Transcript

How much notice do you need to be in it? I was trying to get it figured out. Are you going to send it to Joanne? I'm just going to send it to someone. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to this evening's housing scrutiny subcommittee meeting. I'm Councillor Jo Jo Ramble Hornby, Chair of the committee, and the meeting is being recorded and being broadcast live in the event that any technical issues require the meeting to be adjourned and it cannot be restarted within a few minutes. Further updates will be posted on the council's democracy Twitter account, which is at LBL democracy. Please note that the council has a duty to protect sensitive data. To ensure such information is not inadvertently disclosed, please avoid using full names or any other details that may reveal the identity of others. And in terms of housekeeping, the fire exits, please exit the room from either door and then go upstairs to street level. And regarding toilets, there's an accessible toilet just outside the right hand side of the room from public's view. And now I move on to apologies. We've received apologies from Councillor Alison English Jones. And thank you to Councillor Adrian Garden, who is substituting in for Councillor English Jones tonight. And so without further ado, please, can the housing scrutiny subcommittee members introduce themselves? Councillor Adrian Garden, Councillor for Britain Rock Common. Councillor Marianna Masters, Councillor for Streatham Wells. Councillor Andrew Collins, I'm Councillor for Clapham East. Good evening, I'm Nicole Griffiths, I'm the Green Party Councillor for Streatham Centre. Thank you very much. And do any committee members wish to declare an interest in any of the items to be considered on the agenda for tonight's meeting? Thank you. Next we move to the minutes of the previous meeting the committee held on the 12th of September last year. They're set out in the agenda pack on pages one to 16. Adrian, I know you wanted to come in before we go to agree the minutes. Yes, on page five of the whole pack, there is a bullet point in minutes that says committee members raised concerns in relation to contractors, such as not carrying out the required work, honouring appointments and sometimes not arriving with the correct equipment. That is correct. That is what was said. But what there isn't sort of a matter arising, looking at the actions at the end that came out of the meeting, there is no action to say that would be addressed. There are actions talking about better communication with the residents, but that's not an answer to the issue of the contractors not doing their job properly. Fantastic. So what I'm going to propose, and thank you Adrian for giving me notice of this, is that we agree the minutes pending amendments on the recommendations there to be agreed in wording over email over the next few days. If my committee members are happy with that. Fantastic. Thank you. Now we move on to the first item of core business for tonight's meeting, which is update on major works and cladding, which is item three on the publisher agenda pack pages 17 to 32. We'll first hear from the deputy leader for housing, investment and new homes, Councillor Danny Dilipour. You have up to five minutes to introduce. Thank you chair. As members of the committee, remember in our housing strategy, which we published last year, we set out our vision for ensuring safe, secure and high quality homes for our residents. Lambeth's housing portfolio includes over 23,000 tentative homes and 10,000 leasehold properties, which makes us the second largest social housing landlord in London. The report tonight sets out our ongoing work to deliver major works and enhance building safety across all of this housing stock. In post Grenfell times, this area has seen major regulatory changes and this report covers how we are meeting and exceeding the requirements in the new legislation that has come forwards. On average, the council invests around £35 million every year in improvement works across Lambeth. The report details this in several areas, including major works contract management, resident engagement are major works, building safety compliance, including fire safety and crucially cladding remediation. It details some of the highlights of this work, including that 100% of fire risk assessments in communal areas have been completed by qualified fire risk surveyors and unsafe cladding has been removed from Southwick House, Meath House, Calvedon House and Rundle Towers with further work scheduled over the course of the year as well. We've also continued to invest in our housing stock and prioritising the safety of residents in a time of severe financial pressures. As members are aware, our housing revenue account, which is our ring fair landlord account, primarily funds this investment on repair works through capital borrowing. Like other HRAs across London, we continue to face significant financial pressures on the HRA following previous government decisions, particularly around the four year rent reduction policy in 2016 and the rent cap that was imposed in 2023. These two decisions alone have left the HRA with a shortfall of over £1 billion over the course of the next 30 years compared to what we would have got if those policies hadn't been implemented, which of course significantly reduces the resources available to us to reinvest in our housing stock. Additionally, the previous government's decision to end the decent homes grant has further reduced the level of funding available for us to invest in our ageing stock when required. But despite its difficult financial picture and these challenges that have been imposed upon us by central government, we're continuing to prioritise the safety, quality and sustainability of our housing stock and we'll continue to prioritise delivering major works and building safety enhancements as much as possible. Again, thank you, Councillor. Now we're going to go on to requests to speak and we received requests from Alistair Ross, Tracey Gregory, Anthony Wynn and Galinde Gunnarosk, if I pronounced correctly. First up, if we have Alistair Ross, please. Hi, Alistair Ross. Thank you. You have up to three minutes from when you first start. If I told you that you owed me money, even though I knew that wasn't, what would you think? What if I actually took that money from you or chased started debt collection proceedings against me, even though I knew full well that you didn't owe me any money? Would that be moral, ethical, legal? Lambeth Council does this repeatedly to leaseholders across the borough, illegitimately chasing payments for poorly managed major works. In June 2021, I, along with the other 35 leaseholders in Southwick House, received a letter from Lambeth Council. It started with, you may recall that we sent you a notice on the 19th of February 2014 to let you know that your building was included in the scheme of works detailed below. It was a demand for over £18,000 for central area heating and gas works, and I was told to pay within 30 days or join a payment plan. In the five years since I had moved in in 2016, I had received no written communication about the works. There was nothing on the pack the council sent my solicitor when I purchased, not even a description of the works or how Lambeth had arrived at this figure. There's five years of no communication and then a sudden bill for £18,000 with no detail in it sound like good management. Are these the actions of a well-run housing department? So I queried this bill, I asked what it was for, I asked what work had actually been done, I asked why the council believed I was suddenly liable. I received no substantive answers. I did receive a letter from my mortgage provider stating that Lambeth had claimed I was in breach of my lease, despite them not being able to tell me what my invoice was actually for. In August 2023, after over two years of queries, Lambeth eventually told me that the council had failed to comply with the section 20 process and therefore my invoice would be capped £250. After admitting this, Lambeth then contacted my mortgage provider and lied, claiming I still owed £18,000. Failure to communicate, failure to manage a major work scheme of over £2 million and harassment for payment that wasn't due. At least the council eventually owned up to this this time and didn't try to force an NDA. Naturally, I asked whether now that Lambeth had admitted this error, they would be contacting the other leaseholders and capping their charges too. The response I received said, we encourage any and all leaseholders to raise disputes they may have with their service charges directly with us so that we can resolve those concerns as expeditiously as possible. So no. In fact, to this day, Lambeth continues to harass the residents of my block for payments that aren't due. There are leaseholders who borrowed money from family in order to make the £300 monthly payment and others who have been threatened with court action. Could the officers explain why they believe it's correct and ethical to chase leaseholders for payments that it knows are not due? Could the officers explain why, when an invoicing or management error is decided, resolution is not automatically applied to all the affected parties? Thank you. Thank you very much. Absolutely perfect timing. Please, could we next have Tracey? The picture presented in the paper from officers to the committee on leaseholder billing and NDAs does not represent anywhere near the reality of what actually happens during major works and subsequent leaseholder billing. It would be good to understand what is involved in the internal audit and those review process referred to in the report and how things have improved since May 2023. An internal audit report to Lambeth Council corporate committee in 2023 found that both contract management and leaseholder billing required significant improvement. The poor contract management was found to pose significant risks of errors and fraud being committed. The leaseholder billing audit found that there were large anomalies in the data used to construct leaseholder bills. It also found that there were no checks to proactively identify or log errors during construction and allocation of charges and that any errors logged from leaseholder complaints are not used to identify trends and the same errors get repeated. In our experience, nothing has changed. Bills continue to be wrong and when leaseholders request breakdowns of charges and importantly evidence to back up charges, this has to be requested multiple times and is often simply not supplied. Mainly it seems because evidence does not exist. If breakdowns are supplied, they are so complex that leaseholders need to appoint a surveyor to help them make head or tail of any information. Reductions in charges secured a hard one and often take years causing enormous stress and people are forced to sign settlement agreements and non-disclosure agreements with threats that offers will be withdrawn or negotiations not even started. I refused to sign a settlement agreement on a 40% major works reduction I secured. I was not prepared to agree to the five pages of additional clauses, including an NDA. My offer was withdrawn in an email on a Sunday morning. I kept being threatened with the offer being withdrawn and told I would have to go to first-tier tribunal and yet I kept telling the officers legal advice I took that my offer couldn't be retracted as it was agreed it was a county court issue and not an issue for FTT. I was proved right and my offer was reinstated. 15 of my leaseholder neighbours also secured similar reductions on the works the council agreed had been overcharged based on our surveyor's assessment. Many more leaseholders weren't part of our claim and they paid the bill in full. And it's not only leaseholders who are being overcharged. The council is overpaying for works to tenanted flats too, an overpayment of 880,000 to contractors on our major works case alone. And yet money is never clawed back from contractors. The home ownership team just continued to pursue these holders for payment in full for work they know has been incorrectly built and that in my view is criminal. Next up we have Anthony. Thank you. I've sent quite a long report to council. This is just a breach. We've heard more about the reality that Tracy is talking about. I want to state a project started with an estimated cost of $1.3 million but ended up costing $2 million. It turned out later that a large claim for payment from the contractor had been signed off that bore no relationship to the accompanying invoice. That claim should never have been signed off. Is that what is called robust audacity? In the cleaning contract for the same estate, there is a clause allowing for an annual uplift in charges of 4.5%. However, over three years, the charge for cleaning the estate has doubled from a base of $600,000 to $1.3 million. That's not 4.5% a year. Who has been controlling that one? How much is that costing the housing revenue account? Moving on to NDAs. As you know, Lambeth has recently made 119 out of court settlements under NDA to leaseholders to the tune of $1.8 million. Here is just one example. On an estate of 300 flats, 95 leaseholders were sent a bill for £35,000 each. Yes, £35,000. 48 of the 95 leaseholders were sent a bill for £35,000 each. Yes, £35,000. 48 of the 95 leaseholders were sent a bill for £35,000 each. Yes, £35,000. 48 of the 95 leaseholders were sent a bill for £35,000 to £45,000. The other 47 leaseholders, who because they were too old, intimidated or vulnerable to have joined in on the claim, got nothing. Adding it all up, the contractors had overcharged Lambeth about £6.4 million. And the council had knowingly overcharged the other 47 leaseholders by £26,000 each. So that's not taking into account the HRA. The report you've seen from officers did seven rather weak arguments for using NDAs. I'll just talk about the last one, Fiduciary Duty, which says NDAs help the council fulfill its fiduciary duty by enabling efficient recovery of the sum's own. Well, most of the sums turned out not to have been owed. The council's fiduciary duty is to recover the sum's overpay to its contractors and consultants and to be accountable to its citizens. It is not the council's fiduciary duty to cover up its mismanagement and extract all it can from leaseholders. But this is public money that we are talking about. I leave you with one question. How much money has the council recovered from the contractors and consultants who caused this overcharging? And has the council even attempted to do so? Thank you. Thank you very much. Finally, I believe online we have Jelinda. Good evening. Hi, I'm from Cressingham Gardens on the board there. We have collected over £15 million from our residents through rents and service charges over the past 15 years. And we have had no major works. It's extreme issues here. What we're seeing is that the council failed to pick up patents. Your contractors, then another theme, have damaged every single roof. You have refused, the officers have refused to go and do a blanket major works to fix this or even go back to the contractors and get them to replace all the roofs now. We have residents using adult nappies to stuff their ceilings to stop the water going into the bedrooms. We've got apparently roof reworks have completed in June, but the scaffolding was only put up in July. Nonsense. You're in breach of a court order on one roof, which was supposed to be replaced last year in March and it still hasn't been done. And we have now been told, or we continue to be told, that individual homes need to report roof leaks and they will deal with those individuals only. So they're not going to talk to the neighbours, they're not going to talk to the vulnerable and they're not going to talk to the elderly. Ask them, are your roofs leaking? It's disgusting. I raised this issue last year, nothing has changed. Also I want to raise the issue of drainage, vertical drainage and horizontal drainage. Every office building in this country gets flushed out once or twice a year. Why are you not flushing out your estates? Given that the number of hours we spend at our homes is more than what you'd spend in your office. Every time we need to get, we have to wait till we have foul water, sewerage flowing into people's homes, into their back gardens until you come to flush it out and you only do that section. We have one particular neighbour at the moment. It had sewerage flow into a garden in 2018, again in 2022. And now happening right again, it happened on 2nd of January, it's an emergency, they still haven't fixed it, it's still overflowing today. One of the family members is retching, is ill and has had to leave home. This is serious health consequences and your contractors turned up with the wrong equipment. We tell them over and over again, this is what the issue is, fix it, do the major works, get it solved out, do planned maintenance, flush out your drains on a regular basis. Boyd refurbishment, what a joke. I'm hearing that housing crisis, we're spending too much money on temporary accommodation. We have so many homes boarded up, the rate of refurbishment will take you five years to undo the backlog. This is ridiculous. We have one block of five, two bedroom homes which are in high demand and three of which are blocked up. And I've been like that for over a year. I don't know what you guys are talking about saying there's an issue with the HRA. Obviously, it's not important. You're losing money through temporary accommodation and you're losing income. Thank you very much. One note, a question on the last point, the play equipment action in your actual log. That's a lie. No one has contacted us. There's no reference numbers. Nothing has been done. So can we please get that correct? It should not be green and should not be complete. The officers have outright lied in your action log. And project the TMO. Nothing is done. Complaints. Thank you. Thank you. And I'd also like to thank all of all of those witnesses who just spoke for also submitting written statements. And also thank Simon Morrow, who has sort of provided a briefing directly to committee members as well. And so with that, I'd like to go to members questions. Who wants to go first? Nicole, your hand was up first. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you very much. I appreciate the ongoing major works programme is really complex, really costly. And I've got some questions on the report itself, but I cannot skip over everything that we've heard. We've also been asked a lot of questions, both from the speakers, but also from the documents that we've been sent. We have received a lot of statements from the President. And it's really, really important that those questions get answered. Even if we don't cover it all tonight. Can we be sure that officers will respond to all of those by email? Yeah, I think if there's anything that we don't cover tonight, we won't follow up on. So, I mean, everything that we've heard tonight from these officers is really, really concerning. And I have helped residents of my own on these matters, but I had no idea just how widespread, how extensive and how shocking this situation is. So, I'm really concerned that it's hardly touched upon in the officer report. So, had we not heard from residents, we would not know that there were all these issues going on. So, I'm really concerned about that. So, we've heard about issues about false scoping, false contract management, anomalies in data, lack of inspections during works, lack of oversight and accountability of contractors, shoddy work, leaseholders being overcharged, asked to pay sometimes vast sums in advance, often with little detail on what works were being done or by whom. Leaseholders being charged with money that they don't owe and the past and ongoing legal cases and costs. I mean, it must be costs of millions of pounds at a time when we're having to make severe budget cuts. Why have we not been shown detail of that in the report? Why haven't we received a spreadsheet? We got a spreadsheet showing all of the major works over the years, but we haven't received a spreadsheet listing all of the legal cases, all the legal costs that have been going on all these years. I mean, this is vast, surely. And also, you know, we've been given two examples, vast overpayment to contractors. It would be, I'd really like to hear whether or not that money has come back. Has it been pulled back from contractors? The forced signing of NDAs, which in contravention of legal processes in the attempt to restrict residents discussing the agreements reached, and the council not automatically refunding all these orders in line with any meaning, as evidenced by one of the case studies that we've received and that we've heard tonight. Now, why, when areas are discovered, is the resolution not automatically applied to all the acting parts? Why are residents expected to go through a very expensive, stressful legal process when it's already been established that there's been an overcharge? Also, there's a risk register attached to this paper. It's got one thing in it. None of this, none of what we've heard tonight, which must be costing everybody so much money and taking up a lot of resources, is in the risk register. And also, yeah, I really want to hear from officers how the council is going to address all of these issues that have been so coherently expressed by these holders this evening. Sorry, not by me, but you. And also, we've just heard from Galinda about major works outstanding. We've been reassured that some of that work is going to be done. Yeah, any questions? Who wants to go first? So, Chris Flynn, I'm the director of housing needs and commissioning, so I think there's obviously been a lot in those questions. So I think in terms of responding to them, I'll pick up some parts and then I'll have to hand off to some colleagues to pick up other pieces of it. I think probably the most important part, which I'll pick up first of all, is the point around the foresigning of the NDAs. And I think really, I think I've said this before at a previous scrutiny meeting and I'll say it again for clarity, is that obviously, and I say this obviously having had legal advice on this as well, so I think no lease holder is forced to sign. First and foremost, obviously, the entering into a confidentiality agreement, a settlement agreement, which is normal practice, I won't say every other local authority, but many other local authorities, housing associations, settlement agreements that contain confidentiality clauses are completely normal practice. I have to say that first and foremost. So obviously, the purpose of entering into that is to tackle exactly some of the issues that you've mentioned around costs, distress, you know, the time for both residents and courts alike. That is one of the key reasons why we do use settlement agreements. And I think what we have to do as well, we have to put that in perspective because we're talking about 150 cases where settlement agreements were used. Those settlement agreements are a combination of where they've taken part at the FTT and at the court. Then we have other cases where we've actually done settlement agreements with residents where concessions have had to be met around individual circumstances. This isn't a case of where, because one lease holder or two lease holders or even ten lease holders identified certain issues with a contract or certain issues with works that took place on the block. It all boils down to the lease agreement, first and foremost. And I think even before that, it's partly worth saying that the key thing is either costs incurred by the council, and we've heard about that tonight in witnesses, that either genuine costs incurred. Those costs are then obviously recharged accordingly in accordance with specific leasehold agreements that each leaseholder had. Even in, and I know it might sound strange, but even in the same block, multiple leaseholders will have different variations of leases. And I think that's something that has to be realised. So because one leaseholder or two leaseholders might have particular issues or might have entered into settlement agreements or had particular write backs or write offs for certain charges. That doesn't mean that that's applicable to absolutely everybody. Every single case has to be looked at on its own merits. And I think that's really important to say. We've obviously had lots of first year tribunals, we've had lots of county court cases. You know, this is part and parcel of looking at this, isn't taking a single view and adopting that to all leaseholders in the same contract or in the same block. Every single case needs to be looked at on its own merits. And, you know, again, I will say it just for clarity, with the foresigning of NDAs, at any stage, a leaseholder does not have to decide to enter into a settlement agreement. That's really, really important to clarify. The second part of what I would say is that at any stage, even once a leaseholder enters into a settlement agreement or enter into negotiations with us, and if there is concessions made or depending on how those conversations go, at any stage, a leaseholder can step up those conversations and decide to bring forward the case to the appropriate, whether it's a first year tribunal or the county court. And that avenue is always there for the leaseholder. So it's not a case of where the leaseholder is forced to sign something and then there's no way back. That is simply not the case. At any stage, they can decide to bring that case to the first year tribunal, have an independent judgement on it. And I think that's really important because, you know, I'm aware of cases that we've heard tonight, I'm aware of all of them. Each one of those cases will have different circumstances to them. I appreciate, obviously, how it's being presented. I completely get that. I think it's really important to realise that each one of those cases will have their very own specific circumstances. I think that's important. If I could just follow up, I think that's fair, but I think, you know, there are lots of, you know, whether it be sort of government benefits or other things where it applies to individual circumstances. But, you know, the council does a lot of work in encouraging people to claim for things that they might qualify for, say, you know, winter fuel payments or anything like that. So, you know, would it be feasible for when a resident in a block successfully sort of makes a claim or agreed to settlement agreement or concession on repayments with regards to some major works, that the council could, at a minimum, write to everyone else in the block to advise them that someone in this block has succeeded? I don't see why that would be an issue, because it seems to be the issue is people don't realise that they've been overcharged. And I appreciate your saying individual circumstances, of course, but at the same time, it's the same piece of major works across the whole estate. It is likely that other people may well have claims they're unaware of. So could the council write to residents across a block when one resident successfully makes a claim? The challenge I would say with that without seeking further legal advice would be that we would be effectively prejudicing ourselves should go to an FTT or a court. We would need to be, so if you're suggesting that we'd write out admitting liability for whatever was agreed between a settlement agreement, we would obviously be affecting our position moving forward with any other cases. So it's not something I would say at this stage, and I'm happy to seek legal advice on that and a recommendation on that. I can seek further legal advice, but that's not something that we would be able to understand that much. So to be really clear that the charge for works that are and are undertaken, it's often done in an estimated advance. Now, I mean, I think somebody mentioned the audit. I think we need to be really, really tight on our process. And sometimes our processes have let down a bit. I think that that has improved and we aim to continually improve it, continue refine it and make it better. I think a lot of the cases we've heard today have been around for some time, and I've certainly heard the previous scrutiny in other meetings. It feels that some of this stuff is not new. It's an ongoing issue. What I'm hoping is that going forward, that that has improved because we have got the systems in place to get that right first time round. But let's be really clear. These are costs we've incurred that they cost our tenants and the council has to find a way to pay for some of those as well. So it's about recovering those costs for the council because it has an impact not on leaseholders, but on tenants as well, and actually on all council services where we can't recover that money back. So I think that's an important part of this dynamic as well. Notwithstanding the issue that I, I accept that where people feel that they have been overcharged or that hasn't been transparent, that's quite difficult. Yeah, thank you. I mean, except it's part of a wider picture, but everything we discuss here is part of a wider picture. And you can make the same case about national benefits, right? It's all our taxpayers' money eventually. I don't think that that means we shouldn't try and address the specifics here. Yeah, first of all, I should start by saying everyone that I've come into contact with in the housing team don't have nefarious intent. Everybody wants to do a good job. However, the system, I think, is intrinsically weak. And since I've been a councillor from 2018, it feels like Groundhog Day. And I understand that your point about some of these are really long standing issues. I've certainly dealt with some of the long standing. However, I think we're still reading the reports. It really just didn't chime with my experience of speaking to leaseholders. You know, really sort of sober headed people who actually, because of our continual mistakes, have now sought the help and realised that they should band together. And we have created a whole industry of lawyers who are profiting from all of this. I would want to ask about what I see as our inherent weakness is that we set out an ambition. We place a lot of trust in contractors that personally I find we are going to the lowest common denominator. And there are always going to be problems with the contractors that we choose, we take upon, we say that it saves us overall money to go with these contractors. And then there is no real oversight. And I really don't believe it. I know that there is tracking, but I just feel that there's a sort of strategic aim. But in terms of implementation and having someone that actually goes back and spot checks what's being delivered. Time and time again, you will find whether it's repairs, whether it's billing, you know, with repairs, it's a different issue. You'll find people that are continually treated shoddily by contractors. Don't turn up. People take time off. And that's still happening. All the time that I've been a counsellor, it's still happening. There's no proactiveness with contractors we've given huge contracts to and that we know that we're dealing with crumbling estates. And there's some things that we can do to get ahead of, say, drains and damp issues, flat roofs and all that kind of thing. It just it feels like Groundhog Day. So it's about getting a grip. I feel it just the reports, really, to be honest. And I, you know, things won't be cruel, but it just doesn't read right. It just doesn't feel right. You know, I know that you have to do a job defending it, but it's it's not the it's not the reality for our residents, some of which, you know, it affects the mental health. It goes on for ages and they they're made to feel the harassment. Now, I know you talk about no one's forced to sign an NDA. We will have lives to get on with and this sort of Achilles, this sort of sword of Damocles over their heads. And they want things to be resolved. But at the same time, they they know by talking to neighbours that the costs are wrong. There's double double accounting. There's, you know, things that come up. So I just want to know about oversight. Again, I don't. I think the NDA answers were a bit weak, to be honest. And really from this, because I don't want it to be Groundhog Day. People have mentioned that if we come up with an ask that it's replied and there's a timeframe given and everything is qualified. Like the ambition is in six months to have moved the dial here and then we can come back and not do the same thing. At least we can say, well, actually, we've improved. I know our problems are decades long and won't be resolved immediately. But let's see some improvement, at least before I stop being a counselor. Thank you. Don't know if anyone wanted to come back on trays. Yes. Just on the contractor management point, I think it is a fair challenge. There's always more we can do there. But I do think things are moving in the right direction. So we're not to go for the housing management part of our portfolio last June. One of the big challenges we had was the repairs compact in North. We supported officers and entered into really difficult conversations with Thornton, perhaps at the time about that. But things got to a point where, frankly, we couldn't reach a agreement with Thornton. We pushed back against them saying we don't agree with how this contract has been run, being managed, and we couldn't reach agreement with them. We didn't just ignore that. We didn't carry on with a situation that wasn't satisfactory to us. We took the difficult decision to terminate that contract early. No one would face pushback from doing it. But nonetheless, I think it was the right thing to do because I can't go into the details. Obviously, given we agreed or correct from the contract mutually. But to be clear, we were not satisfied with the arrangements we had with Thornton. We had difficult conversations with them and we walked away from that relationship. So when we have to, we do take that step and those actions with our contractors. I just come back very quickly. And I appreciate, particularly with you, Danny, that the work you've done to sort of try and move the dial. However, I do take note of what people have said. It's like, you know, it's a well and good cancelling a contract and being able to walk away when we've already been fleeced. What is our claw back? Because there are definite examples of absolute negligence on contractors. And because we don't have the capability in house to manage this ourselves, we outsource, which is, which is, which is, you know, it is what it is. But if somebody has delivered a bad service to me, I want a refund. Absolutely. As I say, it's a fair challenge. And what I would say to you is that I completely acknowledge there's more work to do. But I do think things are heading in the right direction. I think the Thornton decision is an example of that. But equally, the Housing Investment Board shows that the council as a whole takes this seriously. Councillor Holland sits on that with me. And frankly, we ask difficult questions of officers at those boards. We get the KPERS coming through. And what we are seeing is that the figures on complaints and on repairs are moving in the right direction. I still think there's a long way to go on that. But I do think we are turning the ship around and that things are improving. But just to be clear, I'm absolutely not going to place it on it. And I keep pushing for that improved relationship that we expect to see because you're right with contractors. We need to demonstrate we are pushing them when we need to and getting value for money for our residents. And we continue to go on that journey. Thank you. Andrew, do you want to go next? Yeah, it's just back on the NDAs point. You've got to look at the fact that there isn't quality of bargaining parts. So by that, I mean that you've also got huge resources. You've got an in-house legal team. You've got all the professional officers that generally are working on this. Whereas if you've just got one standalone leaseholder, they're out on their own. A lot of them won't have instructed solicitors. They won't be getting that advice. Even if they have instructed solicitors, they are getting legal advice. They'll be looking forward at the possible mental anguish that's involved in actually any kind of litigation. And they will feel compelled to follow the settlement route. So there really isn't a quality of bargaining part on that. And in terms of the actual settlements, there isn't a duty for you to have confidentiality clauses included. You could do away with that practice. You could kind of, you're saying about other local authorities do do that. Well, you could lead the way and not follow in that practice. And if it's the case that you've got nothing to hide, that mistakes have been made, why wouldn't you want that out in the public domain? You should basically own up to that. There's a duty on you as a local authority to tell the truth and do the right thing. So so I think basically you should have this practice of requiring these sort of sign up the NDAs. And then Nicole. Yeah, I wouldn't. First of all, I would endorse what Chancellor Collins has said about the NDAs. That's what I would say if I was going to be talking about the NDAs this time. But I said that last time. But the other thing I want to say before my question, it is going to be a question, is three or four years ago, I had a role as champion for something or other, which meant I had a lot to do with leaseholds. All this lot here I had regular meetings with and everything I've heard this evening, I heard three or four years ago. And I also heard what I heard this evening. A lot of these things relate to the past, but we have improved it. So it's getting better. So Groundhog Day is exactly what it is, I'm afraid. So, I mean, I don't know whether this is a question, but it sounds as if the lack is a much higher level of overall project management that manages the project, the finances of it, the recording of it, you know, every aspect of it at a far higher level possibly than you would expect a local council to be able to afford. But which would perhaps cost us far less than the resulting costs of not doing it right. You know, doing it right first time on time is much cheaper than cocking it up and then having to pay for it. So is there any possibility of going beyond the sort of scales of recruiting expert people sort of in that way? Come in here. Just to pick up with the questions of Gracie and Anthony and obviously Council Garden. I mean, things have changed in the last few years. We need to accept that their mistakes have happened in the past. And some of those changes about contractors using the past have gone, the consultants that we've used in the past have gone, changed them. We've invested a lot of money in skills and training for existing staff, new consultants on board. So there's lots of changes we got away from the long term qualifying agreement. I know Lisa was particularly didn't like at all where we had a contractor in place for six years and they were delivering all the work in an area. That's changed. We go out to compare tender on every single project. Now there's much greater control. Lots of issues in the past about recording data that wasn't happening. Information went off with the consultant, which is why we struggled to demonstrate actually what was done and there was that disparity between two. So I hear what you're saying about Groundhog Day, but things are changing slowly, but they are changing. I think I think the challenge is if things are changing and there's much greater confidence in processes going forwards, then one would argue, why is there such hesitation about reforming, for example, the use of NDAs or being more transparent with residents when things go wrong? If things are going to go wrong a lot less going forwards, then it's not going to cost the council so much. And to be honest, I suppose. But I am going to go to Nicole and then go back to you. Yeah, I want to endorse that as well. And I think if you are implementing a lot of change and it sounds like something that. Really good change to introduce. So because I just wanted to add on the whole NDA question, if a resident is being told that they won't receive their discount unless they sign an NDA, that sounds like your resident is being forced to sign their NDA. So there is, you know, maybe it's to do with the language used. Residents obviously in the past felt that they would get the discount that they have to sign the NDA. So just to raise that also. So with that, I really hope that everything that you're saying is going to happen. I do know there's been a lot of changes in the housing team and the way that these are happening. And we can only hope that actually things will happen. To make a difference, because, of course, the experience of the user is less. The service is only as good as the experience of the user, the resident who's on the receiving end of everything that the council is doing. So I just wanted to pick from that question about contractors who have obviously. I mean, there's there's two measures of very large figures. Eight hundred eighty thousand and six million of overcharge, a contract of overcharging, has that money been pulled back? And what happens about that? Also, sorry, just for and also there are lots of circumstances, I think you've alluded to this, where contractors have charged for work that quite clearly has not been done. What's happening in those situations? Yeah, I mean, I'm not saying we would totally agree with that. Yeah. Our evidence doesn't show that, but we will certainly look into that. If I may, I'd like to pick that up with Anthony. That was a substantial amount that you mentioned there. And then maybe if I go back to Anthony and I want to go through the scrutiny of Anthony as well. And also with the other witnesses tonight, because we like to look at that. Same figures don't seem correct, but I'm not disputing what they're saying. So I've got the evidence in front of me. Yep. OK, I might just pick up with the initial points that Gardiner initially. It's just for clarification, because I don't see major works contracts that we know can go over a significant period of time. And I think to your point of that, I guess just for clarity, you talked about the same cases. I think just for absolute transparency, the reason you hear about the same case, because they are the same cases. And they're not really not different cases from it's the same. It's the same cases that we're talking about. So I think just to clarify that it's not the case where we've had those conversations. And then, you know, it's repeated itself all over again with the very same. That's not the same event. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. And if I'm wrong, I'm happy to. But from what I'm aware of and if possible, I just wanted to pick up Councillor Collins' point around the kind of council officers dealing with residents and ensuring that it doesn't seem like it's the council, but all of its kind of solicitors and first single leaseholder. I think I've mentioned this before, but I would like to mention it again, is that a number of our litigation team, it's not the solicitors that are involved in stage number one. But the other thing I would say is our litigation officers, many of them, now there's been a turnover in the staff, so it's not the whole team anymore. But at one stage, the entire team are trained mediators. So, you know, we go into those negotiations, not to try and flex because we're the council versus the leaseholder. We go into those negotiations for genuine fairness and transparency. And if concessions have to be met, as I said earlier, then concessions would be met. But it is a case where we are highly conscious, I guess, of the fact that, you know, leaseholders obviously having to go to FTTs or having to go to court. Don't get me wrong, there's a place for FTTs and there is a place for court after a certain period of time. But we will always do our best that we can working with residents to try and reach a kind of an agreed but a reasonable position. And a key part, I guess, of the settlement agreements that contain the confidentiality laws that's referred to at the end is to kind of give that sort of freedom for the leaseholder and to give that sort of freedom for the council that we can have those negotiations. If the leaseholder isn't happy, then they can walk away. There's no pressure on them to say, you've signed this now, you have to stick with it or you've signed that and that's the exact figure that you have to go with. That's not what we're talking about. That's not the situation. So I think hopefully, I'm happy to go into a lot more detail on that. But I think hopefully that might be helpful. First, Andy, that's OK. Yeah, I think on this point about confidential agreements, it's really important that members understand where and why the council uses them. So just to be absolutely clear, when there's a situation where, as I was saying, yeah, we've got that wrong, we messed up, we need to fix it. We don't use confidential clauses then. So these points about learning lessons and being transparent don't apply because we wouldn't use confidential agreements in those situations. Where the council uses those NDAs and confidential clauses in a situation where the council actually disagrees with the tenant or resident, we don't believe we've made a mistake and we dispute the facts of the case. In those situations, the reason why we use commercial agreements is to prevent illegal precedent and consent because your terms would be every single time we have a case where we disagree with a resident, we'd have to go and fight them at court, which is not something we want to do for pragmatic and financial and frankly reasons of not wanting to take on our own course all the time. But the only way that we can reach agreements when we disagree on the rights and wrongs is with a compassion clause for two important reasons. Because otherwise, one, it sets a legal precedent for people to bring similar claims, even though we disagree about the rights and wrongs of it. And two, sadly, it is the case and it's been seen across the country. There is a cottage industry now of lawyers looking for these examples, search for cases in the media to bring copycat cases, even when there's no likelihood of success, just to try and get money out of the council. So to be absolutely clear, these compaction agreements allow us to reach agreements with our residents that we always wouldn't be able to reach when we disagree because we don't want to fight court cases every single time. Does that sum up the situation? Sorry, sorry, Andrew. Irrespective of whether you are using your actual legal team to do the negotiations, from the perspective of a standalone individual leaseholder, they say here's a gigantic council that has massive resources. That's the perception from their perspective, irrespective of whether you have this team trying to reach remediation or whatever. That's the perception. If they feel our choice is sign a settlement agreement, go to court, where I have to litigate and have that stress and mental anguish that's attached to litigation. We don't know and they don't understand what the next stage is. You do understand. And that's what I mean about equality of bargaining power. There is a disconnect there. It's disproportionate because they are standalone individuals. That's the point I'm making. And the second point is, yeah, look on confidentiality, I think you've got nothing to fear from basically having these things go public. That's my view on it, that basically it should be disclosed. Thank you. I want to ask the question, actually, because the impression that you get is that obviously this is a legacy problem. We've got new processes where we're on an improvement curve and this shouldn't happen. And yet, you know, the term Groundhog Day has come up several times. So what I want to know is sort of almost with the traffic light system, how many are more than five years? How many are, you know, two years under? Because, you know, there has to be a pattern that somebody says, well, actually, it looks like we're meeting the same stakes, even with people that are relatively new. I just need that to happen. I feel I don't have that information. Your answers are credible, are credible, but you need to be able. They're credible. They sound as a standalone. They sound credible. They come into contact with the reality of speaking and sitting down with quite, you know, savvy tenants and leaseholders and literally going through things line by line. And then you're sort of like, oh, my goodness. And seeing sort of, you know, again, I don't think anyone's got nefarious intent, but we've got to think about our moral duty to our residents, you know, and what we're causing in terms of mental anguish. And so for somebody to have to absolutely say, but I'm right on this, look at this line, it's a repetition of this. I'm asking for evidence of this work. I'm not getting it. And finally, how many letters of apology have we written? Thank you. I'm going to go back to officers and we're going to be concluding this section fairly soon because we do have a second item to discuss. But I'll just go to officers, find Nicole very quickly and then. And we've just played about the use of NDA by the council, and I'm wondering if actually what you've just explained to us, is that relevant to any of the pieces that we've heard tonight? Yeah, officers and board of responses. I think the suggestion of the council's suggestion of the traffic light system on the major parks. I think that's actually, to be honest, a really good idea, because I think we are somewhat talking a little bit across purposes, as I mentioned earlier. We are talking about, I think if you were able to follow the journey, the initial kind of when those major parks were initially in, they're being consulted on, in both and then actualised. I do think that would actually be really helpful. I'm pretty sure we'd be able to pull that together fairly easily. I think that would probably give the missing part of the puzzle in terms of exactly the periods that we're talking about. And unless there are any more pressing questions on that, I also wanted to touch on cladding, which is also in this report. And I just note that, you know, I mean, it seems like really good progress has been made in terms of the kind of council buildings with potential issues. And I see kind of plans in place for the kind of further refurbishments over the next two or three years. And the kind of additional kind of fire safety processes have been put in place in the meantime. And what I have seen, there's a mention of kind of further risks. So in terms of fire risk assessments for external walls and the suggestion that inspections are ongoing. Is there a timeline? Because it seems like on the initial concerns about estates with really dangerous cladding, it seems like we've reviewed those. We've reviewed those, we've got fire systems in place, but it doesn't seem like we can say we have got a complete view of the cladding situation in Lambeth. And by when will we have that? So in terms of the mediation, as of the report, four tower blocks are done. Six to do. Tenders for four of those blocks have been moderated this week. We hope to be on site around May time. There is a slight delay in any cladding works now because of the Building Safety Act. So the process now and the gateway process is that you go out to tender, reward a contract. And that contractor has to submit the design, the building safety regulator, which we're hearing six months about the average time. They then approve that or don't approve that before we can actually start on site. In terms of the FRAs, the external wall FRAs that you're referring to, Chair, they're part of the building safety cases. So we've done our initial surveys when we were required to after the Grenfell tragedy. But then again, with the legislation changes, they want structural engineering, opening up works in buildings. They want brickwork cut out. They want other parts of the building examined in depth. And that's where bits and pieces of that. We've not found anything major since those. Yeah. But that is happening up and down the country. I mean, as in the report, the government themselves are saying it could take up to 2035, remediate every building. The industry saying that they're finding buildings up and down the land on a weekly basis where, you know, cladding materials and that. I think we're in a relatively good position in Lambeth, considering the amount of high rise buildings we've got. It has a huge amount, which you've got cladding parts of the country, they've got dozens and dozens of buildings. We're making good progress. It's a challenge because hindering process, lack of skilled fire engineers and a lot of the contractors can't get PI insurance to do it. So the market shrunk. Everybody's calling on the same contractors. Can I just follow up? I take your point about 2035 in terms of actually completing the repairs nationwide. But do we know by when we will know where all the problems are? We'll know this year, because we would have finished all the FRIEWs this year. We're in a good position. The government, Angela Rainer has actually said that she wants local authorities and hazard providers to expediate the remediation works because it's taking so long. The challenges for lots of organisations is the finance. They facilitate the finance because of the local FRIEW. We only get the element back which protects the leaseholder. That funding is a burden for the authority to pay for. So although we get the money back for the leaseholder element, not for the remainder of the works. Yes, we are making really good progress on that and we can bring updates to this. Thank you, Marianne. I do appreciate the work that's being done. I would say from a financial risk to us. Now, obviously the economy means that inflation is we're on top of inflation, but that's not a given. So I think we've got the added complication that the longer we drag our feet, the potentially more expensive it becomes. If inflation, you know, we're governed by now geopolitics so much that I think we really have to escalate, not just from the perspective of it being the right thing to do and so many people are trapped, as in not being able to sell, but also the risk to the council spending more money than it needs to by us dragging our feet. So just any kind of issue of expediting this, it really needs to happen. I think it's to be really clear, we are not dragging our feet to use that term. So that is a rate limiter. Yeah. And we are on track to do the survey and the high risk buildings. So in a way, we're where we need to be. But the issue nationally is there aren't enough experts, there aren't enough contractors, there aren't enough people to do the work. The money is also an issue, but it's not the thing that I think is holding anyone back. Yes. Just to add further reassurance to that, I mean, the political state for me, that's absolutely a priority for us. There's no foot drag in whatsoever. And just to provide a really clear reassurance, we don't have any buildings in Lambeth now that have ACN cladding, which is the most serious type that was involved in Grenfell. Their priority was getting that addressed as soon as possible. Obviously, it's still important that we address other forms of non-compliant cladding and that will be done by the end of this year. Absolutely. The challenge has been about getting the number of consultants that are needed to do it. But it fully remains a priority and we will take the steps to address it as soon as possible. And I'll just quickly come back. It's very quickly. Apologies for the clumsy language, but it's reflecting very much from the point of view of leaseholders in this position still worried. And I mean, you know, having a state where they have to be security, it just it doesn't it doesn't make for people's, you know, good well-being. So it feels to them that we have facts in place. We're acting on, you know, part one. And then there is a gap between actual action. So that's that's the sort of, you know. Yeah. And maybe we need to just communicate that more as to where we are and how long we think we'll be to actually resolve the issue. OK, thank you. That's great. Adrian. You seem to have it all well in hand and you seem to be doing it very well and I don't have any concerns. But how much of it comes out of the major works budget? How much of it comes out of the repairs budget? And what what impact does that have on either major works or repairs? All Clouding Works is sorry. Sorry, I'm not hearing. So all Clouding Works is major works, not repair. It's all the capital investment. You're investing in the structure of the building. It's part of our capital. But the fire risk assessments, if they reveal you've got to do something, does that not come out of repairs? You have to do a repair. It would. But if you have to do capital improvements, which is much more likely and do for most fire risk assessments, it would be better. So it depends what the work is that dictates what you spend. I mean, is it a risk? I mean, is the repairs programme at risk because of what you might be doing on any of this? So all fire risk safety, building safety is the top priority for spend. We would stop doing, be able to stop doing many other things before we would not do any of any of these works. OK, that must be the right decision for me. Yeah, sorry Danny. Sorry, go on Danny and then Nicole. On the timeline point, I think it's important to stress so often the delays, the things that are beyond our control, because I've been changes in this area as well. So in the immediate post Grenfell period, and obviously correct me if I say anything that's wrong on this. We could do a lot of it quickly ourselves. We're a land builder control team. There have been legislative changes for good reason. That means this is passed out oversight underneath the building safety regulator. Again, I'd say that's a good thing to give that oversight. But what that does mean is it can slow things down because that regulator requires us to provide quite complex documents like original plans of the buildings, which often don't exist in the form they need them. And then we have to wait for that regulator to respond and sign off the plans before we can proceed. So that sometimes causes that slowness at times, which can be frustrating. But I can only stress enough, I'm not saying that I think it's a bad thing because I think it is why there is more oversight through that regulator now. But it means that things do take longer than was the case a few years ago. And I think we need to be really, really clear. You're absolutely right to point out, because we know this does cause huge anxiety. I actually understand people is that ACM cladding was on one building, one estate in Lambeth, which was Southwick, which was completed how many years ago?

1. So five, six, seven years ago. The other tower blocks that Andy talks about, Mundell, Kelvedon and me, were EPS cladding. So a later form of cladding that is identified as being a risk. I think that the case you're talking about is herstory and Andy may want to keep you in terms of anxiety. There is continuous understanding and testing being done on cladding because of Grenfell all the time, which is really positive. And what we are seeing is and why this is really important we keep on top of this, is that different things are then saying, actually, we think this needs this. Actually, we think this. We're having to adapt and change. That's what's happened recently with herstory. Do you want to give an update on herstory? Is that OK? I think it's really live and really important. If I may, so herstory is two towers. Her own Hill House and Block House by Brockwell Lido. Those two blocks. The block adjacent Meath House has been completed last year. So those two buildings have got EPS cladding on them. We've been planning to do those for about the best part of 18, 20 odd months to do that work. All the specifications are ready now, and we're just about to engage with a contractor to complete their final stages. What happened just before Christmas? It was some new research because, like Sophie said, fire engineers nationally are looking at different elements of how fire can affect a building, different wing conditions and things like that. And research in Australia recommended that we should put a waking watch on any building with that type of cladding on it. So we did that. We did that before Christmas. What's happening now on that block, we put in a system called an LD5 alarm system in that building. Total coverage will also change the stay put policy to simultaneous evacuation. So if there is a fire in that building, the alarms will activate. People will exit the building. I don't think anyone will stay put. That is the challenge there. Thank you. Nicole, did you want to come in? Does the council have oversight over how the other housing providers in Lambeth are getting on? Can you say Lambeth? Yes, Lambeth Council does, not Lambeth Housing. So it would be building control or public protection. We're just trying to remember. Other buildings, not our buildings. We share all that data, so we know all the blocks within the borough. I've got all the private blocks, housing providers. We work with the MHCLG and the GLA on that. That's Lambeth's enforcing authority. If the owner of that building doesn't remediate that for a time or engage, it's for the authority then to enforce on that building. How many instances of that? There's been a couple of cases, I only know of three other buildings in the borough where there's been issues. I think they're being remediated. There's one in Streatham. There was one in Kennington. I could name the blocks. Norwich House was one block. Fantastic. Thank you. One other thing I wanted to raise, going back to major works, and it's my pet issue, is on leaseholders who want to self fund improvements in their properties, particularly windows and doors, given the energy cost crisis and the climate crisis. We have made recommendations in this committee and I think at overview and scrutiny before around this. I was just having a quick look through the actions log. The ties we've made recommendations for, they're green ticked now and it's just references back to the handbooks. I really would like to see if there's a possibility that the council can quite proactively enable leaseholders who want to self fund improvements to doors and windows to do so, including by providing a timeline on potential major works. If all the windows are going to be replaced in two years, then you can wait. But if they're going to be 10 years away, then you might want to personally act quicker. And also, I think waiving any approval fees, you know, if people are successful in getting the council to approve improvements in windows, I think it's a win win for everyone. And I don't think we should be kind of getting in people's way if they want to pay for kind of improvements to their own homes, energy efficiency. So I don't know if anyone's got any thoughts now, but otherwise we will make it as a recommendation. Well, we can pick it up as a recommendation. What I would say is the lease agreement is very clear around the responsibility of the council in terms of undertaking these works. And I think what you've said there is probably the kind of perfect measure is that the key thing is that we need to be able to say to you, to all leaseholders, we need to be able to say, listen, this is the situation, you know, you're in a five year programme or a 10 year programme, this is when your windows need to be done, etc. And I think obviously that's the starting point, because allowing or granting permission for leaseholders to go off and individually change their windows, whether it's in a street property or a block or whatever it might be, you can just imagine how it's going to start to evolve over the years in terms of the different look and feel of the form, the different quality, ensuring that you're capturing the paper. Just, yeah, you can just, you can see where. So again, we'll pick it up in the recommendation for sure. I think the starting point for us, unfortunately, would be the lease agreement and what the lease sets out between the leaseholder and the freeholder. Yeah, I think I recognise the challenges. I just think we mustn't let the imperfect be the enemy of the good. Right. And and also there are already other examples in wider planning rules about people who want to change their windows and the need to conform to certain guidelines before they can get approval. So there are potentially ways to do it. And it's just something I think that's a real opportunity. Yes, Mariana. I just want to actually touch on that, that there's widespread belief that we as a council are being fleeced by these contractors. So it's about, I guess, procurement and, you know, going forwards, because these aren't contracts that are set in stone. We have, you know, departments and cabinet that scrutinise this and constantly are, I'm sure, putting pressure on you to get better deals. What are we doing to actually have oversight and to actually stress test against what the market is saying? Because, you know, the only one that seems to be benefiting are the contractors, not us and certainly not our residents. Yeah. It's like herring eggs for eggs, I guess. If you go to a little blazing company on the corner of High Street, one man, you know, a dog type of thing, they will be able to install your windows at relatively low cost. However, they may not comply with title with the building regs. They may not have the proper escape windows. They may not meet the rest of the fenestration, the style of the window in the block. Yeah, you can get things done cheap. When we do blocks and flats, we go through a planning process so the planners will stipulate all those things there. And then we'll go to the market by a tender and we'll get a reputable company to install that. Again, with that company, we'll have to have proper access, health and safety, all that provision, welfare on site where the gentleman will call the shop. So we have to we have to protect ourselves because if there was an accident. I understand that. Well, one thing I would say, though, is that we as councillors were asked a few years, quite a few years ago, to approve a sort of responsible procurements. And I don't see any evidence of that in anything. So that's another, you know, I'd like to have that as a recommendation to understand how we're embedding. Brilliant. OK, thank you. Nicole, very quickly, then I'll go very quickly to officers and then we do need to move on to the second item. Back to Bill. So I just have a question about this. I'm gaps. So I mentioned five gaps in electricity and three inches of fire. You tell us what's being asked to address. It's achieving 100% of these updated standards and actual workload. You'll notice with electric and with gas, we differentiate between communal checks and domestic checks. And we would always expect to see communal checks 100 percent. They are because we have access to the communal area with the keys. We go in, we can do the checks. There's nothing stopping us. Domestic checks are much more challenging because when we're doing those, we have access issues, not necessarily objections. Although we do have always ongoing cases with people where we're not being given access. We have a few of those right now. We have to sometimes take enforcement action or end up in court around enforcement. And all we have, you know, no access to the property for various different reasons. So we always have slightly lower. And that's why that one's really on our radar, isn't it? Because what we don't want that is to drop. It will always be lower than 100 percent, we would expect. But we're always monitoring that to make sure it's as close high as possible, because domestic means individual tenants properties. Is that fair to say? Can I quickly qualify what I meant by responsible procurement? Very, very, very quickly. We've only got 45 billion. Does that mean that we're not taking decisions responsibly? I meant that we had a sort of ambition that anyone that we got it, we had a contract, a huge contract with, would have a set of conditions. So in terms of employment across the piece, and I don't think we as a scrutiny team have seen any evidence of that. So you may well say, oh, gosh, of course. But it might help us to understand if we are going with contractors who actually have had these lists, a list of other positive outcomes for our residents as in number of jobs, training, apprenticeships, employment amongst hard to reach groups, that kind of thing. Thank you. OK, I'm going to move on to recommendations. And I have noted seven recommendations. I'm keen that going forwards, we have a slightly smaller number of recommendations that are going to be easier to track. So the seven that I have noted, and please feel free to jump in, are that the council seeks and shares legal advice regarding either writing to residents in a wider block when other residents succeed in contested claims and or reviewing the use of NDAs and particularly linking them to discounts on charges. Number two is review clawback options and contract management. Number three is an update on the implementation of the responsible procurement plan, particularly around social value. Number four is a traffic light system to review and track major works. Number five is review how leaseholders can self fund window and door improvements, including providing them with a timeline on potential major works and potentially waiving fees around approving replacement windows and doors. But recognise the comments that have been made. Number six is to update the committee at the end of this year on the fire risk assessments for external walls and projected timeline for remediation works by 2035 at the latest in line with kind of national expectations. And number seven is to provide a communications update on cladding inspections and repairs to all affected residents. Is there anything significant that I've missed? There was one other where officers were going to investigate some of the figures that were given by residents. Yes. So can you still understand? I was also very concerned that I had asked a question about the major works that were due to happen on Crescendo Gardens and that had not been answered. So can you very quickly answer that now or respond to? Just giving timing, a recommendation for officers to write to the committee with an update on Crescendo Gardens. In terms of clawback options, can we actually have bigger or what we've managed to, you know, because it's all well and good to get out of a contract. Have we been successful thus far getting any money back from contractors? Thank you. Does the traffic light action include time showing the times of the issues coming up? Because the suggestion was that a lot of the issues we've heard so much about, in fact of the past, and they're not happening now. And what we want to see is that, yes, that was all happening then and it's been a progressive improvement. Fantastic. Including timeline kind of historically and going into the future. Great. Thank you very much. Yes. Never normally comment on the recommendations because they're obviously not there for us. But I think it's really important with adding timeframe that we just put something pending new research law because we cannot put it in writing, I think, in public. We will do all that is known, certainly the fire risk assessments this year. The goal nationally is 2035. If as a country or globe we find out in 2030 there's a whole new area of fire risk. Sure. Maybe change it to kind of in line with ongoing national expectations. Fantastic. Thank you. That's fine. OK. I think then I'm just going to make a note of that. So I've got that. And then I think we move on to the second item. Can I check? Committee members happy with those suggestions? Fantastic. Thank you. OK. We're slightly behind time, but no worries. Let's move on to the second item of core business for tonight's meeting, which is the inspection report from the regulator for social housing, which is item four in the published agenda pack, pages 33 to 50. We've heard it again from our deputy leader of housing investment and new homes. So Danny, over to you. You've got up to five minutes. Thank you, chair. And yes, this report covers the outcome and feedback received from our recent inspection by the regulator of social housing. So we firstly welcome the fact that Lambeth was awarded the C2 grading, which is the second highest grading that's available and the highest was achieved by London Borough so far. But nonetheless, we are by no means complacent. I'm thinking that means the job is done. There's a lot of work we still need to work on and improve. But what the outcome does mean is that our housing service is meeting the required standards for our tenants. We nonetheless recognize that we want to make further improvements to go above and beyond that wherever possible. So this outcome from the regulator built on the feedback we received from the housing office inspection, our complaint handling at the beginning of last year. She also acknowledged the significant transformation in housing and the new culture of accountability and ownership in our service at all levels. As you are aware, the regulatory landscape for social landlords has changed dramatically in recent years, and quite rightly so, given the Grenfell tragedy and recent improvements in scrutiny and oversight of fire safety and building safety in general. And there's a much stronger focus on safety, transparency and tenant engagement. And as part of this new framework that the regulator of social housing was set up and conducted the inspection of Lambeth. So the report details the methodology the regulator used in the inspection, the scope of the inspection and the look. And we provided evidence of our compliance and crucially, the learnings we have taken from the feedback received from the regulator continue that journey of improvements that we're suggesting we're keen to continue on as much as possible. So key findings from the report include that we are meeting our requirements for health and safety. As a borough, we do have a suite of strategic, preventative and reactive measures to tackle damper mould and that we are providing mechanisms for our tenants to engage and scrutinise performance. As I can't stress enough, despite the progress we've made and the welcome outcome from the regulator, we remain totally committed to further improvement across our service. We know that too many of our tenants still experience housing issues, particularly with repairs. Whilst I'm encouraged that the figures on repairs are moving in the right direction, I want to go much further and faster in continuing that journey and improving in that area. We are working to improve our repair service so they are delivered quickly and easily and done right the first time around as often as possible. So just to conclude, I strongly welcome the report. It's encouraging about the things we're getting right and the feedback received helps to improve in other areas. Good to continue that journey to improve for our residents. Thank you, Chair. Thank you very much, Fanny. OK, over to our witnesses. We have requests from Connor Crooks and Pete Elliott, both in person. So, Connor, up first, please. And like previously, you have up to three minutes from when you begin. My name is Connor and I'm a private tenant on Fenwick Estate. My landlord is Homes for Lambeth, a company created and wholly owned by Lambeth Council. This, in essence, makes me a private tenant of the same council which is currently trying to evict me and make me homeless. I'd like to talk about the C2 grading that Lambeth Council received from the housing regulator and contrast that to how HFL tenants are being treated. The assessment was based on four areas, safety, neighbourhood standards, tenancy standards and transparency. Safety. Despite claiming the council is both proactive and reactive to mould problems, it has repeatedly ignored HFL tenants' disrepair issues. Multiple HFL tenants complained about their ceilings imminent collapse. They were ignored until the ceilings did actually collapse due to mould. Neighbourhood standards. Under neighbourhood standards, the council must tackle antisocial behaviour. Yet as it continually empties and boards up homes on our estates, the rate of antisocial behaviour only keeps increasing, which leaves the community feeling unsafe. Tenancy standards. The council is required to efficiently use its homes. As an HFL tenant, I have firsthand experience with how ineffectively the homes are being used. In the last year, a third of my direct neighbours have been pushed out of their homes by the council. None of these homes have been re-let despite them being renovated. On the six regeneration estates, there are hundreds of homes that sit boarded up for months or even years at a time. Being surrounded by a large number of empty homes makes me feel unwelcome and unsafe in my own home. Transparency. With regards to transparency, the council has failed HFL tenants miserably. The 2022 Curslake review stated that the key aim should be greater clarity, transparency and accountability for decision making and delivery. The regulator also requires that the council engages with tenants and shows how tenants' views have been considered. As HFL tenants, we've been repeatedly denied the opportunity to discuss our situation with the council. In fact, Council Danny Aladipour has said, I do not believe a meeting with the tenants would be productive. Beyond this, none of us were ever made aware that renting these flats was supposed to be a short term solution. On the contrary, we were led to believe we could stay in our homes for the long term. This report states that the council supports tenants in maintaining their tenancies and is demonstrating a strong commitment to tenancy sustainment. However, this does not align with our experience, as the council has been trying to evict us for over a year. The council works hard to appear as if they are meeting the standards set out by the regulator, but it's clear to their tenants that it's just for show. Perhaps if the council worked half as hard to actually care for its tenants as they do to keep up appearances, they'd be more deserving of this grading. But as it stands, I believe and we believe that is wholly unearned. Thank you very much. Pete, whenever you're ready. Thank you, Chair. The spin that has been put in this report by Lambeth does not reflect the reality on the ground for Lambeth's councils, Lambeth's council tenants, leaseholders, private renters and those in temporary accommodation. Lambeth is consistently in the top five councils for housing complaints, and I have not yet met a resident who is happy with the services received, and I'm aware of many grave issues. Lambeth council has been fortunate with the timing of this report, as it relatively recently handed over millions of pounds to Saville so that it can appear to be aware of the state of its housing stock. Can the results of that stock condition survey be published before all the data is out of date? The report states that the regulator saw evidence that the council was working with the police to tackle antisocial behaviour. But last night, I chaired the Sake and Neighbour panel in gypsy. At the meeting, the police presented a report stating that there were 22 burglaries in the ward, double the previous period. Drilling down into the detail, though, we found that many of the burglaries were the theft of metal from empty homes on Central Hill Estate. These are homes where families have been forced out. They have then been refurbished and left empty, including my own former home. It was agreed last night that the biggest deterrent of crime on estates would be to fill these homes with secure tenants who have a long term future as part of their communities. We have a housing crisis in Lambeth, and Lambeth council has a financial crisis, mostly due to all the money wasted on its failed house building company, Homes for Lambeth. Given those facts, filling hundreds of empty homes should be a priority. Empty homes aren't mentioned in the report. The report states that Lambeth assured the regulator that the council supports residents to sustain their tenancies. Try telling that to Homes for Lambeth tenants who are currently receiving section 21 notices. The regulator also has a transparency standard, yet it's unsurprising there's no mention of the decision making by the Opaque Investment Committee chaired by the chief executive. Consultations relating to housing are engineered to fit the decisions that have already been made behind closed doors. Repairs are rarely completed in a timely manner, and I'm aware of many horrendous disrepair cases that have dragged on for years. I do want to say something positive, though, and I wish to pass on thanks from a woman and her family housed by Lambeth temporary housing team who are in horrendous, inappropriate conditions in Croydon. She and her family have finally been offered a home on a regeneration estate, and she has been very happy with the efforts of one of the officers who's been sorting out her situation and hopefully helping to move immediately. The only reason this is now getting sorted is because Rhea Patel, who is a Green Party Councillor in Croydon, knocked on her door and she flagged the situation to us. And thank you to Nicole as well for supporting this. There seems to be a disconnection though between housing officers and residents, especially those residents housed out of Boer. A secure tenancy on the estate would be more appropriate for this family, considering what they've been through. As we have heard this evening, there is no culture of learning lessons in Lambeth, and this must change urgently. Thank you so much. That's three minutes. Excellent. We didn't have any further witnesses, so I will open it up to questions from committee members. The only thing I would flag, given particularly that we've only got half an hour left, is that the issues raised by the first witness are something that we've previously and recently addressed at overview and scrutiny. So if we can focus questions as much as possible on the content of the report and the social housing regulator, that would be much appreciated. Adrian first? Two very small points. Do we think we ought to claim such credit for being CE2 or PE? It's some weaknesses in the landlord delivering the outcomes in the standards and improvements as needed. I think we should be a little more modest. The second one, there doesn't seem to be anything in the priorities about voids, and voids were mentioned here, and they're always a big issue. Turning around a void should be a very high priority. Danny? Yeah, I'm happy to stress again, Adrian, by no means complacent. I think it's a really positive outcome to the report. I welcome it. I think we should stress the fact that it is the best receivable in the broad so far, but equally stress the fact that I'm not saying, right, this will happen, go home, job done. We're absolutely not doing that. There's a lot of work still to do. I do think this provides the foundation for that work, points out the things we are getting right and also things we need to improve on. And those recommendations are things that were responded to in the report, opportunities to work on to make sure we have opportunity to improve the service. And on the voids strategy, it absolutely remains a priority. We recently set out a new action plan on that, and there'll be constant updates that I believe over the course of the next year. Thank you. Nicole? Thank you. I just want to pick up on the number of empty homes that we're hearing. It's still on Central Hill. Let's think about that. More about, there are still empty homes. So I think we've covered this before, but we have, we took a decision, I think it was January 23, the decision to update the voids strategy for the regeneration of states, which includes Central Hill. As the last 12 months, we have been turning around properties. I haven't got the figures. I'm happy to share them. I think the last one was 128 have been turned around. Obviously, they've been empty for a number of times. And people have mentioned they're often sitexed and secured and they've sat empty. So it does take time and investment, but we have invested and they're turning around. There are a lot of voids on the six regional states. We know that. We all know that. Because they were earmarked for demolition and people knew that. Can we not interrupt? Can we please not interrupt? No, no, no. I have to live on this. No, no, no, no, no. And there's no reason to spend so much money buying a house to board it up. It is criminal. There's a homelessness crisis. Why are houses being boarded up? This is Nicole. Just very concerned that we're hearing again and again. So it's been a number of years now. I'm hearing exactly the same, same story about what's going on in regeneration states. The number of voids are not actually being brought back into view. So it's really worrying that it's taking so long. The decision was taken a year ago. I understand. And as I've got that wrong, I'll go and double check. But it was January 24 was the decision to turn around the voids on the region states and use them for secure tenancies TA, which is what we've been doing. There are hundreds of them. I think we've completed one hundred twenty eight, as I said, Cheryl, double, double check that figure. It's probably changed since December as well and update it. It will absolutely take time. It is a priority, as Danny said. We're trying to do it as quickly as possible. We've got a dedicated team on those voids. We don't want those properties empty. We completely agree. We want secure tenants in those properties. And we want people that are in lightly paid for quality temporary accommodation in those properties whilst that's resolved. That's the decision that we took twelve months ago. You want secure tenants in them? Please compete. You've been to enough of these. You know, you can't interrupt. And can I can I ask a specific question? I mean, linked to the homes that are referred from witnesses that there are homes that are have been vacated with a plan to use them for kind of temporary accommodation and other such uses. And if the strategy to wait until they're all vacant and then move people in, why is why? Why are there why are some of them that appear ready to be used not being used? Or is what we've heard tonight sort of inaccurate? Essentially the strategy is that people are moving as soon as possible. There's been a number of new temporary accommodation residents that have moved into those properties. A number have been matched in the process of doing so. It's not the case that none have moved in. They moved in as quickly as possible and that couldn't happen this year. OK, thank you. Yes. Just want to know, you know, whether there's the ambition to do that. And I obviously I wouldn't dispute it because it's revenue lost having people in there. However, what's your ambition? What's your time frame that you set yourself to, you know, for a void? If we could have that to track and have that as a benchmark of like we're meeting X amount of voids are being resolved in this time frame, then at least we can see the improvement journey. So our target for voids turnaround, this is not specific to any states. And this here we're talking about homes in disrepair. It's a 30 day turnaround. So that's what we say is from key. So that needed improving. 12 months ago, 24 months ago, we were not meeting that target. We're now meeting that target with 29.8. This is published KPIs and we're happy to share with the committee. You're more than welcome to have the data and the data that sits behind it. I trust it. Thank you. And I think maybe that we can absolutely want to track the improvement journey. That's, you know, wherever you are now to be able to see that we will be on target to meeting the target on voids across the borough. I can share the KPI dashboard with the committee. I'm sorry, I didn't realise the committee didn't have that. So I'll make sure you've got that. There's 42 key indicators we look at. One of them absolutely is turnaround time, because we agree we want it to be as quickly as possible. We'd like it to be less than 30 days. We'd like to do it in 24 hours if we could, because we want tenants and homes. And yeah, there's nothing to gain. So I think it's important to say, and obviously this kind of response to this is, there absolutely are properties that will not meet 30 days. That is an average across the borough. We have voids on particular estates where there's capital works that are needed, where there's major works that are needed, where there's squatting, where there's an authorised document, where there's a dispute about tenants. On today, where the tenant is not very well, unfortunately, and has moved back in thinking that they still live. So there will always be exceptions, I guess is what I'm saying. And that's always a challenge. We need to qualify that. So we have to... It's in the data. It's in the data. We'll send it over. I was going to say, I thought that back in 2018, there was a policy that there shouldn't be, across the six states, there shouldn't be more than 100 temporary accommodation tenancies. But apparently that hit all the way up to about 249. So are you going to have that under control? What is the policy going to be on that for the future? Does that make sense? So back in 2018, it was supposed to be a cap of 100 temporary tenancies across six states. Apparently it hit 249. So the 2018 void strategy was, sorry, I'm trying to be succinct, was because at the point of 2018, these were active regeneration estates. We know that that was that part of that time of the journey. And so a maximum was set around empty homes. The decision that was taken, that we referenced, that was taken January 24, was viewed on the basis that we are in a completely different place on that regeneration journey since the Kerslake report and a reset as a council. I don't think we've set a target. What we've set is an ambition that we assess all of the homes on those estates, have as few empty homes as possible. I'm going to go and check the decision, but I think that's the case, that there isn't a target. We're talking about TA. Please can we stop interrupting, otherwise I would have to ask you. What temporary accommodation? Oh, apologies, I'm sorry. It was a cap of 100 that we were only temporary. I thought you were talking about the number of empty properties. So basically that's what I'm trying to establish. What is the next phase in terms of what that will be? Because I'm curious on these estates, is the ambition actually to get more secure tenancies or to expand the number of temporaries? So the decision in 2024 was that the back running estates would be used for temporary accommodation. Sorry, got it the wrong way around. Secure tenancies in the front running estates for temporary accommodation. And there is no limit now. There is no figure named in the decision that was taken last January. The whole estate could be full of temporary accommodation. It's very unlikely, theoretically. It's at its extreme. There's no cap for temporary accommodation. Whereas there was. It is because it is obviously the issue. There are challenges with this. If you if you have estates that are heavily populated with temporary, temporary based people, then it's it is a problem because you don't have that sort of thing. It's a more transient estate situation. So I'm just wondering why there's been that policy shift. You had this policy in 2018. It arguably wasn't a sensible policy to have. I think on that all I'd say is that what we want to happen is that we want the properties that we own on the estate to remain our properties. But we can't control that due to the right to buy legislation. What we have done over the past few years is try to buy some of those properties back. And in terms of the point you make about temporary accommodation more transient, well, that equally applies to short term private sector tenancies as well. So what we want to do is make sure we're maximising the use of the properties we earn on those estates. The people that need to use that property the most. And that's what the policies are trying to do. And as much as possible, as I say, we want to keep our own search of tenants. But hopefully we'll see some reforms to write to buy legislation in the next few years. Maybe we can come if there's a particular recommendation you want to think about, Andrew, over the next 15 minutes, then we can come back to that. That's OK. Adrian? Just sort of clarification, am I not right in thinking that fairly recently the policy of allocating turned round voids on the citizenry development estates has changed marginally between temporary accommodation and permanent tenants. And it's different on each estate and it's been modified because of the temporary accommodation issue. Is that the case? Well, what's the case? As I said before, the decision that was made last year was about how we treat properties that we've brought back on these estates. So the case in the past, when these were earmarked for a state regen and the plans in place were for them to regenerate, were we'd buy them back, keep them in short term use until the regen plans progressed. Obviously our typical decision was those plans and we're not committed to regional estates anymore. But we still have this situation where we have these properties that have been brought back. So regardless of the council, the best use of those properties to provide accommodation that's needed the most is to reallocate them to use as temporary accommodation. So that's the change in the decision and the approach. Does that answer your question, Councillor? OK, thank you. Nicole? I just ask why, if you think it's temporary accommodation, why not offer secure tenancies to those people who are doing it as temporary accommodation, why not offer secure tenancies and let them stay there a long time? I think my understanding, I think we cover this over in Scrutiny, so I just don't want to relitigate old ground. My understanding is that these are tenants that wouldn't qualify necessarily as the most highest need for social housing. So effectively, given the extent of the housing crisis, always really difficult decisions to make. And because they wouldn't necessarily qualify to be the top of the list for social housing, they therefore ask to go back into the private market and those homes are being reprioritised for the most needy in temporary accommodation. And I believe that's what we explored at OSC, is that correct? That's exactly what we did, yes. OK, so that's my understanding. Again, Nicole, if you want to think about recommendation around that, please do. Any other questions from members? OK, I'm going to move to recommendations then. I have noted down three, but I do know there might be a couple more that the members want to add. One is to kind of continue to provide updates on the voids action plan on homes that need to be renovated. Number two is to provide data on the timeline to move residents into voids with the average target of a 30 day turnaround. And my third one, but subject to you, Andrew, is whether you wanted to kind of ask for a detailed explanation on the policy shift around the proportion of TA properties on estates. Would that be helpful? That would be helpful, yes. Fantastic. OK. We also, you know, we've referred to Kerslake several times. Just how are we doing against those recommendations? That would be quite useful if it's a positive story, then that's great. OK, fantastic. Yeah. Are we happy with that? Sort of an update on where we are? Because it was specific, so. Progress against Kerslake recommendations. Nicole, did you want to? I don't. It's just not making a lot of sense to me to move people out of these estates and then put temporary residents in. Only that they're going to have to move again for other families to be there because I don't don't see how that actually enriches the life of the estate. OK, so it's about whether we can move TA families in. So we're not talking about the current residents, we're more talking about TA families. Absolutely. OK. I'm sure there are. So yes, maybe we could ask officers for kind of a more detailed explanation of of how we transition or how we seek to transition temporary accommodation families into more permanent housing. Happy with that? Yeah. The improvement. OK, brilliant. With that, I'm trying to write and speak at the same time, which is not going too well. Fantastic. So if we're happy with those recommendations. Thank you, everyone. And finally, we'll return to the work programme, which is item five in the published agenda pack from pages 51 to 76. Do members have any comments on the work programme? At this point, obviously, this is sort of the final meeting of this year's cycle of meetings. And so, you know, there'll be plenty of opportunities for those who stay on this committee and new members to kind of discuss future work programme. But do members want to kind of raise anything at this point? I'll give you a second, Adrian, if you're just having a quick look. Absolutely fine. Work programme isn't the same as the action monitoring log, is it? No comment. Fantastic. OK, well, then, if we can agree that the work programme and action monitoring log as it's there. But obviously, I've noted, Adrian, your comment right at the start about the actions from last meeting. Fantastic. OK. And to note that this is the last meeting of the subcommittee for this year. And so thank you, everyone. And that concludes the business call this evening. Good night. The action logs are incorrect.