Transcript

Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the meeting of the Homes and Community Screening Committee. I'm Councillor Jason Jackson, chairing of, I will be chairing tonight's meeting. Please note, we're not expecting any fire alarm tests this evening, so if the alarm is sounded, please do evacuate the building. This meeting is being broadcast live on the Council website. However, members of the public are unable to participate online. Please do turn on your microphone on when speaking, and remember to turn it off when you are finished. Please do speak clearly and directly into the microphone. I will start by asking fellow members and officers to introduce themselves, starting from my right. Councillor Councilor Mcgiln and Rollen Chancellor Ben Math connectors, Tarcomangan Ward Councilor Mick O'Sullivan, 3rd gerade 플国 Councilor wellbeing Councillor hen 问 Press Rào Dbia Good afternoon you all. My name is Ian Swift, Director of Housing and Operations. I'm Helena Greenhouse, Minister of Investment Aid. Evening, Michael Hall, Assistant Director of Property Services. Hi everybody, Matt West, Director of Property Services. Jed Young, Corporate Director of Homes and Neighbourhoods. Councillor John Wolfe, Executive Member for Homes and Neighbourhoods. Okay, also I, we have apologies from Graham, Councillor Graham, and our... Yes, I'm my Vice Chair, Anna McHughes, she's reporting. And also we have apologies from Rose. Just to note, we've got Councillor Claire Zamit here, observing, and a young man there, very keen on politics, just observing what we do. So he's been paying attention to what's been happening throughout the day. So he's observing as well for us. Sorry, I don't know if it's the right time to bite in with this. But Rose, my colleague, my co-op tea. Do we have any updates on that? Or anything like that? Because she's rung in or said anything? Yeah. Right now, I know there's just apologies. I think that's something that could happen. I'm happy to give her a call myself to find out, because she wasn't here last meeting as well. So well observed that. Thank you. Moving on, I would ask, is there any member that have anything to declare? No? Good. And also, minutes from previous meetings. Anything rising? Are we happy to agree? Agreed. Agreed. My report. Following from this meeting, we're going to be asked, I'm going to be expecting Stephen Chaplin, we'll be providing members of the committee a briefing on the strategic asset management plan. This will be done virtually. Date for that will be agreed. So we're going to ask members to be able to attend that. We're going to send the invites. The clerk will make sure that happens. Also, an informal meeting involving officers and the vice chair. And we'll be scheduled to draft recommendation ahead of the committee meeting on the 17th of March. Details will be provided by next week. This will be circulated to committee members. An opportunity for you to contribute ahead of the March meeting. The reason why we're doing it that way is just to gather some rough draft recommendation. We're still bringing it back to the committee for the final part of that and how that sort of shapes up. Yesterday, I had an opportunity with the company of the exec member, Councillor Chapman, and offices. I see the offices there at the back, actually, that gave us the opportunity to visit the Penham Community Centre. I've been told that a number of visits to other community centres is being arranged. So please, if members of the committee can attend, please, I would really encourage that you make provision to do that. Details on that will be sent out to everyone. In terms of order of business, we'll be moving the agenda slightly around. That's the accommodate presentation, a request that was made. I really appreciate Eleanor for coming to present for us. In that case, I will be moving to B3 as my first point of agenda. Without holding back, Eleanor, please, go ahead. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me. As I said, I'm Eleanor. I'm the Women's Rough Sleeping Policy Manager at SOLIS Women's Aid. SOLIS is a London-based organisation supporting women and girls experiencing and fleeing violence and abuse in London. We've been working on this particular project with Islington Services and with SOLIS and Single Harmless Project as well, SHP. We want to talk to you about the Women's Rough Sleeping Pilot Project that the teams have been working on over the past couple of months. I can't quite move on the slides, but I'll just... To give a bit of background, I want to talk about women's rough sleeping, which is very poorly understood, really, and poorly recognised nationally and regionally at a strategic level. So, unfortunately, a lot of strategies and commissioning at a national level kind of misses out women, unfortunately. And part of that is because in England we have a particular definition of rough sleeping that we use that informs a lot of services, a lot of commissioning, a lot of, and in particular the Women's Rough Sleeping, not the Women's Rough Sleeping, the annual rough sleeping snapshot count, which provides data used to kind of understand the numbers of people who are sleeping in particular areas and across the country. This definition doesn't include the experiences of women, unfortunately, so data and services using this definition struggle to represent women, and that has a knock-on impact on services that are commissioned and the way they're delivered as well. So that was just a bit of a summary. We'll probably skip through these, as I know I've written a lot of slides that we might not be able to cover. But if we just pause there, I'll just kind of move a bit more back then. Thank you. So, in England, rough sleeping is defined as including people being about to bed down, so looking like they're next to bedding or a sleeping bag and so on and looking like they're about to sleep outside, or already sleeping outside, for example, in doorways and parks, but also buildings that aren't meant for habitation, such as sheds and cars and car parks and all sorts of things like that. But for women, we mean something different by rough sleeping. It doesn't particularly look like sleeping outside on the street. It can do, but often women will find a few less visible ways to rough sleep before they get to that stage. So, women might be walking around all night, which is not very visible to people doing counts or on outreach services. They might sit in McDonald's and other places and any waiting rooms, places that are warm, feel safe, have people around so that they're not feeling as vulnerable to other people. And also in those places, they might make sure that they're not looking like they're rough sleeping so that they don't have to leave. So, those kind of experiences don't fall under the definition that we currently use for rough sleeping. And in the more detailed papers that I sent out for this session, a set of slides, I included statistics on prevalence of violence against women and girls, which I know is something that we're knowing increasingly about. But in brief, women who are rough sleeping almost universally experience some form of violence, often multiple forms of violence and from multiple people, including members of the public as well. So, what's the connection between all of this? Well, women we know experience violence and abuse. Women, therefore, make sure that they're less visible to people who could harm them. That also means that they're less visible from support and statistics, which aren't necessarily looking for them in those places. And then that statistical data is used for informing what services are commissioned and so on. And if women are missing from that data, they're also missing from the services and accommodation that are then provided. So, women continue to be at risk of violence because they're not getting the support that they need. In response to this, Solace and SHP and a number of other services we've developed the Women's Rough Sleeping Census in 2022, which is a way to collect more accurate and more in-depth information about women's rough sleeping and test practice as well. Islington have been at the forefront of a lot of that since we started it in 2022 and delivered it every single year. Since then, gathering important data and testing and practice with us to try and find the best way of reaching women. So, the action that has been taken since, as I say, has done the census for three years. But what they've been able to do now is not just kind of investigate and understand more about the women that are in the borough, but also looking at turning that data into action to improve services for women. So, using their built understanding of how many women are out there and also what they're experiencing, using that in their services to make sure that services can adapt and be more gender informed. So, we've done that through a six-month pilot project on women's rough sleeping, which has involved a huge range of services across Islington Council teams, Islington Outreach, as well as health teams, drug and alcohol services and women's teams as well. And so, what did we do in the pilot? We have used a gender informed definition of rough sleeping, so that those experiences that we know aren't included in the definition could be considered. So, for example, walking around the night. We removed the need to be verified as bedded down so someone didn't have to be seen sleeping outside on the street for teens to be able to effectively support them. We introduced gender informed practice and we increased the number of services that can identify women who are rough sleeping. So, again, it's much easier for women to access services. We've also, to help deliver the pilot, delivered monthly pilot meetings so that everyone, all the services could get together, share practice and learning and understanding and develop the pilot as we went. And the teams also decided themselves to deliver case call-over meetings for women specifically so they could discuss challenging cases in more detail, in particular because of the barriers to women, these cases weren't able to come up in other spaces in which they might ordinarily suffer. For example, meetings which talk about forums that address women bedded down, people who are found rough sleeping outside, and people who are experiencing violence, women who are experiencing multiple dispensers of rough sleeping often don't fall into either of those categories for discussion. So we've created our own format for being able to discuss and solve cases. The pilot's been really successful in Islington. It's been really driven by people on the ground, by practitioners and managers wanting to make that change and really knowing what they're talking about and wanting to learn and develop and make services more accessible for women. An important measure of the success of the pilot has been the change in collective support felt by practitioners in their ability to work with women. They felt more confident, they felt more able to do it. So just a couple of numbers that are included in this presentation pack, but just to highlight a couple of them. The pilot worked with 49 women over the six months. Some of those women would have been on the caseload regardless of the pilot or not, but the new approaches allowed us to find different ways of supporting them and offer support. Eight women within those 49 were supported through the pilot only because we were able to use the gender-informed definition. They wouldn't have fallen under the usual government definition, but they were rough sleeping and would have been mixed otherwise. And 21 of those 49 women couldn't be recorded on the database that we use in London, the Combined Homeless Information Network chain. So that means that they would be much less effectively supported, wouldn't have been able to, wouldn't necessarily have been on the outreach team's radar, so they wouldn't have known that they were there to support them. But through the pilot we were able to work with them and record details about them that we couldn't put on the London database. The outcomes really is that there's been a wider range of services for women to present to. That's also included, for example, being able to go to a women's drop-in at the drug and alcohol service and then be connected in through that to the outreach team. Identify and find more women because we've expanded that definition and being able to find those women who are really at risk and who we might find further down the line months or years later but finding them earlier. Being able to house more women, more substantially advocate for them because we've got better understanding of what's going on for them, what are the risks to them. And speeding up processes to get women into accommodation as well. And what's been really positive to see as I've supported the teams through the pilot is the really effective partnership working and how well they've worked together as teams to make sure that they can get out to women more quickly, so that they're working together so that they can share information effectively and safely to improve support. So just finally, I can answer any questions, but just to summarize, the Islington teams have worked really hard in the census every year and have wanted to and driven this pilot really on top of their day-to-day work and it's been such a collaborative effort which is always fantastic to see. Islington Council has really supported the census wider London outcomes and recommendations that we've had as well as the national recommendations and we want to write a report on all this work so that we can share the best practice and encourage others to do it as well and cement the learning that we've found through the pilot as well. Unfortunately, it can't all be done through the improved support for women everywhere. We need to make sure that women are included in higher-up strategic efforts including the current writing of the Rough Seating Plan of Action by the London Mayor and also the national homelessness strategy that's being written at the moment and we really need help to support and champion this work and advocate with people writing that so that we know that we're not going to have to keep fighting for adapting on the ground what's happening for women and that it's included in those strategies that might be in place for 10 years and so on. We don't have to keep fighting from the bottom to argue the place for women. That comes from the top and services are supported to provide the support they wanted for women to leave for sleeping. Thank you very much for having me and listening to me. Thank you. Thank you so much. I will then open up for members to ask questions. Start with Councillor Tobinock. Thanks so much for the presentation. Really important piece of work and I'm really pleased to hear that Islington's been sort of leading the way in this regard working with other organisations. I'm very mindful that we're talking about a six month pilot so a bit of a question is what do we need to do as a borough to embed and build on this practice? And also part B of a question to Ian if I may, what activity is happening at a senior strategic policy level to embed this practice? I mean it's not so reliant on individual members of staff who are really committed to it and it's actually embedded across all of our work. So really positively I know that this is something that we've had a review and kind of wash up meeting and teams really want to carry on this work and so they have thought of several ways that they can make this long term practice whoever the staff are so kind of creating protocols to continue and embed this working which is great. So we're going to support them to do that but they've already built up so much learning to pass on to each other. They're going to keep doing the case call over and they work together which is really positive. Thanks for the question Councillor. So in terms of what Islington Council is doing, we share the slides that you've got in front of you with the Ministry of Housing, Community Local Government and meeting them tomorrow to have a discussion about additionality of funding. Because funding is key to this in terms of Solace Women's Aid as well as for Islington Council. Because as Ellie said, a lot of this is done on top of what we're already doing rather than in the additionality of people. We do realise it does need a resource coming in. Ministry of Housing are very keen to meet with us. Tomorrow in the office we're going to have a discussion with them. In terms of the commitment from housing operations, I think Ellie has already said, it's 100% commitment from me and my team. There's no more commitment in London more than what is in terms of providing to Solace Women's Aid in terms of this work. We truthfully believe that one person sleeping rough is one person too many, as we discussed last time. This is why Ellie is here today, because of the challenge that you gave us last time in terms of the number of rough sleeping and women and vulnerable people. Hence this was an opportunity for Ellie to come to demonstrate the brilliant work that Solace Women's Aid is doing. Thank you. Thank you. Councillor Metcrow again. Councillor Metcrow again. Councillor Metcrow again. I just wondered if organisations like churches and other organisations have been involved or approached to sort of help out, if you like, on young women and girls in the homeless situation. I wonder as well, how many of our outreach workers approach these young people and help in desperate need? Yeah, so we've, an important part of the women's rural sleeping work that we do in the census and this pilot project is expanding the organisations that are involved, because we know that people might go to a church, as you say, or they might go to a food bank or a soup kitchen. And so we've tried to involve as wide a range of services like that as we can. So we've had kind of two levels of involvement and wider involvement, these monthly meetings that we've had to make sure that we're sharing practice, offering people the chance to get involved and so on. And that's involved soup kitchens, it's involved churches where possible. Not everyone's able to come every time, but we try and make that group really big. And that builds year on year with the census as well. So we had a really good group, a really wide range of services taking part in the pilot to different degrees. And then we had a smaller group of services that was kind of doing that in depth work with women themselves. And that involved outreach teams, it involved council, rough sleeping teams, it involved park guard, for example. The health teams and drug and alcohol teams have been really crucial to this work, definitely. And the more, we've seen that the more joint outreach shifts that are happening, the better support we're able to get to people. And the quicker that teams are able to respond between each other as well by helping to share some of that load. I really strongly believe that for outreach teams to help people who are rough sleeping, they don't have to have that first contact. That can come from all sorts of specialist services that we have doing a great job and who people might actually trust and have that initial relationship as well. So that kind of collaboration has been really beneficial. Thank you. Councillor Byrne Brinkett. Yeah, I can see, I mean, fantastic you're doing well. And it is a hidden problem that those councillors do must pick up on. My question is, first of all to you, obviously, with Islington. Obviously, Women's Refuge, House of Drayton Park, that's of women and great people fleeing domestic violence. Would they be categorised under this? Because they're actually housed. Where do they fit into that? That would be your question to you. And then to Ian, mothers that are fleeing domestic violence have got temporary housing. But generally the children are in schools in Islington. So we do our best efforts. But I've had a few cases where the mother is actually travelling in for miles away now. How best do we link up that with rough sleeping? Because obviously they've had to leave the home. How do we deal with that and try and make that a bit more swift? So we've, in the work that I do on the census and this work, we've gone quite specifically on women who roughly think there are really specific gaps and systemic barriers to their working. So we're kind of looking at a group who aren't included either in the bulk pathways, like refuge provision and so on, probably won't get priority need or might never approach the council to ask for that. And who aren't being seen by street outreach teams as well. So people kind of really in the middle of that who are falling between services. And so, I'm really sorry I forgot the question. How do women that are obviously fleeing violence, are in refuge, how are they categorised? Because obviously they are homeless because they've only got a short period of time in the refuge, probably a month or three months. What happens to that? Obviously you've got services to pick that up, but would they be deemed as rough sleepers as well? Yeah, so what we define as women who are rough sleeping is women who don't have anywhere safe to go at night. So women who do have accommodation, even if it's not safe, if they are using that accommodation, we'd count that as kind of homelessness rather than rough sleeping. But what we do include is women who might be in any sort of accommodation who don't feel safe to use it and are out rough sleeping part of the time or all of the time because they can't go back to that accommodation. So that's slightly broader because one of the examples we found was an 85-year-old woman who had accommodation but the team were able to investigate a bit further and find out that she wasn't safe there, she couldn't stay there. We've had several women in those situations where people have been cuckooed and so on, and so on the face of it they look like they're housed but actually they can't use that accommodation so they really need that support. They end up losing it because they never stay there or it just deteriorates until they just never stay there and they're not getting the support they need because it doesn't look like they're rough sleeping but actually they are. Thank you. Thank you. I'll take... Ian, sorry, please. Go ahead. I was hoping you was going to go across. So to answer your question is that the rough sleeping scheme that was opened a couple of years ago has a wing within that for women and that is secure etc. for women sleeping on the streets. We're opening another scheme shortly, around about June time, of 19 flats and some of those will be for women who are sleeping rough on the streets and that's really positive, if I'm honest with you, with trauma informed support provided by SHP, likely to be providing that contract. With regards to women fleeing domestic abuse, approaching Islington Council with children, you're right. 50% of all temporary accommodation households are now living in Islington. 45% in neighbouring boroughs and 5% elsewhere. Some women fleeing domestic abuse do not feel safe in North London and we move them further afield. But that's by the choice of the woman to feel safe in an environment that she feels safe and not where we think she'll be safe. So we do move people away. You are correct that, you know, the homelessness crisis is increasing, the financial crisis is increasing. This council is receiving more homeless applications than we've ever had. Our increase is greater than most of the London councils. And the problem that the council has got is it doesn't have the stock in the borough to rehouse people and the cost of rehousing people is increasing. As members know from last time, we've got a £5.2 million over spending temporary accommodation. So we will probably be moving people further afield, which we'll acknowledge. For those people that want to bring their children back into school, we'll have an educational impairment on that education, health, community, etc. But the council somehow or other has got to balance its budget. It can't go into a position like Newham, where, you know, £42 million overspent in temporary accommodation section 114. We've got to have a policy that's human, but is also empathetic, but also looks at the council's policies in terms of finances. Thank you. Just as a mindful of time, there's an agenda. Councillor Mick Sullivan. Do you liaise with streets kitchen, pick up women, and especially in the early stages of homelessness, when it can sort of have the most impact? And just to follow up with your explanation, Ian, do you look at taking possession of proceedings against the perpetrators of domestic violence? If the victim has to move, the victim and her children have to move out, it would seem to me that it would be an idea to take, you know, perpetrator, I don't know which particular grounds for eviction you have, but to regain possession of that property and let it out to new tenants if you can't necessarily reinstall the victim in the premises. So to answer your first question, we work very effectively in close partnership with John at Streets Kitchen. He's always singing the praises of Islington Council at the Homestead Forum and around. So to answer that, yes, effective partnership on a daily basis. With regards to possession cases against perpetrators, we would consider that were it safe to do so and were the person fleeing domestic abuse believes that they would be safe if we proceed with the eviction. I've got to be honest with you, a lot of people fleeing domestic abuse don't feel safe taking possession of the previous property in case the person comes looking for them when they're rehoused innocent and no other ways. But we truthfully believe that domestic abuse is appalling and we want to eliminate it like we want to eliminate them sleeping. The difficulty the council's got is we've got to work within a legislative framework but also be mindful of what the person fleeing domestic abuse wants us to do either from a same-sex relationship, male, female or whatever. Thank you. Yeah, that answered a lot of the questions I was going to ask. Can you see this crisis, I can see this crisis getting worse with the way the government's going at the moment and these ladies, women, do you give them counselling for drink and drugs and substance abuses and try and help them along that way as well? Yeah, so that's what's great about having so many services involved and there are two services that can provide that support, I believe, in Islington who are working with us and they've got a women's drop-in at Better Lives so that women can go directly there. Sometimes women might feel more comfortable going there than, for example, to the outreach service. So that's really important and I think one of the things that's really important to say with all of this is that best practice can only achieve so much. The best practice and best therapeutic services can only do so much if there's nothing to give someone as Ian was saying, that funding needs to be there because you can't effectively support someone to recover from addiction or alcohol and substance use if there's no suitable and safe accommodation for them to be able to go into and if we don't have the funding to be able to access that. Thank you. Just one question from me. Thank you. More to do with duplication of data with other services in the council and sort of training to council offices to be, to actually, because some of the people you probably have recorded probably are known to the council one way or the other. Are we doing anything internally to make sure that everyone's aware of what this support? I'm hoping we can find a way to keep it going. And obviously to avoid duplication. So someone has turned over 222 and didn't get the help before, now meets the team. What happens? Do we, knowing there are some data that are blacked out, how do we get to check to actually inform ourselves of better improvement of our services? Ian might be able to talk more on the specifics, but I know that the particular setup in Islington means that there's a lot of back and forth between the council services, between the council outreach, rural sleeping services and the housing department. As well as the outreach teams that exist. So I have seen when we're doing these case meetings that there's an effort to get all the information that we can. Some of the women we're talking about simply won't be people who will go to housing options that have not had a bad experience in the past. So there might only be some crossover. One thing that I would say is that there's currently a, I'm not sure if Islington are piloting it yet, there's a rough sleeping risk assessment tool that's coming out that I think we think needs to be much more gender informed. That's being rolled out by the government and piloted by the government. We don't think that that is going to be effective in risk assessing women's rough sleeping needs. But our teams that have taken part in this pilot do have the expertise to be able to feed into that. And I think they'd be better teams in the housing department who might meet them. Again, I think it's another great piece of work, although it's piloted. So Ian, just directly to you so that I can move on to the next gender. Can we have you beyond that six? We're committed to this forever, as far as we're concerned. We're trying to convince the government to give us more money to embed this as practice, not just in Islington, but across London. We may be leading it, but this needs to be repeated in other boroughs as well, not just Islington. Thank you so much. Thank you, Eleanor, for coming to present. Thank you. Right. Refer back to the agenda B1. Can I...we have... This is actually our main screening review for Uninflated Community Centre. There's a presentation from Barnett Council. Thank you so much for coming down to present for us. Members have seen your...some of your slides. So if we can just...high level. I'm sure members probably have some questions or any prompt areas that you want to highlight. That would be fantastic. Thank you so much. Good evening, everyone. Sal Waheed, Head of Property and Portfolio Management at the London Borough of Barnett. And tonight I'll just be going over what we've been doing at Barnett with our community assets in relation to leasing them to community groups. So Barnett has 61 community assets and they're occupied by faith, arts, culture groups, as well as theatres and sports clubs. So Barnett's recently adopted a new approach when granting leases on our community assets. Our community assets essentially provide a valuable space for community groups and the wider residents of Barnett Council. And Barnett's introduction of a new system will measure the sustainable upkeep of our assets, as well as delivering a fairer and more transparent approach when it comes to the allocation of the assets to community groups. The main items that the new process sort of picks up on is introducing a service charge in leases and that will tackle sort of major repairs to do with the assets. The establishment of a member-led community panel when assessing a community group which puts itself forward for taking an asset. And also an introduction of an asset matrix which would calculate the social impact and the financial health of the tenants organisation. Effectively, the approach and the aim of the process is to ensure Barnett's assets are managed properly. Just on the next slide, we have just some images of our assets. Assets to the top left is a sports club in West Hendon. To the right is a community centre which was built in 2019 in East Finchley. We've got the Bored Theatre which is in High Barnet and in the middle we've got a community centre in Hendon and just to the right of that a community centre in Edgware. So guiding principles around our new process is transparency and a consistent approach, delivering value through activities and improving outcomes for our residents, better monitoring, impact reporting, a fairer distribution of our assets and the asset to be a benefit for the community and not as an income generator and maximising our assets. So just touching on the service charge. So the main reason for the service charge historically we've granted leases which would be full repairing leases. These leases make the tenant responsible for all of the repairs right from the roof, right the way down for structural repairs to redecorating. What we've faced, the challenges that we've faced is groups, they're great at delivering what they do for our residents. However, when it comes to maintaining the assets, in particular major parts of the assets to the structure, they're not prepared for that, they're not equipped for that and they often would come back to us despite it being their responsibility in the lease for help and for assistance to carry out repairs. And our issue is that we haven't budgeted for it, but to save the asset we do step in and we carry out the repairs to help them. The service charge would cover items such as windows, structural repairs, roofs, foundations, plant upgrades such as boilers, electricals and air conditioning units for example and also damp issues in the property. The service charges would be implemented in new leases going forward and when there's a renewal of a lease or a rent review in a lease then we would be approaching the community tenant to negotiate and to include this within their lease. So just to touch on what the service charge could potentially look like, it would be based on the value, the rental value of the asset. In Barnet we've got an average rent of £25,000 and the table that's been displayed shows you what that would look like in terms of a percentage. Barnets opted to go for 10% factoring in that they are community groups and they survive on donations and grants and to not make it overly burdensome for them. The allocation of assets. When we have an asset which is available which we bring to the market for community use once a proposal is submitted we would look at that proposal, a panel would look at it which would be member-led. We would be looking at that proposal against the council priorities which is the table to the left and we would be scoring it using the chart which is to the right. Across Barnet we are looking at rationalising our estate and that includes community assets. We have undertaken work and engagement with community groups already and we are looking at groups who are not using their current assets to the maximum potential where they are mainly using them maybe odd days a week, few evenings and we are trying to get groups to collaborate with one another working together, placing groups in two or more groups in one building and potentially giving us back assets to either repurpose or re-utilise or offer to other groups that would use them. And my final slide is 154 Station Road. This was a case study where we did just that. We had two charity groups who were coming in their separate buildings different days. We worked with them to come together to occupy one building. The way we did that we granted one charity a lease in addition they would grant the other charity a sublease and they would share the space together. This allowed Barnet to repurpose their other buildings one of which we managed to put back to the market and gain a market rent for to generate new revenue for the council. And that brings me to the end but I am open for questions if you have any. Thank you so much. Amber's question? Thank you for the presentation. Pretty interesting to hear. I wonder if you could just say a bit more about the management model for community centres specifically. Am I to take it from your presentation that most of the assets are sublet or leased to community organisations to run entirely or are there other models within the portfolio of assets? So most of the assets are leased. They are leased to community groups. And that's the model that Barnet's adopted. I think there are some probably longer groups that have been established for a number of years that may be on different types of tenancies that either would be a tenancy at will, that there would be some sort of tenancy that would be documenting their occupation. Yes. Councillor, you start first and then we're going our way. Thank you, Chair. I just want to ask, currently you said you've got 61 community assets. Out of the 61, how many are actually leased out and what is your average rental income from that? And also, if you can explain or maybe try and advise that if it's a voluntary organisation that relies upon donations, how it's going to be feasible for them to pay a rent and also a service charge? Thank you. So the vast majority of our assets, I believe they are actually at Peppercorn. So when they were granted a lease or granted a tenancy, it was documented at Peppercorn or at a very nominal amount. We're hoping by introducing this, and if we go for the sort of, using the average rent of £25,000 and 10%, £2,500, that will outweigh the benefits for them potentially having to spend a lot more money doing major repairs further down the line. The other question was, in terms of rental-wise, how many of them are currently leased out? I believe we have around about, the vast majority of them leased out. I think only two of them are remaining at the moment that aren't leased out, and that is due to, because they need repairs to be done to occupy them. I'll take just one follow-up. Thank you. So, you said that there's only like two that maybe have not been leased out. What are the terms for your leases? And if there were previous tenants there who had a Peppercorn rent, when you advised them of their rent increase, did they find it difficult to pay? And just to turn to the lease, how long they are? So, the previous process that we used, we used a previous tool called CBAP, Community Benefit Assessment Tool. That particular tool, we found issues with it where it wouldn't, there wasn't transparency within that tool. That tool, it determined the discount. So, every time there was a review, part of the leases, which on that scheme, the leases would be for 25 years, with a break clause every five years, to give the ability to either the council to end that lease, or for the tenant to end that lease, or for the tenant to end the lease. On the vast majority of the cases, on the review, the rent was still determined at zero once they went through that Community Benefit Assessment Tool. Does that answer your question? More or less, it's just basically, if you've got someone in there already, how difficult is it going to get them out if they don't want to pay the rent that you're asking for? So, it would be again, done on the assessment, so that would be based on what they're delivering. If they are unable to meet the rent, then we're not, the council as a whole, we recognise what community groups do. So, we'd be probably coming to a workable solution with them. Thank you. Councillor Nick O'Sullivan, thank you. How do you vet the community, or you've mentioned these various tools, but how do you vet the community groups, like in terms of their membership, their board, financial viability, sustainability of the organisations, because sometimes these things can go belly up. Do you have any plans or processes in place when an organisation gets into trouble, and when you need to sort of rescue deposit? So, we do have a dedicated communities team that are separate from the estates team, but we work together and in conjunction. They engage with all of the community groups across Barnet, especially more so with the ones that also are occupying our assets, and they would be engaging with them. So, once they submit their proposals, it would be based on that, and that would have to be done with proof of funding, if they've got funding or grants or so on, and what they're going to be also offering. We would also be putting what they're offering within their lease, so they'd have to be offering just that, for them to be qualifying for that property. Just a very quick question. Do you look at, you're charging a service charge, do you look at ways that you can help groups reduce their running costs, for instance, you know, solar panels on roofs, insulation, possibly even using water butts, etc., etc., to cut down the other utility bills that organisations have? Yes, so we've got sustainability teams, and we as the Council are getting funding for our own buildings. So, we're in Barnet, we've got fundings, and we've just recently done PVs across roofs of buildings, libraries, and community centres. Tiling Road, the one that I showed you, needs, that one's got PV panels on it, and we had funding for that. So, we are working with that across our assets, even if they're leased. We're applying for it to try and get that in, and trying to make the building sustainable. Thank you. Councillor Bennberg-Murdy. Right, so it's kind of a couple of questions, but the first one I noticed that you were talking about, under your terms of your lease, and it's a lease, you were talking about handing over the responsibility for structural works to community groups, which I find could be extremely expensive, especially, you know, types of structural stuff. And how does that kind of pan out in a lease? Because generally, structural stuff is the landlord's responsibility. Second of all, how many of these assets are on actual estates? So, like, you know, a community hall on an estate, they looked like they were nice houses and built up in the sports centres, but what about community centres on estates? How many do you have in them? So, just to answer the first question, historically, we're given full repair and insuring leases, which hands the structural responsibilities to the tenants, and that's what we want to take away from them. And have, sit that ownership with the council, and that's what the service charge would pay towards. So, the service charge, it would be paid by all, the way we see it working, would be paid by all tenants, all community tenants, so all 61 potentially. That money would be paid into a central pot. That pot of money would then be used when structural repairs come up at various different properties, and we would undertake that repairs using our teams, using our building surveying colleagues who would oversee that. It's a service charge, but for that, they've taken away the liability of them having that issue. Councilor Baird, do you want to ask officially? Because your mic is not right. Okay. You don't have to actually ask you the question, I was saying it's quite interesting, and it actually, it's, yeah. But no, I'm just asking about the community groups and the estates, which is the more important one. So, the community groups on estates, we've got a number of community groups that, and community buildings. One of the ones that was on the picture, that's actually based in an estate. In fact, I think two of them were based in estates, but we do, we do have them. I didn't put them all on for the business, but we do have them. I don't have the numbers with me, but we do have, where there's estates, there are community buildings that were traditionally built like that, as a hub for that. And we're carrying on doing that when we do do regeneration work in Barnet. That's one of the things that our planners are quite keen on, to keep community hubs there. Okay, I've actually worked on a few of your estates in Barnet. Just quickly, so they are run for tenants? When you say community groups, they're tenants and residents groups? Or are they specific faith groups or something out of the community? Are they actually run for the residents of that community? So it's a real mix. It's a real mix. The property itself, that would be run by an organisation. And within that organisation, we would police and our community engagement team would be policing that community group. And within the lease, we would have clauses that they need to let out to other groups. So if there are issues, we would generally tackle that under the lease, under a breach. Thank you. Finish down, Councillor Ben? Yeah. Okay, great. Thank you. Dean, please. Just to back up, Mr. McMurdy. Structural, you usually get insurance for that, the whole structure. You wouldn't get that on a lease that you would lease out like a normal flat or a normal house. That would have to be something totally separate, because the main costs could run into millions, never mind 5,000, this, that and the other. And on your percentages on your annual rent, you've got a footnote here which says, repairs on average cost more than five grand. So you must have to charge everybody five grand or more. You couldn't charge them two and a half on 3,750. You'd have to charge them 5,000 if the works are costing 5,000 on average. Could you alliterate on that? Yeah. In regards to your first question regarding insurance, you're quite right. If we choose to insure it ourselves, which nine times out of ten, we would do. We would keep that. It wouldn't be cheap, unfortunately, because our policy access is quite expensive. So it depends what the issue is with the property. And our policy is, near enough, 100,000 for a claim. So we would have to weigh out what would actually be cheaper, whether we pay that policy, pay the access. That's the word there. That's the word there. But pay the excess, or we carry out the repairs. The 5,000 pounds, that's on an average taken from the last two years. So what the idea would be is that the whole 61 properties would pay into a central pot. So every single year, we'd be collecting on around just about 150,000. And that would stay in that pot. That pot would build up. We would undertake repair works as of when it would be needed, which would be subject to a survey. Sorry, that's not what it says. That's not what it says. I'm happy for us to please let's bear in mind. This is our guest telling us what happened. They're not one of our in-house that we can hammer out. So thank you so much. We're very good at doing this over here. I'll come back to you if you really need to, if you have to follow up. Okay. Councillor Mee. It just seems a bit outsourced to me. I just wonder that the responsibility of the council, I mean, I think Heslund run a completely different model. You know, community centres are there for the community. I just feel it's a bit, I don't know, I'm trying to think of a word, arm's length would be a polite word. You know, I mean, pulling on from Councillor McMurdy, you know, community centres are there for the community, whether they're on estates or otherwise. I just, I mean, how many community centres are directly run by the council? So we don't have any community care centres that are actually run by the council. But as I say, we do have a community engagement team and the lease would police that, would police what that community centre is actually going to be delivering. That would be part of the lease. So if they were to shy away from that, then it does give opportunity for Barnet to either break the lease or take them up from a different way, which would probably be breach of governance. Thank you. I've got two questions. First one is, do you find a repeat of lease to maybe the same organisations that have several, several community centres? For example, do you have, you know, maybe a charity organisation that has maybe three or four or five on your books? And how are you avoiding some sort of like a monopoly based on the fact that smaller niche groups, community groups, tenant associations might not be able to get into such a contractual agreement? So I'm just wondering, is there thinking around that? And how are you thinking about those of a smaller housing associations groups in terms of accessing and using this space? So we don't have groups that one group that would occupy more than one community centres. And I think we purposely try not to do that. We'd like to have a sort of a variety of different groups providing different facilities across our community assets. And with the smaller groups, then again, we've got community groups that would engage with them. And they'd be open to make a bid. And again, it's not, our properties are not, and community properties specifically, they're not there for, to generate income, they're to generate a service to the community. And that's what they would be scored against, as you saw in the scoring model. So, my second, thank you so much for that. My second question is around the actual community and engaging in the space. And I'm sure with it across some community centres, people don't engage, don't use it. Is it the work of whoever's running the list to engage with the community? How does the council play a role in actual use for community, actual use of a community, meaning residents living next to you that are actually using this space? What's the council's role in that, outside of whatever charity or organisation that are using it? So, that probably would be down to, again, our communities, if we would engage with that community. And if it's on an estate, they would engage with the estate. If it's the estates which are managed by our arms and sort of repairs company Barnet Homes, they would also have a community and resident engagement forum, which they would engage with them residents to bring them into the community to find out what their needs are and what they would like to see. Thank you. I'm actually inclined to ask our offices, I see a couple of people around, do we have anything to feed into these or questions? I'm actually looking at, I've got two members of offices that are sort of fits on this area. Do you have a question? I'm inclined to go against my thing to get a question from your team because I don't know if you've met them before. So, we just wanted to highlight what Sal just finished with there, that they do have a separate model for the Homes for Barnet community centres, but we really wanted to bring something that was more reflective of the commercial buildings that are designated for community use because it's helpful in terms of how that feeds into other types of spaces that the council owns across the borough. And there was something else I was going to say that's just fine. There are some similarities in processes that we have run here to let premises in historic situations where we have scored on how organisations meet council priorities and things like that. And that's definitely something that we think works really well and that we want to factor into the review as we move forward. Is there anything else about that? Okay, thank you. I've got the director, corporate director here. So, do you, I don't know if you're feeding in a question, and then I will move from this agenda. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. And I'd like to thank Sal for his detailed presentation and taking the questions. So, I guess really just wanted to sort of bring this together in terms of what's been presented tonight, but also equally at previous scrutiny meetings, what's been brought in terms of witness evidence as well to yourselves. So, you will have seen the Bromley by Bow presentation at the last meeting, which I hope members found really interesting as well as the Barnet one today. We've also brought forward VCS managed centres. So, you heard from Brickboats and Hilldrop. We've also brought forward council managed centres as well to provide you with that information and volunteer committee managed centres as well. So, really just to kind of bring this together in terms of the reasons for this is so that the committee could see lots of different options of different ways of managing community assets, both from a management perspective but equally a running perspective, and also, you know, how communities are involved as well. So, I think really what I would be just... And obviously, Chair, you mentioned that one visit has taken place so far at one of our community centres and there are more planned, would provide you sufficient detail to be able to consider all of that evidence and be able to have those conversations with officers moving forward as well. So, really, just if there's any further questions on any of those models that you've seen previously or anything that you would like to sort of see or explore further, then happy to take any of that detail, officers and myself, as well. Thank you. I was pretending I didn't see Councillor Ilker's hand, but I'm happy to take a brief one. Thank you. Thank you. I just want to know whether we're just talking about... When we're talking about the community assets, are we also talking about our commercial assets that we've got, or is it just the community centres that we're talking about? I can actually answer that. We're looking at just the community centres. There is another piece of work asset stuff that is going on. However, I think at the beginning of the starting point of my meeting, I did mention that we are going to have... We're going to have an online meeting to sort of look at that particular piece of work, in connection with a community centre. So, we can go a little bit more question around that. So, dates of that will be sent across. So, not the commercial side of it, as I'm afraid. We're fully focused on community in here. With that, I'm happy to bring this particular agenda today. Thank you so much for coming, and we really appreciate your time. And if members have any questions, are you minded for us to send some questions to you, and you can... Thank you so much. Fine. Great. Thank you so much. Okay, great. Right. Let's move to the next agenda. B2. B2. B2. B2. B2. B2. B2. B2. B2. A2. B2. B2. B2. B2. B2. B2. B2. B2. B3. B2. B3. B4. B2. B2. B2. B2. B2. B2. B3. assume that we've seen this thank you so much it wasn't we don't like too much stuff, that's not relevant so with that I'm happy for you to go to a high level again I'm sure members have questions already ready for you, thank you thank you, welcome everyone I'll quickly just do a quick brief because I think everyone's seen the papers the report was to clarify responsive repair services, how we're utilising external contractors and agency staff some of the things we're recommending is we're going to continue to monitor our agency numbers and contractor delivery to ensure that we've been cost effective in protecting our budget we're always going to review how we do works with our contractors and we'll always try and bring works back in house the report does show the works that contractors do and also what we've brought back in house since we've been in DLO we'll continue our current recruitment drive it's really important that we have staff on a permanent basis and there's benefits for that which is seen in the report also we're also looking at our over-establishment and that was due to the damper mould and increase in works I think it's just worth noting though that as a repair service we're always going to have the need for contractors and we'll always have the need for agency staff it does give us that bit of flexibility and also make sure as we cover covers all work and just finally some of the things we have in place already we already are monitoring our agency and contractor spend on a monthly basis we'll continue the recruitment drive one of the areas that we were struggling with is around our surveyors and now we've gone up to the market and corrected those grades and made them more competitive we are looking at a reorg early on this year for the repair service to try to perm some areas up and deliver the service more efficiently and more effectively and also with our contractors we only continue monitoring them and looking at new technology to see if there's different ways we can deliver the service that's sort of a snapshot of the report so yeah any questions or yes I see your questions is it okay if I can go go round right councillor Toby North please thanks a couple of quick questions for me hopefully firstly in terms of those 15 contractors roughly how many staff are engaged as part of that those contracts useful to understand I recognise that might be a bit of a challenge if it's dynamic but just generally and second question and then we can move on could you just explain a bit more the relationship between agency staff and apprenticeships it was referenced in the report but I didn't quite understand it so just to clarify is it numbers of contractors and the volume of staff and so obviously we've got numbers for staff who are directly employed by the service and then it's 15 contractors but as far as I know that could be thousands of staff working on those contracts I'd have to come back on that because it will vary you know some of the contractors will have a larger pool and others will have a smaller one but I can come back to you on those numbers regarding agency can I sorry I want to probe a little bit on that you could give us a rough idea are this large I think the question was just to improve there I think the question was leading to 15 you know are there 15 of an average of 50 10 100 workforce or not I guess that's where I was trying to get I mean I would say we're looking at max a dozen people on one of those firms so the numbers are not going to equate to you know our staff yeah yeah I'm just a couple secondly the agency staff this is where we're going to recruitment service who are providing our staff for a period of time that we need to fill space until we can make those permanently our apprentice staff staff that we're bringing in that's local apprentices within the borough that we're bringing into the service training them at the end of their apprenticeship whether it be an electrical a plumber where we offering them a job job interview and bringing them onto the service as a permanent member they will get preference obviously over any agency staff you know that's our future that's what we invest in Councillor Mick Kilgain do you have a question or we go straight to that okay go on Ben that's your time sorry how many questions I'll let you to have two please so then we'll come back right so on our legal responsibilities and implications I mean I've had I've had I've had horror stories obviously not in my world thank God recently on on housing stock and where are we with the fact that we're repairs and the two questions are in one here sending the wrong person to the repairs and and not really fixing the repairs for example major flooding and obviously ruining all their ruin ruin the house and how how are we dealing with that and then the last question sorry I know that's free what happens when I picked up some work recently when the person can't live in the flat how does that work within within the departments into departments so obviously we've got to go into the repair that the person is so ill that they couldn't live in the flat so we have to get them out so how quickly are we linking in with the other other services to get these repairs up and running I'll try to cover them I think Matt's going to pick up the last one so firstly with the sending the wrong operative I mean that's something we work a lot on we have a script at the front end of our call so we're trying to identify exactly what the repair is and that should tell us what trade is required for the repair so we really should minimise that if that is happening it's something that we can go back and review but we have a system in place that should really limit that that it shouldn't be happening the second bit getting things right the first time I mean we have a first time fixed rate of 85% it's our goal is to you know for services to complete things first time there's obviously occasions when that can't happen depending on the type of work or trade if it's a wet trade there are required drying times or if we are requiring access equipment we might not have that equipment there on site we have worked really hard with our materials with our operatives it's a bespoke set of materials for each operative and we monitor the materials that are needed for each trade and each operative so they all turn up with a bespoke set of tools that hopefully can repair that repair first time so for example is that your third question you're following up it's a little follow up question just to this one that will be the last question from you thank you why don't we get specialists in for particular specialist projects when you're talking about pointing pointing I seem to think which then obviously leads to flooding or mould or stuff like that I think our brickwork really does need attention too yeah we've got a particular set of trades operatives within the service that can deliver that service a lot of it normally does require access to because of heights of brickworth we actually are due to go out and we've recognised just what you've said there councillor that it is really important and we've actually separated that out and we're going out to the market to look at a brickwork contractor that will specialise in that that actually tried so it's the first time we've actually really looked at that model but that's actually in the process of doing that right now thank you councillor mico sullivan did you sorry did you want me to pick up the other question about the rehousing very quickly chair and I'm conscious of time sometimes with a repair we do have to move our tenants out it's very very rare that we do that yes like a last resort but due to the needs of the tenant or the nature of the works we'll work closely with the tenant to find a suitable alternative sometimes that's straightforward but sometimes because of the complexities of the household or the requirements of the tenant finding a suitable location can be difficult but we work very closely and that's monitored on a monthly basis by senior management team both mine and Ian's area to make sure that people aren't stuck waiting for that process and look at lots of different options whether that's service departments whether that's using hotels sometimes even doing the works in situ and finding a creative way to do that but yeah we always try to minimize it it's a very small number of cases they get a lot of scrutiny from the service to make sure that we're doing it as easily and quickly as possible and supporting the tenant throughout do you have programs available for agency staff and contractors to bring them up to standard when they deal with tenants tenant communications and tenant interaction do you make this a compulsory part of any contracts that you wish thank you and a lot of councillor Sullivan is referring to a recommendation from this very scrutiny about four years ago just to check that I've kept up with it yes we do indeed all of our contracts have a customer care element which is both marked managed through contract monitoring and mobilization we have recently been rolling out training to contractors mirroring our own staff's contracts our aim since we set up the in-house service is to a tenant it doesn't matter where the workmen coming to the home come from they get the same level of good service so they should get the same service from one of our operatives as they do from one of our contractors is that a case 100% of the time I'm not certainly saying it is but it's something we constantly work towards and strive towards but yeah we do roll out those joint training programs and continue to make sure that we're covering that on both sides okay thank you I'll let you come make after but let's go this way I'll start with Councillor Ilkay and then then make and then I've got one question okay so only a quick one I think you just really answered the second part of my question preventable repairs I do keep asking about this what are you doing to prevent anything going wrong like cleaning gutters and things like that and the second one is monitoring repairs who's monitoring them to say that they're at standard that we should be accepting and what percentage of the monitoring do we do on jobs thank you so regarding preventative stuff and we're talking about the gutters of rainwater goods we do have our RAG program historically we ran that seasonally and that would come at the beginning of October moving through to those colder months at present we've decided we'll run that RAG program annually and there's a team that will go around the borough 12 months of the year they have access equipment with them they have a sky back with them and they'll be picking up those rainwater goods where they're clearing them taking on minor repairs it's probably the first bit of really preventative stuff we've done for a while and some of it will continue I think it's going to have its benefits to the service and it's going to prevent issues later down the line which is I think a positive step regarding monitoring all contractors work is monitored through to completion but also post inspected to some degree either it'll be a physical inspection depending on size of work depending on complexity of work or it'll be a desk inspection where photographs are required and so forth or other work that's done by our in-house team again the same rules apply I think it's 10% that is post inspected and then all jobs are reviewed with photos to make sure that times are taken and so forth before during and after photos to try and you know to make sure we're capturing everything thank you I'm councillor you're going thank you chair I'm just going to follow up on from what councillor north said and that was when we're looking at the report especially 3.11 where it says we also require agencies to allow apprentices the opportunity to join services on a permanent basis when we when the question was asked we didn't that was the explanation people wanted furthermore just a really quick one we are currently give 25% of our staff and budget to agency staff on average how much do we spend of our budget to our contractors apprentices? Apology now I see what the question so the remark where agencies the reason we keep agency staff for apprentices is at the end of an apprenticeship if we had all permanent staff there wouldn't be any vacancies for apprenticeships to come in so that's why we would always keep some agency posts to allow the staff that we've trained to have the opportunity to come in so yeah so making sense yeah it makes us a few more questions that might come from but can you attempt the first question as well the 25% and so with our budget on contractors it is roughly so I've got that note there apologies on that so our contractor spend is around 10 million for our subcontractors which works out at roughly about 20 to 25% of our budget and they deliver about 14 to 15% of our work remember the work that the contractors do is the bigger pieces of work for us though you know so they're putting up scaffolding they're also doing the large works that take longer to do so you know the idea of the DLO then house teams to get inside do the jobs quickly lots of volume lots of turnover we're not wasting lots of resource that are waiting on site for a long time we give that to the contractor which is the more expensive work to do but it does take longer to do too okay thank you councillor Mick Guggen and then on the plus side you know it's very positive that we've got a good DLO in terms of our work what's it 86% of workload is through the direct labour organisation I think that's very impressive I'm a firm believer that the DLOs need to be expanded because I think they're you know with the housing problem it's part and parcel of that and that's on the plus side I'm still getting case work I've got to deal with now and I'm sure a lot of councillors are regarding damper mould and I just wonder whether the painting over solution is the right way forward to resolve the problem I also just regarding contractors who actually has like a clerk of works if like who signs off any contracts that they perform so like it's actually up to standard thank you I'll pick up the contract a bit first so we do have an in-house clerk of works team that as I was saying before the dean that they do post inspect 100% of the work and it just depends on size or cost if it's going to be a physical inspection or a desk inspection we also have monthly contract meetings where contractors are brought into our offices or via teams where we're going over any trends or issues that may be arising if performance isn't good if quality of work is not good and we'll be dealing with those during those contractual meetings so we have quite a stringent process to ensure that we're getting the best we can out of the contractors there will be problems you know like but we do pick those up and we will address them to make sure we're improving moving forward okay thanks just to pick up your point about the damper mould we do have properties with damper mould in our stock when that's reported our intention is to go and remove that hazard for residents as quickly as possible the painting and removal of the damper mould is stage one of that process we do that as quickly as possible to remove any hazard from the resident and then we have to tackle the root cause that can be very simple there's a broken pipe we need to fix or it could be something very complex that the house is overcrowded and requires a special particular type of residency which we don't have a lot of and we need to find suitable accommodation and everything in between including you know pure poverty so trying to find the solution is the key bit but while we're trying to find that solution working with the household to do that we will continue to remove the damper mould while we work on that solution whether that's something that we're working on in terms of a fix or whether it's something more deep-rooted in terms of supporting the tenant you had another question at the beginning which I'm sorry I forgot about the DLO can you just remind me I firmly believe that I mean as you know this is my heart speaking I did bump into Linda Clark that some people might know around here she's a firm believer in retrofitting and a way of expanding retrofitting and installation of our homes is by expanding our DLO hopefully in Islington but other boroughs as well I mean I'm a firm believer in that so that's just it's just a point I think that's a statement but we are expanding it sure you don't need to answer that I got a question I think the first one I wanted to sort of go into was on the on the contracts are there sort of I'm intrigued to understand it are there any sort of hidden costs when it comes to contract station overtime emergency call out are there and how do we how does that work in terms of our costs like I is that something we are we seeing this 20 percent or 30 percent of what we spend overall that falls under the emergency call out no no it's the so the contracts when procured there's a pricing framework that they'll sign up to we work off a thing with national federation rates the NHF that has a pricing code that they will put a percentage to that will ensure that that's the delivery that that is agreed so really there are no hidden costs because even with the likes of the out of hours calling you get a cost up front that we agree before that contract starts I think there's always a question you do hear about scaffoldings one that are there are there additional costs to scaffolding and and again it's it's no you know the scaffolding they sign up to the rates there's brackets where they can where the scaffold fits into certain into brackets into payments that means that outside yeah if it's a bigger scaffold you get a bit more money but there's no cost outside of those those agreed rates which is always sort of the question we get thank you I know Ben you're eager is this a short statement I'm inclined to allow you to do that sorry just just back back to combined boiler systems again people yeah we're finding real serious problems with I don't know the Decarpa works you guys the amount of phone calls you must be receiving not just from my state but from many other states across Israel which each country we've got Jem in the south they they they will leave at five o'clock if the problem is still there you get some people that they really are taking the mickey what do we do with our contractors that are taking the mickey out of residence okay thank you I think it's a valid question and it sounds like a local issue I see Matt you're going to be answering this one yeah we we have a set of expected standards as I said before we expect you know contractors to behave in the same way that our in-house staff do respect our tenants put the tenant first in terms of our repairs that's set out in the contract terms that we let from time to time we get complaints where contractors have not lived up to that that expectation of let our tenants down those complaints as well as being responded to to the tenant and obviously looking after them are fed back to our operational meetings where we meet with those contractors if we get repeated issues those contractors are put on a performance plan so they're asked to set out how they're going to improve how they're going to address those concerns and frankly if they don't we've got records of times where we've parted ways with our contracts the new procurement regs that's going to be even more public and even more open so I'm expecting the contractors will be much more interested in making sure they adhere to our contracts going forward but thank you and on that note I would just want to ask this is for in-house now I'm sure there are specific KPIs used to measure contract performance and based on those are we having an issue that a lot of our contractors are underperforming or we don't have a KPI so we do have KPIs in each one of the contracts some of those reflect our in-house ones some of those are very specific so for instance for water testing generally our contractors are performing well there are currently some under performance plans at the moment and some that we are working with to improve their performance because we're unhappy with how they're doing that's right now speaking I'm not going to name those contractors but we do expect our contractors to perform we will you know use the contract terms we have to make sure that they do and the KPIs do reflect that I think performance wise generally there's not a uniform picture across the board some are performing well performing very well and some as I said they're on performance plans because they need to get better and you know if they don't then we won't be working with them anymore sorry I'm going to I'm going to go just I can see time but this this is a one of those topics because some of our contractors are giving us councils a lot of headaches based on residents feedback so question now is do you a life cycle of a normal contract using the procedure you just mentioned for us to actually address the situation do you think that actually drives things for way longer than we need to and obviously you mentioned the new procurement might be sort of addressing that making things a lot more public I'm trying to understand what are the sort of issues that you're dealing with so that we are aware of it so that we can you know think in ahead so we don't find ourselves in this situation again do you think that process is too long and why that process drags our residents are unhappy we're getting those complaints so I'm trying to figure out do you think that they're too long and do you think they're fair yeah it's a really good point that chair I think that given the necessary steps in procurement we act as quickly and as reasonably as we can I think one of the things to bear in mind is that when we hear complaints that's not reflective of the whole service whether that's complaints about DLO or complaints about our contractors it is important that we give contractors an opportunity to learn from those in the same way we'd expect a member of staff to learn from from you know a negative experience that they created for a tenant and improve and I think re-procurement it's not there's some of these contract pools that we're at in there's not infinite numbers of contractors that deliver that kind of work and getting a contractor takes time so it's not a case of you know quick fire get rid of that said if they're serious breaches we will do that but I think in terms of the structure of the system I think react in a reasonable authoritative way using the contracts that we have I don't think I think it could be perceived from the outside that sometimes that takes a long time to give someone three months to go through an improvement program but if they're bedding in new processes if they're evidencing that they're improving in their service it's going to take three months takes time to improve and if they don't we don't give second chances easily but thank you so much I must say I'm based on your last answer there that there's a little bit of me that feels like we're kind of stuck with some of this and we might yes I do understand we have processes that we have to follow and I'm hoping that your team and our part we are following that because hence why if there is an oversight from us in terms of following and that process because for any reason then the consequences of that is that so I guess I can encourage that your team or the council whatever department that might be involved in this to actually follow through what we are supposed to be doing on our part because if we can't do our part then our residents will suffer and and to us that's not good enough but thank you so much I'm happy to actually bring this topic to an end we have lots of questions on this I'm sure we're going to email them to you all right good okay thank you so much thank you thanks guys thanks I believe this is my final yes performance report addresses and complaint in we've seen some things I think we have yes at the last meeting you was concerned that of the 22 tenant satisfaction measures three were not in top quartile you asked for an action plan and an update at this meeting this report presents that so the three areas that were not in top quartile in London to relate to complaints and one relates to asbestos complaints we believe will see a massive change in our approach from the first of April when the long awaited restructure of housing management is actually implemented which is one housing officer for every 550 tenants and they will be contact the housing officer will be contacting other complaints that comes in within 24 hours visiting them trying to sort out the complaints so that will be a massive huge improvement however until we get to that first of April magic deadline we've been doing quite a lot of work as the action plan shows you in terms of quality checking mystery shopping escalation audits to ensure that Jed and Matt myself and Bez and the housing management team get monthly updates on the complaints to ensure that we're learning from complaints improving our services by listening to residents and we've set up the resident service improvement group as you know consisting of tenants we've gone to complaints with them a report they've critically analyzed us as well of what we need to do we've appointed an independent agency K West who does our satisfaction surveys we're succumbed at 66% improved from 64% last year to critically appraise analyse and do the satisfaction of how we deal with complaints we honestly look at every published regulated social housing report on every council we look at every ombudsman report to see if we can learn anything we've had compulsory training on everything from customer care to ombudsman proceedings etc we've introduced a new framework and escalation process and we've briefed all the TMOs we've briefed the partners we had a meeting with them yesterday so the complaints management framework is in a far better position than it was in the past however it's nowhere near where we want it to be we need to be quite honest and frank on that we're pretty good in housing operations getting back to elective members in terms of issues but it's not consistent in terms of the quality so we need to improve on that the section on the asbestos management surveys as you saw last time it stated 80% property services are confident it'll get to 100% by the 31st of march i've been advised today that it's gone from 80% to currently 90% and there is an action plan to get that within the next four weeks to 100% and hopefully that addresses your major concerns that you had at the last meeting in january but if i needed to produce a further report ask any questions happy to do so thank you um councillor um okay you'll rest your hand firstly thank you and and yes you do really get back to us for me to ask questions thank you um my questions on the quality check-in um we've got a 20 point quality checklist would it be possible for us to see that checklist because i'd like to know what was in it um and how we check and what the priorities are um and my second question chair sorry is about compensation um how much have we paid in compensation you asked that last month and i didn't get the figures i did i told you it was 93 000 okay um so still 93 000 from memory and yes i'll send um to follow the quality audit checklist and that can be circulated in the minutes or before the minutes come out tomorrow thank you um just the guidance type question um the amount of phone calls and letters and emails and everything i get about suing you for damp and whatever building you know these phone calls are coming from india and poland and australia and places like that what are you doing to sort of like stop this let's sue you type of attitude like the americans have we we regularly place information on uh the state notice boards to try to say to people you know if you've got an issue come to islington council and we're here to help um likewise when we liaise with the vulnerable households we explain to them that sometimes these agencies want payments up front and you may not get that money back we did a campaign in 2024 uh so basically it's on our website still about guy be careful that you're not scammed on this and we're working with the corporate communications team next week to plan our campaigns over the next 12 months in terms of issues that we need to cover and that will be one of them because you're right you know i've got a phone call the other day a person's been phone four times in in a day and they were saying that my service must have given these people these four different companies her telephone number so we don't we we won't do that oh it is that you know it is getting concerned to our residents thank you um i mean when it comes to complaints um it's um it's an evolving space for us and i i i know your team are doing a lot but can i ask how does he integrate to the wider councils approach and what are you doing to set standards that could move into others or are we following any specific other um directory in terms of how they're dealing with complaints we try to look outside of the council of monitoring benchmarking the mystery shopping report we've just had done and looking at all of the best practice that not just in public sector but like private sector comparing with you know i did a comparison the other day looking at our complaints our satisfaction with you know private sector organization john lewis and how we can plan for what we needed to do and we've got a long way to go you know we really have we've come a long way but you know we're not satisfied that with our complaints framework in terms of housing the the council's not either um in what we're trying to do is work in partnership with everyone across the council to improve that we had a meeting today with the corporate center in terms of those complaints management etc very positive meeting was conducted of where we've now got an action plan specifically to deal with member and complaints from residents as i know that's a concern to elected members we do need to improve in housing we can't say that we're the best in the council best in the country we're not but we do we do have an improvements agenda and that will continue to go forward in the future i'm just uh i'll follow up on this and i know we're going to purchase um complaints obviously happens because something did not we're not doing something right at some point or along what happened not necessarily actually addressing the process is something triggers before it gets to um are any of this associated with cost savings or would you just say it's management processes that we have in place that might might need improvement okay so you need to look at you know the global entity complaints in housing so 65 percent of complaints relate to property services 35 percent relate to housing management homelessness housing register no recourse public funds etc now at the moment property services has a complaint rate of 1.3 percent for all property works done the national average is one percent so we've got to get some distance there to get to one percent but you know it's an awful you know that is a a performance that needs to improve but we need to recognize we're doing over 100 000 repairs and somebody will not be happy with a repair you know i just recently had somebody come around to my house pay them money to fix something it's not fixed and i can't get them back and i can't get them back exactly so there's always complaints in the private sector as well as they're in the public sector so we've got to acknowledge that in terms of housing management and um housing needs you know there are blurring errors in service quality from those teams and there's repeated mistakes that's happened over the years and we now through the restructures both in teams will be reducing those complaints and having staff that are focused on the the positions they should be rather than the complicated structures we currently have in those teams thank you again um oh we have jib please go ahead thanks chair and sorry if it's helpful i think it is useful to kind of um offer some other wider points uh relations to kind of your question is there are there resource constraints that uh do lead to the generation of complaints and i think it's important as Ian said that we benchmark ourselves um proportionally the amount of work that we carry out in repairs so that complaint rate of 1.3 which is actually very good for london um but it isn't um at the national highest level of performance that's what we're targeting um because we have an increase in workload within repairs over time because the condition of the stock is declining because the investment levels are low so the actual number of complaints numerically is bigger because we're doing a lot more work so there are resource factors that influence the size and shape of uh complaints demand upon us uh based on the amount of work that we need to do the type of work that we need to do it's definitely a factor and it's one that we kind of keep reviewing and look at the numbers in different ways and want to kind of continue that dialogue with uh with scrutiny committee uh members as well there are also points of time at which we might we exercise kind of management decisions about levels of resource allocation we don't always get those things right and we're trying to do that as well thinking about value for money and how to direct the resources as effectively as we can a good example of that was when we restructured our complaints team we combined two teams into one within housing so we have a single unified area for managing complaints it gives us better management information it was the right thing to do and we made a judgment at hmt to reduce below their designed level of service a couple of posts and from that team just to try and be more financially efficient and the evidence is that we do need to provide those additional pages to manage the workloads we're putting those back in this year after the first year of service so um so there's definitely learning for us on a kind of continual basis about how we are developing customer service given the right level of resource in the right places and we definitely don't get it right all of the time but we're all kind of i suppose we're relentless in wanting to understand what's driving it um and taking on board your comments and your insight um when we're looking at those particular areas kind of helps us to do that thank you so much um right hi thanks for bringing that back in by the way tom um has requested from us um just for my work plan just for noting nothing's changing okay great um unless there's anything um there is something okay so there is something dain has something to raise i'll take that and then we come sorry on behalf of me and rose because rose isn't here at the moment um on them seems to have disappeared off the last couple of months texting we both volunteer and i think we should have some sort of recognition of the work that we do i know it seems very silly to you but to me and to her it's something yeah absolutely noted i i would you know i would take a chair so i would then take the the the position to apologize to yourself and and and others um although i see it's in the minutes but that shouldn't be the case thank you for just flagging that that's something i should um should have noted myself and it as far as i'm concerned um that will be the case next time and the second one is it's uh the 17th of march st patrick's day us i think there's four or five irish people around this table okay we need to change that date okay um i this is actually something that was raised it's a good point 17th of march is um right i i will i would liaise um with the democratic service team and yes um i think it's a valid point um it is the day and hey why not we can just depending on what the the the timing looks like but yeah i think that's more likely to be the case so do watch out for your emails thank you with that i think unless there's any any issue i'll bring the meeting to an end thank you