Transcript

Okay, thank you. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our first Cabinet Housing Subcommittee. Welcome to you all, officers and members and chief executives, certainly. Any apologies? None. I can see a full house. Fantastic. Any declarations of interest from the members? Nothing? Nothing? Nothing there? Yeah. It's a matter of being the lead member. Thank you. Okay. Welcome to Badul Chodhry, chair of the Housing Scrutiny Subcommittee. Welcome. Nice to see you. Okay. Pre-scrutiny questions. Is there anything, is there anything, Matthew, on that? Oh, okay. Yeah. Go on. We've got two pre-scrutiny questions. Lead member? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, in relation to the first question, it's tabled in the papers, so I'll just respond directly to it. Okay. In terms of opportunities for the Housing and Regeneration Scrutiny Subcommittee to assist in the development of the programme, it's not for this committee to decide on the work streams of the Housing and Regeneration Scrutiny Subcommittee. It's for the committee itself to decide on their work streams, but by all means, this committee will hear out any recommendations you do have, and we will give it its due attention in the development of policies and programmes. There is a second question, Mr. Mayor, and in relation to consultation about policies with residents members and key stakeholders, as always, this committee will follow the protocols and guidance that are set up within the council's structure, and, where necessary, and, where necessary, we will go out to consultation with the relevant stakeholders, before determining specific policies. Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you for the questions. To our colleagues in over in Scrutiny, and thank you, lead member, for answering those. Okay. Okay. Okay. The first agenda is 4.1, the terms of reference. Shafiq, Shafiq, Shafiq. Did you want to speak to a speech? Okay. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Good evening. Thank you. Good evening to you all. Thank you for providing me with this opportunity to feedback the views of the Housing and Regeneration Scrutiny Subcommittee. As the chair of the committee, I recognise the importance of delivering high-performing housing management service for our residents. I am pleased to see the council's commitment to driving improvement in this area, supported by the establishment of the new Housing Cabinet Subcommittee. One of our main areas of focus at the scrutiny meeting is to ensure we reflect residents' voice and concerns. Therefore, I am pleased to see that this committee will be a platform which will allow tenants to influence decision-making, inform improvements efforts, and hold the council as their landlord accountable. As part of scrutiny pre-decision responsibilities, it is important that there is an alignment between this committee and the Housing and Regeneration Scrutiny Subcommittee. We are committed to being a critical friend and supporting your efforts to drive improvements in our housing stock. As a committee, we will submit pre-decision scrutiny questions, invite officers to present relevant reports at housing scrutiny meetings, and I will attend as chair to keep you updated on the activity of our committee and provide any additional comments from the committee members. The Housing and Regeneration Scrutiny Subcommittee. The Housing and Regeneration Scrutiny Subcommittee includes a tenant and a leaseholder representative, which is hugely valuable in ensuring that we have a resident voice in all of our discussions, and we also receive reports from our tenant voice panel. As we move into 2025-2026 principal year, we will ensure meeting dates are aligned so that the Housing Scrutiny Subcommittee meets one or two days before the Housing Cabinet Subcommittee. We will ensure that the Housing Scrutiny Subcommittee is given an additional meeting to sync with all the Housing Cabinet dates. I welcome your views on how we can develop the relationship between our committees further, and look forward to working with you all. If providing a brief update on a recent activity from the Housing and Regeneration Scrutiny Subcommittee, we have considered four items. The first item was the review of the housing management of Tauramlet Homes and the progress made in delivering improvements to the service since it transferred to the Council management in November 2023. Next, we reviewed performance against the tenant satisfaction measures that have recently been put in place and noted that the Council has self-referred itself to the Housing Social Regulator in order to drive further improvements. The Scrutiny Subcommittee appreciates the step taken by the Council to self-refer. We sought assurance on key issues such as our repairs services and the services which our residents have received from our Housing Service Centres. We will examine the Social Regulator Report when it is published. We are looking to work with Housing Management to see any recommendations and implement it as soon as possible. Finally, we received the latest performance report of the registered social landlord in Tauramlet from the Chair of Tauramlet Housing Forum. We scrutinised the performance of our registered social landlord across a number of regulatory standards. We noted several local government and Social Care Ombudsman reports. Finally, we have submitted pre-decision scrutiny questions and appreciate your response. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Choudhury. Thanks for your comments. We very much note that and we look forward to working in partnership. Your suggestions as scrutiny members can be vital to us. Is that okay? Thank you very much. Okay, good. Now I'm going to move on to 4.1, the Terms of Reference of the Subcommittee. Just so before I move the Terms of Reference, can I just say for the record, you want to say a few things? Yeah, I'll introduce it. Yeah, you want to introduce it? Go on. I'm happy for you to. Mr. Mayor, so as this is a new committee, we need terms of reference. So this particular part of it sets out the Housing Management Cabinet Subcommittee, which is chaired by yourself, Mr. Mayor, and includes members and independent advisors. It's strengthened the Terms of Reference with the added function for monitoring asset management, approving policies and driving service improvements. So we'll be regularly getting those reports and checking and scrutinising those reports from officers. With that, Mr. Mayor, I'll hand it back over to you. Steve, please. Thank you, Councillor. Can I just ask one question, make a comment? Under best value implications, the fifth bullet point, it talks about promoting a culture of compliance. Would it be helpful to promote systems and a culture of compliance? Yeah. It's just the systems point. I should have picked it up earlier, David, I apologise. David, please. Yeah, I think that's a very helpful suggestion and we'll update the Terms of Reference to accommodate that. And I think the systems that we're using are a critical part of the work that we're doing on our improvement journey around compliance. So that is a very helpful suggestion. I did just also want to say one other introductory comment, if that's possible, Mr. Mayor, which is to say that the setting up of this committee was a key component of our improvement plan after our self-referral. And because we recognise the need to strengthen our governance arrangements and we recognised the need for this committee. And it was a deliverable in that improvement plan. And obviously the first meeting tonight shows that we're on that journey towards having that greater focus of our housing management functions with executive members able to scrutinise us. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for all those comments. Can I just say, Matthew, the three executive members, other than the mayor, the deputy mayor, Councillor Kobir Ahmed and Councillor Shafi Ahmed. Is that okay? Just for the record. I'm just amending the grid. Other than that, any comments on the Terms of Reference, Councillor Shafi? Anything at all? You okay? You okay? I mean, just a clarity. I mean, at least hold on the tower. I just wanted to declare that. As long as you bought it properly and you're paying the grand rents, shouldn't be a problem, yeah? Okay. Okay. Anyone else? Any comments? Go on, Kobir. Sorry, Mr. Mayor, just to add one other thing. In terms of substitutes, that will apply to the whole of the Cabinet. So if a member can't attend, then any other Cabinet member can substitute. But the core, as you've identified, will be the current committee membership. Thank you. Please, please. I have one question, Matthew, and it's to you, and it may be completely irrelevant. On the list of, on page 16 of our PACs, it talks about functions, and it talks about overseeing and advising the Mayor on a number of things. That's right. Is there any space or any requirement to advise counsel? So I get the executive bit. Is there any non-executive bit? I don't know the answer. I just wonder whether or not there's a point there. Yeah, I think we probably have to look at that. On the top of my head, I'd probably say no, it's an executive function, but we can double-check that. I think it is entirely an executive function, to be fair. Yeah. I just want to make sure we don't miss something. Okay. Great. Good. Okay. I think... Okay. We're okay with the terms of reference? Karen? Yeah? Okay. Good. Okay. They're agreed. Let's move on to agenda item 4.2, please. Recruitment and selection and remuneration policy, please, onto the board. Who wants to introduce it? Councillor Kobir. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This policy outlines the recruitment and remuneration of independent advisors who will provide expert scrutiny with a recruitment panel and final decisions will be made by yourself, Mr. Mayor, and corporate directors alongside that. But we have benchmarked this against other organizations and other advisors, and we feel it's appropriate to offer them £6,000 per annum, and that will also entail their expenses as well. So it's all included within that. Mr. Mayor. Good. Thank you. Anyone else? David? Anyone want to answer? Yeah. I think this is a really important part of ensuring that we have that independent challenge and scrutiny as part of this committee, which I think is really welcome. One of the things that we have been talking to the regulator about, but also a fun part of our submission is how do we hold a mirror up to ourselves? Now, obviously, a critical part of that is the resident voice and the tenant voice. But we also want to make sure that we're getting other experts input into this committee. And it's something that will really add to the value of all the work that we're doing. So I think it's a really important proposal. Karen, did you want to add something? Yeah, it was just to say that since we've last met, we've strengthened a couple of paragraphs based on the discussion that we had earlier. So I would say that paragraphs 5.1, 5.4, 5.5, 5.7 have been strengthened. And they set out what the work of the panel is going to be that's going to be doing the shortlisting. So the panel 5.4 say the panel will be shortlisting, setting up the interview methodology and also deciding on the weighting for the selection of the candidate. That they'll present 5.7 says they will present their findings to the mayor who may choose to meet the candidate and then may choose to appoint or not. So the decision rests with you, but the panel are setting out the criteria for the selection of the methodology. And as Councillor Ahmed said, there was benchmarking that led us to arrive at the 6,000 figure. The only other point I would raise is that we've also amended the section in the enumeration policy around the Council's equality duty. Just to make sure that we're setting out, I think it's on the, just before the point 3, the scope. It's sort of, it says that the recruitment policy will meet the general requirements of the Council's equality policy. So that was something that we've strengthened first. I just have a question on, after tonight, timescale. Is that it now, sorry? For recruiting. Thank you. I'm going to hand over to Nicola on that. Thank you. So once agreed, we will begin the recruitment process. We expect that we should be able to bring back a decision for yourself in May. We're engaged with you throughout the whole process. We will get some experts to look at the best people to recruit and start that recruitment process in the next few weeks. So we expect and we hope to have someone. In terms of recruitment for the independent security, what sort of expertise we're looking at? Have we said anything or has there been any kind of discussion? Yes. So we're looking at a mixture of skills, specifically asset management and property management, because there's a big focus in terms of the safety and quality standard. So somebody with that expertise to scrutinize, because a lot of the activity will be around our landlord compliance and health and safety activity. So somebody with experience in that. And somebody as well on the resident side as well, so with perhaps housing management experience. I don't want to define it too much in terms of the types of people, you know, to preempt the process. But it's certainly those skill sets. Absolutely. People have got experience of working in the sector. People have got experience of that sort of best practice and knowledge and able to hold us to account as independent advisors. How long will you be appointed for? What term? Three years. Three years? Three years. That's set up in the policy. With an opportunity to review every year. So that's normal how you get the non-ex and the board. That's correct. So there's a proposition within the process that there is an annual review to be undertaken. A term when you then look at getting a new provider. Okay. I very much want to be involved in that process, please. Yeah, it's in 6.1 of the terms of reference, so we'll strengthen that. Yeah, if you can. Because it just says independent advisor shall be appointed a term of three years subject to annual review and reappointment, but it doesn't set out who's doing that. Yeah, so I and the lead member, both of us, I'm bringing you in. Want to be involved in that, I certainly, if I'm chairing the recruitment panel, and I have the only vote, so I must have the vote to also terminate that on appraisal of the appointment if necessary. Okay. And the JDs, please. Can we, and the person, whatever person's certification, can we have a look at the draft and agree it? And the advert, before it goes out, please, yeah? Is that okay? Okay. Please, go on, Mayim. Mayim. Yeah, so, I mean, just to understand, obviously it's by the mayor, but in terms of the review, I just want to, it's appraisals, isn't it? Yeah. I'm just going to, so there's going to be an appraisal process, annual appraisal, so you will look at the performance, timing and all that. Well, we can develop that, you know, David and Karen and the committee member, you can develop that, you know, it's like any other non-ex, any other bodies. And you appraise them, but it's going to be a rigorous process. We really want this to work, its whole purpose is to work with the residents, make sure the residents are getting the best expert voice, with the best wisdom around this body. And helping us to make sure we are truly, as David says, we put the mirror on our face, so we, and we learn from shortcomings and we improve those shortcomings. It's about that as it is that we want the best person on this body, Steve. Thank you, Mayor. The only point I was going to make was, I think it's really helpful to think of this in context. You are, we are, realigning the housing and regeneration function. You're recruiting a brand new senior leadership team. There's a process that we're going through. We've got consistency in members of panels and your approach. So I think it's really helpful if you have the time and capacity to be a really important part of this recruitment process. Also, can I just, can I be sent the job descriptions as well, please? If you've already done it, then I apologise. But if you could, I'd be grateful. Can I please request that, David, you're in vote with us rather than someone below you in that process, please? Because your expertise and Steve's expertise is very important for us. Is that okay? Absolutely. Is that okay? Absolutely. Anyone else? Are we okay with that? Yep. Great. Thank you. Can we now move on to 4.3, Housing Management Performance and Compliance Report. Are you okay, Karen? Okay. Page 41. Kobir. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. As you'll understand, the context to this whole committee and our strengthening of governance and processes is as a result of the findings from the Pennington's and the HQN reports, which led us to make a self-referral to the housing regulators. We're currently at inspection stage, Mr. Mayor. So performance, we're on a journey, but this is the beginning of the journey. So in terms of performance, a brief overview, tenant satisfaction recently in Q3 has decreased partly due to seasonal issues and complex repairs, some of which are district heating systems within whole estates, Mr. Mayor. We are making efforts in order to contact residents and improve those services. 11 out of the 16 housing management matrix missed targets and 10 have shown improvement. So, as I said, Mr. Mayor, this is the first meeting. What we want to do is, meeting by meeting, we will review these just like we do with other performance indicators in order to drive up improvement and hold officers at different levels to account in order to deliver our targets around satisfaction. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I mean, there's so much I can say. But very briefly, I mean, for me, the level of improvement I've seen since I've been here is quite incredible. We've still got a very long way to go. And when you look at our data from December when we made the kind of commitments to compliance improvements, that's continued through into January. And we've got some tough targets to hit by March. And kind of looking at where we are, I think we're going to do it. And beyond that, for the remainder of the year, getting ourselves back into a position where we're on a stable footprint. Probably the most important thing I would say today is we must never allow this to happen again. I think some of the infrastructure we put in, the structures in the meetings we put in, will prevent that from happening again. Because that is such an important thing. Because we don't ever want to be in a position where we are doing a self-referred later again. Thank you. Just to add to that, Mayor, on some of the operational metrics, there are some clear challenges we recognise. So income connection, 98.3%, although slightly below target. It's been a challenging year with 53 weeks. One week missed out on UC and we've had the rent increase accordingly. So it's been an uphill battle, but I think we're tracking well overall. In terms of voids performance, whilst we won't be hitting target year-end, we will try to close that gap. And there is a very important balance to be struck as well in terms of both the quality of the properties that we're letting, making sure they're hitting the D standard where possible. So that needs to be factored in overall in terms of the timelines. I think there are some very particular challenges within the call centre that we recognise. That's a combination of some of the pressures and the demands from the repair service, but equally within that space, we know there are individual performance challenges that we're robustly tackling at the moment. And we've asked staff to attend three days a week in the office. And we're appointing an interim head of service to provide it some bespoke focus over the coming weeks and months. Karen, is there anything you want to add? I mean, all I'd say is that there's a very, very good summary of performance and executive summary. And just to be aware that the triangles are showing the upward trend or the downward trend. And the coloured percentage or the figure is showing actually the performance which is on this sheet here. And we're below lots of missed appointments this year, this quarter. And I just wanted to do paragraph 3.4 in the report, because paragraph 3.4, which talks about the way we manage repairs and the way we have high volumes of urgent repairs, which have a two-hour turnaround, mean that more scheduled appointments and repairs need to be cancelled and therefore they're missed. So there's something around how the repairs policy might be driving some of the missed appointments for non-scheduled, using the data to sort of pick up what the unintended consequences of the repairs policy on some of the other areas of how we deliver the non-urgent repairs. You know, how that's looking at the moment. Thanks, Kevin. Thanks for those points. Can I just request David and the team to look at the one area that we continue to get reported back from residents, tenants, not just our tenants, also RSL tenants. Some RSL tenants have this policy already and on Gateway do, an independent verification of the quality of those works and if they've been done. A process within the policy, if you can look at that, please. We had it before. I remember in the 80s, in the 90s, this council had such a policy where we can pick up, you know, so we avoid a number of times, you know, those contractors going in to do the same work or not going in at all. So we, a process where we can have feedback from, independently of the contractors, from the tenants and we can improve ourselves as we go along and the performance of the contractors, please. If you can look at that, I'd be grateful. Shafi, you want to say something? Yes. Obviously, the, one of the issues of the ASP, we see an increase in ASP satisfaction, but as residents, as well as a ward councillor, we see that this is something that needs to really improve and I see the performance information, and I think in going forward in the future reports on how we can deal with vulnerable residents and take action on what we need to do with, some residents can't report ASP because it's just so difficult, the system is so difficult, you have to mention certain numbers, certain days, and we have residents who are vulnerable, who can't manage the phone calls or who can't, who picks up a phone to me as a councillor, and I think going forward we need to have some sort of strategy to make sure that the ASP is more active and more reporting due diligently. Thank you. David, is there anything you want to add before I bring? Well, if I could ask Ghulam to come in and address that question, then I do have some points I want to add, but Ghulam, do you want to come in? Thank you councillor. So obviously, as you will be aware that the housing ASP service forms now part of the wider community safety division, and we're working very closely with them in terms of reviewing policies and procedures and re-working out the customer journey map to try and make it as easy as possible for residents to report ASP. And a key part of that is also to ensure that we minimise hand-offs and where that is happening between different teams, it's as seamless as possible. From an operational perspective, you know, our caretakers are also very diligent and where they are picking up things around, whether it's nitrous oxide or other things, when they're going about their daily cleaning routines, those are being reported in and form part of the intelligence. That's the news to inform some of the tasking that's happening with the Theos and the additional police officers that the council's committed to. Obviously, you will also be aware that the mayor's announced and we are in the process of rolling out additional CCTV across the borough, particularly on our housing estates, so that is expected to have a positive impact on ASP on the estates. Thank you. David, and I'll bring Steve in. Thanks, Ghulam. Yeah, I suppose just sort of to highlight a couple of important points. The tenant satisfaction measures are going in the wrong direction and some of that is seasonal, but I think that is not a position we want to be in because we want to be driving up our tenant satisfaction. We've got a stretched target for a reason because we want to be providing extra services to our residents. The one thing I take comfort in is that we are doing a lot of follow-up calls with the residents who express dissatisfaction and the issues that they're raising around things like the management of complex repairs, the call centre handling, things like missed appointments, are very much issues that are in our sights in terms of our improvement plan. And there are also issues where you, Mr Mayor, and the Cabinet have provided the extra investment that we've asked for to really sort of shift performance in some of those areas. Things like complaints as well. We've absolutely resourced the team to really drive that down. And we're starting to see a feed-through in terms of results. So the complaint handling has improved very substantially, but also the escalation from stage one to stage two and then onwards to the ombudsman has improved as well. So I think that is helpful, but we need to continue that and we need to really address the issues that residents have very clearly raised with us. I think there are also some positive highlights in the report around things like satisfaction of our caretaking services, which continues to be very high, including when benchmarked against practically all of our near neighbours. So I think, you know, there's stuff that we can be proud of, but we mustn't ever take our eye off the things that we need to work on. Cobbry, do you want to come in or I'll bring Steve to see something you want to see? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I think as this is the first meeting, but going forward, Mr. Mayor, I think on average we're going to be holding this meeting every two months or so. I think it's important to highlight that this is about transparency, this is about openness. These are published papers and it's not about data and figures and smokes and mirrors, that's what it's not about. It's about being open with our residents and the action plan we're working towards. As the administration, it's also our responsibility in this meeting with challenging questions going forward. There will be timelines and specifications added to this and the key thing around this is accountability. So we have the highest levels of officer level representation in the form of the chief executive and corporate direct representation as well. So throughout the whole structure of the council, we want to ensure that the public are reassured that their safety is our main priority here. I had a very specific question, actually. I've heard quite a lot about AI and the implementation of new systems to support tenants and what have you. Back in the day, as the mayor knows, I used to be a pre- and post-inspection officer up on the boundary state. Do we still post-inspect ourselves? What do I mean by that? Do we post-inspect repairs that are undertaken by contractors? Yes, we do. 10% every month. Is that by value of the repair, by geographical area? The majority is by value. Is there anything over £1,000 room of repairs? Can I ask you, that's one area that we get quite a lot of concerns from residents, from tenants. That there are, and I've said this in other forums and I think it's inappropriate to say it here, that the work isn't done at the first opportunity most of the times. It's either two, three or four visits before the work is completed or not completed at all. Either a contractor saying couldn't get someone in or no one's, you know, responded. But the residents are saying, no one called. No one knocked on my door, no one called me, no one didn't turn up. And yet the contractor will say, no, I've been there, so who do you believe? I would rather believe the tenants than believe the contractor. I believe 10% is not good enough. I don't know what the benchmarking is with good, competent local authority of high performance. I want to see that. But I very much want to see an improvement in that area. So a paper is requested, please, as soon as possible. I'd rather have it, it can come, because we're not meeting until two months' time, in another forum, maybe in cabinet, normal cabinet, as soon as possible, to see what the baseline is, how can we improve ourselves in self-regulating ourselves and supporting our tenants' voice, I know that's the next agenda, and how we reduce the number of times the contractors have to go in, or tenants calling us again and again, putting pressure on our officers at the call centre for work to be done. And in the meantime, they're suffering, not in silence, but, you know... Yeah, 100%, absolutely support that. Very happy to do that. And as part of that paper, I can include some of the initiatives we're implementing now that will address some of those issues. So, yes, 100% can do that. One thing you can get a paper to us, sorry. Paper to us. I think the next one I'm bringing is on disrepair, mate. That's a standard agenda item going forward. And just to add on to that, Ian, I want to look at the value, whether £1,000 is appropriate or it should be reduced, and what is the... What kind of value is the common thread? Is it £500? Is it £750? Is it £1,000 or £1,500? I would like to see that. And it's 10% of us inspecting. Is that enough or it should be a higher figure? And how do we do the inspection? Is it a telephone call or do we pop around? How do we do it? Yeah, we actually go and see the job. Go on, Steve. I'm so sorry. I was going to ask, I take it these jobs are by Scheduler 8, so we know which jobs are the most... what we do most. I assume there's a value to them, so I assume it's quite easy to either increase the level of post-inspection for the most common repairs. Sorry, you know this is your area. Yeah, absolutely. You can slice and dice it by a number of failures. In my experience, there's probably nil benefit in posting speculative feedback from asking questions at those inspections. And gas and electrical repairs, whereas safety certificates required, how does that fit into them? Yeah, so for gas servicing, we use an independent third party. I would never test and put in new installations, that sort of thing. I know we will discuss this further in another forum. I just want to ask, I mean, the point is, every repair for a tenant is important. Yeah, it doesn't matter what value it is. A tab not working for a tenant. Getting that repaired as soon as possible is important to them. It may not be to us, but it is to me. But I just want to understand, do we have a mechanism or feedback procedure where we know how many visits it's taken the contractor to do the work or what timescales within which they've done the work? Whatever work it may be. Yeah, so we can always identify the timescales. What we're aware to, though, is if the job is reported as one thing, a pair of tabs, for example, but actually the end job, what the contractor will do is close down the first job and then open up a second job. And one of the things, I wasn't going to go into some of the improvements, but this is a really good example. One of the things we are bringing in very soon is something we call follow-on card taps and said, actually, no, I need to renew the bath as well as the bath taps. There will be a follow-on card, and on the follow-on card it will say what happens next and who to come time with me in the next couple of weeks. That's good, thank you. Is that OK? I can see the signs, you know, we're on the right trajectory. Thank you for your input. Is that OK? Can we close this down? Yeah, great. OK. Now, the most important aspect of the day is the tenant's voice. At the end of the day, we're here for our residents, for our tenants when it comes to housing stock. And this is all about improving the quality of the work, including improving our performance and housing management to support them and for them to be the heart of what we do when it comes to housing management or anything in this council. So, Kubir. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. The tenant's voice panel has positively engaged with the Your Voice, Our Action Plan, discussing compliance, complaints and proposed policies with an emphasis on tangible outcomes and involvement in future plans. Essentially, Mr. Mayor, we have something that's quite unique within tenants' voice. We have a very diverse range of people who represent leaseholders, tenants, as well as sub-leaseholders. Considering we have 50% of our stock, which is owned by leaseholders, and of which 50% of that, so in total 25% of residents living in council housing stock, or ex-council housing stock, are actually sub-tenants. So, that's actually a sizable number of people who are renting from leaseholders. So, we've created capacity for them to be represented as well. And again, there are a number... This was set up last year. There's been a number of meetings, and there's also a number of capacity-building training programs. So, you'll see Terry's here. Terry's part of the tenants' voice as well. So, we want to give everybody an opportunity. In terms of reference for the tenants' board, one of the areas we said we wanted an independent resident voice is by sort of indicating that those who are office-bearers of TRAs and other panels would not qualify for it. So, resident members can actually have an opportunity. Otherwise, what you get is bottlenecking of certain individuals sitting on five, six bodies, and that's the only kind of interpretation of choice you get. So, in order to create a more diverse range of opinions, we've devised the tenant voice in that way, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. David, sir, anything you want to say? Yeah, I think this is a really, really important part of our improvement journey, is how do we involve tenants and many soldiers in forming that sort of practice. We are early on, but what I would say is I've seen some really good examples of work that that tenants' voice group have already done, such as input to our Damp and Mould campaign and the materials and communication around that and how we get the messages across to residents around tackling Damp and Mould and the tenants' voice group have had some real impact to that. We're really lucky in Tarhamless. Whenever anyone asks me, how are you finding Tarhamless? I always say the best thing about it is the strength of the communities in this borough. And, you know, I do a lot of estate visits with the teams and every time I do, I meet tenants and residents associations, I see community good-growing initiatives and we have got tenants who really want to get involved and help us improve our services, which is a real strength. And I think Tenant Voice will help drive that forward, but it's only one of the many ways that we involve residents. And I think that's important to say because there are a whole other suite of options, which were in the resident engagement strategy, which was agreed at Cabinet in November. Thank you. Sorry, Steve, you wanted something to update it. I was just excited. Just for timeliness, really. Under Next Steps, it talks about an event that took place, has already taken place. Yeah, yeah. So I was just interested in just updating that for accuracy. It talks about the event that took place on the 23rd of January or was scheduled to take place on the 23rd of January. Were there any updates? Yeah. Thank you. Yes, that refers to the RSH observing the Tenant Voice meeting on the 23rd or observed the Tenant Voice meeting on the 23rd of January. It was a really authentic discussion on the night. Lots of challenge. I think the most, some really productive feedback. We've got one of our members in the gallery there around KPIs. And it seems to be the KPIs are making them much more focused than they are at the minute. So we're reviewing that. But also we went through a discussion around our vulnerability policy. And I have to say the panel are passionate about, they've got lots of examples of where they've helped their communities and people in their blocks and vulnerable tenants. And I think the feedback really, the headline for me was around, they want to see tangible outcomes. They've noticed a change of tone in terms of, you know, our approach since coming back in house and our willingness to work with them. But they now want to see some outcomes. So for example, in the vulnerability policy, they've asked to see going forward more metrics around the numbers of people that we support for our resident at risk process. And we've agreed to provide that. Future agenda items where they will provide a report. Mail. Thank you. Mr Mayor. Just a suggestion. Can we, is there any way we can involve the chair, just to come in and kind of report? Yeah, you will. Next meeting. That's what will happen. Yeah. Nothing happens when they do the report. When they present the report at the next meeting, it will be the first standing item. And just like the Regen came the chair of the panel. Okay. Good. That's it. It's also important to know that the Tenant Vice Panel will report into the Housing and Regeneration Scrutiny Panel. We heard from the chair earlier, Councillor Charduri, and that is another mechanism in which the Tenant Vice will feed into our scrutiny process as well as this executive committee. Thank you. Is that okay? Can I note the report? Yeah. Shafi? Anything else? Just quickly, I can see on the Tenant Vice, there's quite a few training programs going on. I just want to know how the engagement is. Is it all hybrid or is it done in a face-to-face setting? And also, do we have the resources in making sure that we can deliver all this training? Thank you, Councillor. Thank you, Councillor. Good question. So, we're looking at working with an organisation called TPAS, that's sort of experts in tenant engagement. And we find face-to-face works best, really. We have had some hybrid sessions, but we find face-to-face is the best way to do it, so we run sessions here in the town hall. Good. Good. Okay. Is that okay? We can note the report? Yeah. So, 4.5. It's related. Go on, Kubri. Your voice. I action. This programme focuses on tenant engagement, safety, service integration and compliance, with progress made in multiple improvement initiatives since November, Mr. Mayor. I'll leave it brief and give people… It's quite explanatory. Is there anything else anyone want to add? Please, Nicola. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, there are seven work streams, asset management, leaks, dump and mould, complaints, governance, data improvement, and then ASB and lettings. ASB and lettings is not included in this report, but it will be included for your April report. Within the 62 deliverables across those five work streams, 10 are completed, 25 on track, and 17 are not started, and that's mainly due to dependencies with the NEC Servicing Programme, which is the IT Improvement Programme. There's no risks to the delivery of the programme or need identified for additional resource at this stage, but we will continue to come back and update you on that. I think it's really key to say it's expected that the programme will continue to develop with co-production with this committee, with the Regulator of Social Housing and with Tenant Insight, and we will take an approach whereby if additional improvements are suggested, so, for example, you discussed on repairs performance, improvements around that, we will include those in the programme and we will track them, and equally, if we've got resident insight, we will continue to do that. We will also evaluate those improvements, so we will hear from residents when we've completed an improvement, has this actually made a difference, and the focus will be on really shifting resident experience and driving outcomes based on that. Good. Is that okay? Yep, okay, thank you. Okay, 4.6 Housing Management Policies Plan. Mr. Mayor, a review of Housing Management Policies has identified areas for improvement, with a forward plan for resident consultation, member engagement and approval to strengthen compliance and consumer standards. So, as I said at the onset, Mr. Mayor, we carried out external consultants, carried out reviews, and it was quite concerning in specific areas around building safety complaints, and we self-referred ourselves in relation to, sorry, to the social housing regulators. Um, and these are areas, when we've scoped it out a little bit deeper, we've found we need to strengthen and tighten, if not create policies, in order to serve our residents. Um, I think, um, one of the really important things for us is that, um, we've talked about the fact that updating policies is important, because we can reflect the resident feedback on things like the repair service, but also they're only going to be impactful if we train staff appropriately. So, one of the things that we're building into this is, is something around, uh, a programme for training staff, so that they are actually implementing the new policies that we agree, um, and we will also track performance against those policies and any new standards that they put in place. Karen, please. So, um, I mean, I just, on the cover sheet, it sort of talks about the 21 policies, policies, but they just, some of them need, um, refreshing. Um, Appendix one sets out all of the policies, uh, that we're considering. Um, you'll see that we've changed the, the hat, the title, uh, when we talked about delegation last time, so the title now says body in which the executive is in. One is it's in scope, one it's developed, in development, third one is that it's drafted, and the fourth one it's complete. So, using those sets, uh, quickly we're completing them, um, and, and signing them, signing them off. Some of them will require resident consultation, um, and some of them, all of them will have an equality screening, uh, check. Okay. Is that okay? It's noted. Yeah. We can have a discussion, uh, somewhere else for that. Is that okay? I would ask. Good. Okay. Can we note that? Can we move on to the forward plan now? Uh, uh, uh, yep. 4.7. Come in, Mr. Mayor. Yeah, go on. So, Mr. Mayor, um, as you can see the forward plan, uh, includes standing items for the cabinet subcommittee, um, to ensure transparency and accountability, with reports from tenants' voice, uh, and housing and regeneration scrutiny subcommittee chairs. Um, it also has, uh, other items on there, which includes housing management strategic risks, performance and compliance, third party contract management and third party, uh, contract performance monitoring, uh, your voice, our actions, which we just spoke about, um, uh, investment programs and tracking reports, policy plan and approvals. Uh, so, we've got a whole robust set of agenda items within that. And we'll, as a committee and the public, we'll get a full insight into, uh, the operational management of housing management within the council. Okay. Okay. In addition to the standard items, there's two items that we're recommending that come forward, um, for the next meeting in April. So, that's the quarter three TSM reports, the tent satisfaction measures, and the Legionnaires policy future items, but those are for April. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Can we agree what's set out in the report? And, and we've got now for business. Thank you for coming to our first meeting. The first meeting community. Thank you.