This meeting was called following a request by five councillors to discuss the Housing Ombudsman Service's recent report on Camden Council. The Ombudsman's report is highly critical of Camden's Housing Repairs service. It makes a series of recommendations on how the service can be improved.

This article summarises what was scheduled to be discussed at this meeting. It is based on the publicly available agenda and report pack for the meeting. The information in these documents does not tell us anything about what was actually discussed or decided at the meeting.

Request for an Extraordinary Council Meeting

This meeting was called in response to a request by five councillors dated 6 January 2025: Councillors Tom Simon, Nancy Jirira, Linda Chung, Judy Dixey, and Matthew Kirk.

The request asked for an extraordinary meeting to discuss the Housing Ombudsman's recent special investigation into Camden's Housing Repairs Service. The Councillors' request argued that the findings of the special investigation should be a matter of grave concern for the council, particularly its findings on Camden's defensive complaints culture, the unacceptable length of time taken to carry out repairs and the impact of this on vulnerable residents.

The request also expressed concern about the planned date for discussing the Housing Ombudsman's report. Whilst Camden's constitution requires that an extraordinary meeting be held within 7 days of a request by five councillors being made, it does not stipulate how long the meeting should last, or what should be discussed. The councillors therefore argued that At present the intention is for this vitally important matter to be discussed at Housing Scrutiny on 25 February, three months after the Ombudsman released its report. In our view, this does not treat the issue with the urgency or the importance it deserves.

The councillors asked for the meeting to enable all councillors to come together to: 1) Examine the problems with the service, and the plans to improve it. 2) Debate the effectiveness of those plans. 3) Share and discuss ideas about how the council could do better.

The request recognised the challenging context for housing repairs in London, but argued that many other London councils face similar challenges and have not been subjected to the same criticism as Camden. We think Camden should aspire to have the best housing repairs service in London and believe an Extraordinary Meeting of the Council could provide the springboard for achieving such a standard.

The Housing Ombudsman's report

The Housing Ombudsman Service is a public body which looks at complaints about registered providers of social housing. It has the power to conduct special investigations where evidence exists that the provider in question may have wider issues than those related to one specific complaint.

The special investigation into Camden's Housing Repairs service was initiated after identifying that the London Borough of Camden had 10 findings of severe maladministration between 1 April 2023 and 16 October 2023 in cases involving repairs and/or complaint handling.

The report was published in November 2024 and is available on the Housing Ombudsman's website.

The report made thirteen recommendations to the council. The report pack provides a summary of these recommendations, and the action that was planned to have been taken to address them. The report pack describes how Camden has already started to implement a number of changes, and provides the following examples of this work:

• Resourcing to handle complaints both in the Housing Team and Central Complaints has been increased since the time covered by the report. A dedicated learning lead role has also been created to ensure continuous improvement.
• Internal Audit were invited in to review the complaints process in housing and produced a report including findings of which services were already working to implement when the Ombudsman report was published.
• For the first time, resident members of the oversight panel will conduct quality assurance checks on some of our Stage 1 responses.
• Also for the first time in Camden, we will review the current Property Services compensation policies with the oversight panel members. Our aim is to create a policy that accurately reflects the impact on residents.

Planned actions to improve Camden's Housing Repairs service

As well as outlining the Housing Ombudsman's criticisms of the service, and the steps already being taken to address them, the report pack outlines a number of additional, longer term steps that Camden plans to take to improve its Housing Repairs service.

The report describes how the context for housing repairs has become very financially challenging. For example, it explains that Nationally, the 2016-20 social rent cut alone reduced council landlords’ rent revenue by £2.4 billion over four years, amounting to an estimated £40 billion by 2042. and argues that Pressures are so acute that boroughs are budgeting for £170m of cuts to spending on supervision, management, maintenance and repairs over the next four years to balance their HRA accounts, focusing only on the most urgent repairs and delaying much-needed improvements. The report goes on to argue that this challenging national picture is particularly acute in Camden, because Camden has a lot of housing stock that is very expensive to maintain. It explains that Camden's housing stock has the following characteristics, which together contribute to a challenging financial context:

• Average home is 74 years old
• 188 High Rise Buildings (25% Homes)
• 10% Homes in Listed Buildings
• 19% Street Properties
• 33% Built pre-1945
• 20% with single glazed windows
• 35% with Energy Performance Certificates below C – meaning homes are inefficient and hard to heat

Notwithstanding these challenges, the report recognises that Camden must still provide a good service to residents. It outlines the council's vision for residents' experience of the repairs service:

Tenants will experience a reliable, simple, and relational repairs journey from reporting and tracking to resolution. When on the job, trades will be equipped with all the necessary skills -and information about the home and the tenant’s needs -to complete work efficiently and cost-effectively. Repairs carried out will be of high quality, with both in-house team and contractor partners maintaining our service standards and providing a seamless experience for residents. And where repairs or maintenance is outside our remit, we will work closely with the communities, empowering them to take action in their homes and estates.

The report states that Camden will seek to realise this vision in the longer term through its Housing Investment Strategy, which was scheduled to be discussed at the council's Cabinet meeting in January 2025, and through a Housing Transformation Programme, which was in the process of being developed.