, so when I spoke to officers about this report, let's say I didn't hold any punches when it came to how shocked I was to see the process that they went through. All I can say is, going forward, once this is highlighted, it has very serious concerns, and the governance team are looking into it. And in terms of trying to get remedies, not only for this particular resident, but the process itself and the quality of the homes we procure. There's a review of homeless people and their care needs, and that will be submitted to the Ombudsman by the 16th of December, so we're collating all the information together in order to identify this. In relation to Ms. X within the report, again, a mother with children, the situation that they fell under within unsuitable temporary accommodation, particularly around sort of mixed sex inappropriate accommodation for nine weeks in a B&B. Again, it's areas of serious concern for me as a lead member. There's also mental health issues as well encapsulated within this. The mother had PTSD. And overall, one of the areas identified is a level of silo working and departments not communicating, which caused further delays. But the delays in itself, for me, isn't the issue. It's the impact it's had on those residents, and it's how we can minimise that impact. And I've come to this committee on numerous occasions about homelessness and the stigma of homelessness and the impact of things like Section 21 notices and how that suddenly jolts someone's lifestyle or what normality is for them. And as a council, I know we've put in a lot of resources in order to sort of deal with some of those actions. But we really have to expect delivery in terms of quality, in terms of sensitivities, in terms of the way we process and the speed we process these applications. I hope that addresses some of your questions. I wanted to ask about the risk assessment and suitability form. So as a council, obviously, what we do, we do in-depth assessment. We have the form, then we take all the data, all the information, collect, and then we do our assessment. The officer make a decision about the suitability of the property. So the report from the Ombudsman says specifically that our form is not fit for purpose. So I'm saying we are ready to, you know, the deadline is 16th of December. So I wanted to ask what we have done in terms of these to remedy that. Thank you. So I'm happy to update further on that. So we got some updates from housing last week as to the progress of some of those actions. So two of those elements that will address that, both generally and specifically. So first of all, the Ombudsman requires in cases like this that officers are reminded, because it wasn't not just the form that was the issue, but sometimes the officers need to have the actual prompt to understand, one, to gather this type of information, to gather it correctly and correctly assess it as well. And the other element of it was the actual form itself. So we did receive some evidence, you know, a screenshot, because normally when we go back to the Ombudsman, we can't just say to them, we've done this, we've done that. We normally need to evidence it to some extent. So my understanding is there has been a change in the form to gather more specific information to address what the Ombudsman has done. So there has been some element or background in the form itself. And the actual reminders and the learning that goes across the housing office is about, one, the circumstances of the case, and two, I believe the Ombudsman also mentioned within the report about the gathering of the data and correctly recording that as well. So both the learning has been shared and also, to my understanding, there has been a change of the form which has been sent over to us to send over to the Ombudsman as well. So they have specifically looked at that and changed the form to my knowledge. Thank you. Asma, sorry, yeah, carry on, yes, your questions. I'll come in afterwards. I've got a question as well. Thank you. Thank you, and it's nice to, Asma, it's nice to put a place to your name. We're always waiting back and forth. It's nice to have you at the committee. Two questions. First one is, with the Ombudsman's cases, how are we filtering the process now and reviewing them? Is there a triage in place? And if we were to treat everything as an emergency, you're going to create a bottleneck, so it would be good to understand how we're dealing with that, and that then goes in a good segue for the next part, which is, you talked about learning, but if we can actually understand how we've learnt, demonstrate in a report, and maybe every time we have a committee actually come back, because then there's the new cases, that how we're using that to train staff, how we're building capacity within our own team and everything else, because it's good and welcoming to tell us that you've learnt, we need to see demonstrations of that. So how would you talk about that process and are you welcome to the idea of bringing this back? Hi, so Leah Sykes, Acting Director of Customer Service. So one of my areas is the governance team, and we've done so much work on the Ombudsman inquiries when they've come in. Obviously this was the first, back in March, April, when we received the first one, it was the first one since we'd had since 2020, so we've rebuilt that whole process. As soon as one comes in, we've got a separate triage survey, so they are dealt with the utmost importance, they go straight into corporate directors as well, and then we get the right teams looking at them straight away. Now similarly to what was mentioned earlier, we've got a big focus on our overall complaints process, and that's both at stage one and stage two, and we're all about trying to mitigate the issues that are not escalating, and also when we're linking to the actual reviews process, we're making sure that's much more robust and we've got links in and we're monitoring all the right things in place. So we've done lots of work on it, there's still lots to do, but we are making big improvements in all those areas. Thank you. Susanna, your question, thank you. You haven't? The filtering part, is there a triage in place, if not, why not, because you can't treat everything like an emergency service, and also are you welcome to bring in this back as a report to talk us through, demonstrate what the process is like, where we can actually see there's been learning, and the infrastructure is in place for this council to avoid the same situations. So in terms of the initial complaints handling, that was done within the housing department, the homelessness department. Again, we're in the process of learning from this and reviewing the whole triaging process. In terms of coming back to you, yeah, I'm happy to come back and report back to this committee. If you want to make it a regular item, we're happy to do that as well. But as and when these complaints come in, that's when we get an opportunity in order to test what mechanisms we put in place. It's not good to have them come back from the onwards man, but again, it's important it comes back where we have those failures in processes so that we can change those processes in order to suit the needs of residents. And again, what I want to highlight is we have a new corporate director in place who's got a wealth of experience within this area, and with the new restructure that we're talking about as well, hopefully things will be shaped and aligned in a way where we can be more responsive to the needs of the residents, not only around these issues, but multiple issues going across the whole of the housing and regeneration director. Thank you. Before I come on to Susanna, I've got a question. Is there any member of staff or senior member of staff here from housing options or homelessness joining us here in this meeting? I just couldn't see any. Sorry. She's one of the managers. Okay. Don't have the director or... >> No directors? No. It would have been nice as it's a concerning issue. It would be very nice to have someone here from the top level. Thank you. Over to you, Susanna, your question, please. Thank you. Yeah. I realise it might be a repeat of what Councillor Asma is saying. I think it's quite important to detail out the process and then we can work together, because the worst thing is if someone is homeless, if they are desperate, they call a housing officer or whatever, it just might get stuck there and then, you know, and this thing comes back again. It's good to define it publicly so that we also learn and we know who we can go to if somebody were to come to us. Because it's the timing as well. Once you delay this, that's why it led to this situation here, which we all want to work together to prevent for the sake of the person but also for the sake of the council that, you know, you define it clearly who are the contact points and who are the decision makers and, you know, what we need to do even as part of the community. Thank you. Thank you for that. So I think obviously there's a few multi-layered elements there. I can speak more specifically to the progression of complaints and making sure when things go wrong that they get raised in the correct way and alerted to services. I think what you'll find from both of these cases is actually the initial contact with the council goes back several years. So with Mr. X, I believe the first sort of the process kicking off was in 2021. And with Ms. X, the initial contact was from August 2022. And I think what happened at several points within those journeys is not that the actual right contacts weren't being made. So these residents were getting in touch with the right teams at the council. It's just that there were points of the processes that were either not going correctly forward within the right timescales. There were a few mentions of it in both those reports. And also, like I mentioned earlier in the introduction to both of the reports, what was being missed, it was the knock-on impact of those specific circumstances of those individuals, both those individuals in both reports, where the knock-on impacts, for example, with Ms. X, there was a knock-on impact of his care needs. So when he was moving, the right process had not taken place to ensure that the care package had been adjusted for the new distance of where his new accommodation was and also for his care needs being adjusted for when he had to come into the office to actually have his accommodation extended. So I think there's multiple points of different elements here. So it's not just about obviously making sure it's the right triaging as well as the right contact, as important as that is. It's making sure that officers are aware when that contact takes place that those elements, those red flags sort of trigger so that the right actions can take place as well. What we do in terms of our element of it is when we get the learning, as we were discussing earlier, it's not just disseminate, because obviously from one perspective you could say the Ombudsman says that officers have to have the learning take forward and we can say that as a tick and we can inform the Ombudsman of that as well. But it's about the ongoing element of making sure that is that learning being implemented as well. So that's where our service is continuing to evolve and improve the Ombudsman service. So, for example, this year we've set up a dedicated Ombudsman inbox, so we have direct contact with the Ombudsman. We have regular meetings with the Ombudsman as well to ensure that that regular communication takes place. And we're regularly now ensuring that, you know, the relevant directors and corporate directors are aware of these key elements of learning going forward. So it's really about making sure that that information that we pick up in these reports, it gets disseminated not just to the officers that the Ombudsman says within the actual report itself, that's what it asks us to do, but also with senior management so that they're aware that these are the issues that sometimes, you know, you might see big case numbers, big reports where it talks about X100, et cetera, but these are the individual stories where you can see the real impact of what's happening to people, and we're making sure that that learning goes through that particular element. So I hope that's helpful. Thank you. Thank you once again, Usman, for the presentation and giving the answers to our questions and the update. Thank you very much. We will move on to our next item. Sorry. One last thing. Just for the knowledge of this committee, so we've got governance and customer service here, and then we've got the housing. How does the relationship work, just so we know as a committee like where, how this will look as far as improvements are concerned, because you're looking after governance and the customer service side, but the improvement can't be done without this director. How does that work, just for our own knowledge? We have the specialist, Leah. So I actually go across broadly all the departments in the council, so work really, really closely with the operational teams to really focus on what have we got in terms of measures, where's the improvements, I sit on the boards and sort of moving some of that forward. So we're constantly in communications with all the departments, that's not just housing, we're doing a lot of work with them. Yeah, so we will track overarching in terms of what's happening in terms of how many complaints are we getting, and members inquiries, mayor's inquiries, what does that then look like for the services, and make sure we work really closely. We've been going around to all the department management meetings, and then that goes into, in particular for housing, really focus on the overarching improvements to drive that, I guess, big culture change moving forward, but all focused on performance and how do we make that better. Yeah, and just to add to that, Leah was at my management team last week, taking us through the complaints data for our area, also her team have introduced some really great sort of power BI dashboards so that any officer can go in in live time and interrogate the data, see how things are tracking, what our performance is, response times. But I also think the other piece of it, which your team is doing with us really well, is about shifting the culture, so we treat complaints as a learning opportunity rather than just something to shift on to the next stage. When we get to the stage of talking about special interest reports, we've failed basically, because we've had several stages before that point to deal with this, and so really it is about turning that culture around, but I have to say since I've been here, Leah and her team have been one of the most visible parts of the council for me, they're always there helping us and trying to get us to learn. Okay, Councillor. I think one of the other things that Leah does, which nobody really sees, is that investment, I don't know if some of you around went, Raj and I came to the scrutiny committee and we spoke about sort of bringing in the new telephony systems and the new IT systems. Leah's the one who actually tracks all of that, or Leah's team tracks all of that, and then on a monthly or a weekly basis, depending on the need, the directors, Haroun and others, will get these reports saying phone calls not answered within this many minutes, this number of phone calls, whatever it is, that micro level data is scrutinised by Leah's team in terms of customer service and customer performance, and where that training need is, Leah's team will go in and deliver that training in order to make sure that each department of the council is appropriately and properly reactive to the needs of the residents and calling the council. >> Thank you for that, Councillor Ahmad, thank you very much for that. We will move on to our next item on the agenda on any other business. So thank you very much once again to all of you. Thank you. Thank you. On any other business, I have three items I would like to update you all on. Thank you. First of all, housing cabinet subcommittee agreed to introduce the housing subcommittee last week. It is important that scrutiny engage with this committee and continue to have oversight of decision making and policy development on housing issues. Along with the chair of OSE, I will be making representation to the mayor and officers to suggest how scrutiny can best engage in this. I would like to welcome your views on this. I'm happy to take any initial thoughts now or please send your comments to Paul and we will ensure they are incorporated into the committee response. Second one, performance report action plan to cabinet. The action plan is responsive to committee's review of RP performance and due to be considered by cabinet this month. Paul, do you have a date on that? I believe it is the 18th. >> Sorry, 18th of this month. The papers will be published a week before the meeting. Please review and feed any pre-decision scrutiny questions to Paul for considerations. I will ensure Paul sends a reminder when the papers are published. Item number three, next housing scrutiny challenge session is booked on the 30th of Jan. It is still in debate. Yes, Paul? If you could update on some of that. It has been very difficult to get dates for the council chamber. At the moment the 30th is free so I have requested that from facilities management as hopefully the date for our next housing challenge scrutiny session that this committee does. They do one of those a year and that will be the date for that one hopefully. As soon as I get confirmation I will send that date out. >> Thank you, Paul. Sorry. The subject of the session will be a review of council's commercial assets and how they can be used to regenerate neighbourhoods. Full details will be circulated shortly but can members please confirm the availability with Paul and if there is any business to discuss, if there is any other, anything? Yes, yes. Anything to discuss? Can I get some clarification? Is it set up in the same way as ONS committee is set up? So before the housing subcommittee meet, do we meet and the papers are released at least minimum of one week beforehand? Is it webcast? Can you just explain to us what you do know? >> At the moment we haven't seen the papers yet. So we have no information about what the ultimate look will be of the housing scrutiny subcommittee. So that is, that's a valid consideration. So I think that will be something, it sounds like something that needs to be addressed so we can raise that with the officers and as I said with the mayor and the officers. So the idea is to shape it at a time stage when it can be shaped but we haven't received any details about what it consists of yet. Then the first meeting is going to be held when? We still have no data about that. >> So can we try and keep, if you can keep on top of this for us and then we will probably have to contribute views via email if it happens before our committee meets, but I think they should really meet after us. That would be the natural course of action. And to be honest, I don't feel like we should, I don't think I can give feedback anyway without knowing what's on the table first. Yeah, those are all very good points. We just wanted to give people an opportunity if there was something that they wanted to say in order to shape the discussion that there's that opportunity for the chair to feed in but yes, as we get any information we'll make sure it's circulated to all members and that they'll get the opportunity to feed back on that. We don't know yet actually, that's the thing, you know, it could be a decision making body or we're waiting to find out whether it's a body that actually refers things to cabinet for ultimate decisions. Because that could have an effect on what actions we want to take. You're right. Thank you. If there's no other business to discuss I call this meeting to a close. Thank you for your time. The next housing meeting will be on the 24th of February 2025. Thank you once again those who have joined us here and those who have joined online. Thank you very much and have a good evening. Thank you.