Transcript

Good evening, and welcome to the Housing and Regeneration Scrutiny Subcommittee meeting. My name is Councillor Bodrum Chowdhury, and I will be chairing this meeting. This meeting has been held in person with the Housing and Regeneration Scrutiny Subcommittee members, along with key participants present in the room and joining remotely. The Subcommittee members can, only people who are in the room can vote. Should a technical error occur that prevents remote attendees from participating, I will decide if and how the meeting should proceed, after taking advice from officers. This meeting has been filmed for the Council's website for public viewing. Those participating in, those participating in the meeting, will be included in the footage. I will remind members at the meeting to only speak on my direction and to engage and speak clearly into the microphone to ensure that the contributions can be properly recorded. Can you all please turn your mobile phones on silent? Keep microphones on mute except when speaking. With the exception of Scrutiny members, only turn on your video camera when speaking to you safe. Scrutiny members are encouraged to keep video cameras turned on. If members and officers joining remotely wish to speak, please use the raised hand function. Please do not use the remote meeting chart function as it will not be seen by those of us in the physical meeting. First agenda tonight, apologies. Justina, do we have any apologies? Thank you. Yes, Chair, we have apologies from Councillor Amin Rahman and Councillor Kabir Ahmed. They are both attending the extraordinary meeting for the audit committee. Thank you, Justina. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Justina. Thank you. Can you just say Paula Cottage is going to do a presentation? Paula Cottage, who was meant to give a presentation from Tenants Voices. I will be stepping in her place. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Item number one. Committee members, DPI, is there anything to declare? Anyone? No. No? Thank you. Everyone should introduce themselves. Anyone? Yes. I will start from my right. If you could introduce yourself, Councillor, thank you. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Councillor Balaluddin. I am replaced with the Sahab Amin al-Rahman. Thank you. Councillor Mohamed Chaudhry, Councillor for Myland World. I am a tenant co-op tea. Councillor Ahmed al-Kabir, Bethnal Gil East. And those who are joining us online, please, thank you. Councillor Asma Islam, Weaver's Ward. Thank you, Councillor. Susanna, can you hear us? Yes. I am Susanna. I am the leaseholder representative. Thank you. We will move on to item number two. Minutes of the previous meeting. Do members have any comments? Thank you. Yes. Yes, Councillor. Yes. Yes, Councillor. Yes, I think I asked for the Metropolitan Housing Association didn't provide data, so I can't see anything in the minutes. Thank you, Councillor. Did you get that? Metropolitan Housing. There was some data. The question was raised by the Councillor in the previous meeting. If that could be noted, thank you. Next item on our agenda, outstanding actions. Justine. Don't need to be signed. Justine. Don't need to be signed. Justine. Don't need to be signed. If you just bear with us. Thank you. We will move on to our next agenda. Outstanding actions. Paul, do you have any updates? Thank you. Thank you, Chair. I submitted an action log around with the papers. There had been a response to a couple of items and some things have been accepted that we are going to need to put them on the new scrutiny program during the next year. We will move on to our next agenda. Outstanding actions. Paul, do you have any updates? Thank you. Thank you, Chair. I submitted an action log around with the papers. There had been a response to a couple of items and some things have been accepted that we are going to need to put them on the new scrutiny program during the next year. Since sending out this action log, I did send around a reminder to people late last week. Some people have said that they are still working on the responses, but I haven't had any updates since the publication of the papers. Yes, David. Yes, there is one that was against me to circulate an update on the Regulator Social Housing Inspection and Timetable, which Karen did at the end of January. Sorry, I did not make it clear that she was responding on behalf of me, but Karen has circulated that timetable, so hopefully everyone has seen that. I think she shared it with you, Paul, on the 24th of January. Thank you. I will update the log in that case. Thank you, Paul, and thank you, David. The first item for this evening is the review of social landlord performance for quarter one and two. So with this brief introduction, I would like to welcome Karen Swift, Director for Housing and Andrea Baker. If you could introduce the item, and we will take questions after from the members. Your time starts now. Thank you. I think Mubin is going to introduce the report. Mubin here. Introduce the report, Mubin Chowdhury. Good evening, everyone. I will be presenting the landlord data for quarter one and quarter two of the 24-25 financial year. This report is a little bit different to the ones that we have had previously. We have now changed to a slide deck, but the information is the same as the previous report. So to begin with stocks and repairs. The percentage of homes that do not meet the decent home standard. Three RPs reported a non-decent rate of zero. And Tower Hamlets Council has the highest non-decency rate reporting a figure of 26.16 at quarter two. Percentage of emergency and non-emergency repairs completed on time. Four RPs had 90% of their emergency repairs completed on time in quarter two. Providence and Spitalfields reported that 100% of their non-emergency repairs were completed on time. And five other RPs had a completion rate of over 90%. Notting Hill Genesis reported a figure of 55% in quarter one, which went up to 70% in quarter two for emergency repairs. But reported the opposite trend for non-emergency repairs going down from 72% in quarter one to 50% in quarter two. For safety checks, gas safety, Swan reported a compliance rate of 97.6. All other RPs reported compliance of over 99% for their properties with Spitalfields and L&Q with a compliance rate of 100%. Fire safety, seven RPs reported a compliance rate of 100%. Asbestos, seven RPs reported a compliance rate of 100%. Tower Hamlets Council reported a compliance rate of 90.49% in quarter two, up from 79.75% in quarter one. For water safety, seven RPs again have reported a compliance rate of 100%. And all RPs reported a compliance rate of over 97%. For lift safety, all RPs reported compliance of over 95% for lift safety checks. For complaints and ASB, Providence reported the highest number of complaints per 100 properties. However, they showcased significant improvement from quarter one to quarter two. Three RPs responded to 100% of complaints on time and four more RPs responded to almost all complaints on time. For relets and vacant units, L&Q again had the highest average time for relets for both standard and major work relets. And four RPs reported an average wait time of less than 50 days for standard relets. And three RPs reported an average wait time of less than 50 days for major work relets. That's all. Thank you. Thank you, Movin Chowdhury. We will now move on to the questions. Members, do you have any questions? Councillor Chowdhury, your question, please. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. I think in the last meeting, I mentioned that when you collected the data, as a metropolitan in Thamesville, one of the housing association, who has some stocked into our homeless and specifically in my ward, but there is no data for them. And that's what I mentioned in the last meeting. And when I see even this one, there's no data about them. May I know why this happened? Number one. Number two. Another question? Yeah. And second question. When I, some of the data like, you know, the emergency repairs completed within target time and decent home standard, when I compared with the Tower Hamlets with the other, some of the other housing, landlords, Tower Hamlets is very low. Puff, I mean, what is the reason why, I mean, Tower Hamlets Council is so low. That's a good question. Thank you. Thank you, councillors. If I could just address the first point, councillor Chowdhury. The data that you have here is provided from the Tower Hamlets Housing Forum executive members. So they're the main stockholders of properties within the borough. So your Peabody's, your Clarion, your Harker, your Tower Hamlets, Eastern Homes, et cetera. That's the reason why we don't have metropolitan Thames Valley's data on here, because they're actually not part of their housing forum. If we were to request for data from them, we'd have to make a separate request outside of the meeting for them to submit on the stock that they hold within the borough, which they would have to then voluntarily submit to us. Which is why, even at the last meeting, there was no data, and there is no data for this time as well, for this report. Councillor, are you happy with the response? Or do you want that printed? Azir? If they have a stock within the borough, in our borough, then obviously, how do we scrutinise them? How do we check how they are performing? How are they treating our residents? Because at the end of the day, the people who are occupying their properties are our resident. We have the same duty with the other residents who are occupying properties within the other social housing. So, yeah, I think it's quite important for us to have some data for those as well. We can make a request to Metropolitan Thames Valley and any other landlord within the borough who owns stock, whether it be one or a hundred, to provide specific data that you request. But, as I said, the data that MUBIN's collated is obviously from the townhouse housing forum. I'm not sure if you're familiar with the forum, if you know much about how long the forum's been going on, but I can definitely get you some more information about why it's these specific landlords that have produced the data and why it's presented here at this forum, and the actual overall functions of the forum, if you'd like, if that would help. Karen, did you want to add something? Yeah, just to say that, I mean, MUBIN mentioned that the report is in a different format to the one you previously got. So, you'll see that it launches to have been some narrative in a standard report format. And I think what would have happened is that that explanation that Shannon has given you about how the data is pulled and who it's pulled from would have provided that context around the Tower Handlers Forum. But it's a valid point that you raise because we've repeatedly reported the information in the way that we've done. And Andrea is the chair of the Tower Handlers Forum from Poplar Harker. And Andrea and I have been having recent discussions around how we can broaden the membership and why wouldn't Metropolitan or Thames Valley want to be part of Tahoe when actually, as a collective, we're all sort of striving to do the same thing. So, recently, we had an all-provider session around Grenfell, the Grenfell inquiry. And we invited non-Tahoe providers to that, and we did get some. And then we've got a special one on damper mould. And again, we'll take those two things away as actions. Are you happy with that, Councillor? Yep, thank you. Any other questions? Yeah, Councillor? Oh, sorry. Yeah, the second question. There was a second question. What was that, Councillor? A comparison between Tahoe Hamlets and the other social landlords. Some of the areas, the performance, Tahoe Hamlets performance is very low. So, what is the reason for that? Thank you. Councillor? Karen, do you want to answer that or anyone on the panel? Thank you. It's probably best if I pick up the point on emergency repairs. I mean, the figure that you're seeing in front of you is Q1 and Q2. At Q3, so the period up to December 2024, I'm pleased to say the emergency repairs performed, so he is moving in the right direction. Decent homes. Decent homes. So, we were at, I think it was 20, 20.4% in Q1, and it deteriorated to 26% in Q2. In Q3, it's come back in again to 23%, and we've got a year-end target to try and get. What are the reasons for that performance compared to other landlords? I think it's largely about historic underperformance in the capital program and actually putting the investment in to get the stock up to decent home standards, which is why we're pleased that we've now got a significant amount built into the housing revenue account business plan to allow us to step that investment up over the next few years so we can really improve the performance. But I also think, to be fair to the council, in common with a number of other big London councils, we've got some really complex stock where the investment is going to take some time to get to the right answer so we can get up to decency. So, we've got the largest number of high-rise complex buildings of any landlord in London, as an example. So, whilst we do want to step it up, I think it is worth acknowledging that, you know, we've got that backlog in. It's indicative of the reason why we self-referred stock will move in and out of decency based on condition and time period. And we wonder, next year, we'll have caught up on all of our stock condition survey information. So, no home will have stock condition survey information that is more than five years old. And that's a good place to be. Councillor, happy with that? Yep. First question from Councillor Belal. I'll come to you. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you very much. And my question to you is very short and simple. What is the most common complaint and what action we're taking to address this? And I've got another question to you. What steps are we taking to improve repair being achieved with a specific report time to a lot of times? Thank you. Is that, you mean on the complaints and antisocial behaviour? Mubbin, you don't have that level of details about the nature of the complaints? No, we just collect numbers. I mean, in terms of our own stock, we can tell you that that is primarily around repairs and also the contact centre driving down some of the complaints on the repairs. Yes, thanks, Karen. So, in the complaints I've looked at and the stage one and stage two complaints I've reviewed, I think the most common cause of a repair complaint is us not properly explaining what's going to happen next. So we're very good at doing a very simple repair, but when we're trying to do a more complex repair, this is when the operative is going to come back and this is what they're going to do next. So one of the things we're looking to introduce very shortly in the next two or three weeks is next steps cards. So any resident will be given a card by the operative and on that card it will say what happens next and who they can contact if they've got any queries. We think that will help reduce a number of calls coming back into the contact centre and the frustration residents have sometimes with not knowing what is happening next. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor. Happy? I hope. Councillor Asma online, your question, please. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. So can I ask some questions again around the non-decent standard? So I heard your answer a little while ago about the stock conditions and everything and the investment that we want to make going forward. And I get that. I understand that and sympathise with some of the challenges. But I just want more of an understanding, more of a context around this and our numbers looking the way it is. Because if we were to make a comparison to, say, Poplahaka, who has, again, its old council stock, similar age, there might be some places that you might say is different and slightly older and has more complexities, like, say, for instance, the boundary. But in the whole, in the majority, it's the same sort of age, it's had the same, it's had the regeneration around the similar time. Why is our numbers looking the way it is? If we have understanding of that already, that would be really helpful. The lift safety data, it would be interesting to know if the complexities are still the same as what we've been suffering after post-Brexit and doing COVID with contracts and stuff. With repairs, I wanted to come back. I've heard some of your answers about communication. I agree with that. And just like residents understanding what's happening next. But with all due respect, I think as a councillor, what I do see is all like some of the problems that happens in repairs are from like really, it can be really simple stuff to really complex stuff. But there's a systematic error that seems to occur in the way we handle repairs. So something as simple as unblocking someone's sink seems to still take that much longer as someone who where there's been a leak in the property or in the building in the block itself. And I know that's a lot more complex. And, you know, having the communication to explain to residents why it's the case is definitely something we need to improve on. And lastly, I wanted to ask if you can help me understand the vacant and the relet sort of data. So is the last table on the slides, the ones that explain how many properties are vacant? And I know the reletting numbers are quite good compared to others. I just wanted to, if you could explain how that table was put together, just for my own understanding, please. Thank you. Hi, Asma, I'll take the last question that you had on the table. And yes, the number on the two columns, quarter one and quarter two, is the number of vacant units reported. And the figure on the right is just the general housing needs stock, just the overall stock. Can I just come back on, I think, what was a good question from Councillor Islam around why are we lagging so far behind landlords like Poplar Harka on stock decency? And I do accept the challenge. I think local authorities generally are performing significantly poorer on decent homes than housing associations, not universally. But I think that statement is true more broadly. I think there are a number of factors around that. I think local authorities often struggle to attract the right skill set for asset management, which can be a challenge. I think also there's been quite a lot of change within the sector with a number of Almos in London coming in house, which has caused some disruption. I hope that by stepping closer to this issue as a council, we can get on top of it because we're getting closer to the detail than perhaps we were when we had the Almos in place. But I suppose actually one of the best people to ask to answer that question about why are Poplar Harka doing so well might be Anne, if I could possibly ask my colleague at the end of the table. I do agree that the Poplar Harka stock is in good condition. So, Andrea, do you want to talk a little bit about how you've done it? To be fair to my council colleagues, we benefited from a huge investment and retrofitting as part of the Housing Choice Stock Transfer Programme. So, we were in the position then, and I think a lot of the stock transfer organisations got a huge injection of funding, and then it was about maintaining that. We've also got new build stock, which helps, but I would certainly agree with both Karen and David that it's about knowing your stock. That's the first step, and actually it can be quite painful. So, again, making that public, that you're on that journey, I think is really important so that residents understand nothing's been hidden. But, yeah, I don't think you can compare like with like just because of the history of our investment and our management of the stock. Thank you. Malibu, your question, please. Thank you. Yeah, hi. My actual questions were kind of in line with what's been asked so far. I think the first one kind of data collection and how accurate that is. And I think if you look at, for example, the decent homes and is an example where perhaps the council stock is about 20-25% and the others are performing much better. Are they entirely accurate in that regards? And so how are they collected? And in terms of, again, from a turf perspective, how are they monitored and benchmarked across the different organisations? And the previous question or whoever, that would be a quite useful thing to do. The other thing I think that would be useful, especially for councillors who do not have a background in housing or regeneration, which I do, but they might not necessarily have, is in terms of have the definition of what decent homes is, because it excludes things like kitchen bathrooms, windows and so on. And I think that would be quite useful to know what is a decent home standard and what does it include and what does it exclude. And then I think it would be easier to kind of understand and benchmark what is the condition of the stock is. Sorry, if you could just bear with me, Mubin Chowdhury. I've just got a message from Councillor Asma. Her repair question wasn't answered and she also has a follow-up. If that could be answered, please, first, before we go into Mahbub's questions. Thank you. Thank you. I think that was a question on the error in the way we handle repairs and communication. I mean, I can say we are now looking at lessons learnt as part of our complaint learning. So, if we've got repairs complaints, we are looking at what is the root cause of the repair complaint and what it is that we can do differently to improve the service. And I already mentioned that we're looking to use next step cards. We're also looking to do more training with the contact centre. So, the upfront triage work, the telephone work we do in the office to identify the correct repair. We're doing more work in that area. We're also working with our supply chain to make sure their support services are keeping residents updated on the course of the repair. And we're also, Mears, who are our main repairs contractor, we've asked them to put more resource into our contract to try and clear some of the overdue work. Because it's that overdue work that generates a lot of telephone calls. What's happening in my repair? When are they coming back? So, if we can start keeping the work running more quickly, jobs finishing more quickly, then there's less need for follow-up calls and ongoing communication. So, there's a lot of work happening in this space. And you will be aware, I think, from the December meeting when we mentioned there was an end-to-end repairs review happening. That piece of work started, we're now into the action plan. And some of those things I've just mentioned to you are in our repairs action plan. So, there's a lot of work happening in that space. Very happy to come back at a future meeting, do a slot on responsive repairs, if that's what the councillors committee, the scrutiny committee, want to hear. Thank you. Councillor Islam, do you want to come back on that? Yeah. Yeah. So, thank you very much. And I understand repairs is such a challenging piece of work for all councils across the country. What will be really helpful for members and councillors if officers feel open to it at some point? Obviously, I understand regulators are, you're very busy with regulators at the moment with our self-referral, and we can wait until we have an outcome. But just understanding, now that our stock has come back to the council, it would be really good if officers would open up how the operation works. So, if members could come and see how the call centre works, how the repairs, just so we have an understanding of what that journey looks like, just will be helpful. And it's actually quite helpful when we talk to residents as well. The second thing I wanted to come back on was really, Andrea, thank you for your answer about the comparison I did. You talked about, you know, Poplahaka having the investment. Please just like, this is more for my own education, but my understanding is when we've created the ALMO, it was, it came with that same level of investment. So, because the stock is now back with the council, it's just trying to understand, so that in the future, when we're looking at our performance, is how have we got ourselves in this place? So, is it because we haven't done stock conditions as often enough? Was it not correct? Were we not able to get, like, a really substantive, comprehensive understanding of what our stock looks like? Were we behind when it comes to investing on a yearly, annual basis? It's more, because I don't really understand how, because if I do a small comparison with another local authority that I know quite well, it's just something seems to be missing for us, and I just wanted to understand what that was. Thank you, Councillor. Did you want to comment on that? Yeah, I mean, I think the way I would explain that is, if you look at the way we undertook stock condition surveys in the past, we had a regular program, and then in 2020, COVID hit, and that year we didn't do any surveys. We didn't do any in the following year as well. So, we went for two years without any survey information, and then in 22, 23, 24, we're trying to catch up. So, you can see that just under 50% of our stock condition data is within five years. The rest of it is older than five years, and when the data is older than five years, it's unreliable, and you have to make assumptions, and you make safe assumptions about the condition of the stock. You never assume the stock will pass decent homes until you've been to look at it. That's the reason why we're in a catch up situation, and that's the reason why we have a lot of decent home sailors. Around the corner, we have a £140 million capital investment program that's due to start at the beginning of next year. That will allow us to do the catch up piece of work, and that will go hand in hand with the stock condition information, which will be updated. So, the program will be agile, and it will deliver the investment the council needs. Yes, Karen. Yeah. So, it was just to cover off the point that Mubin said about what makes up a decent home tick, and I'm sure Ian can explain how that measurement is made, but the regulator is capturing this information. So, when the regulator is acting at that regulator level about the figures that you've got in front of you. Ian wasn't here when we came out of COVID, but there was a period after COVID when I think everyone went back to full capacity. Thank you. Mabu, do you have a follow-up, or you're fine with that? Okay. I'll go to Susanna, who's joining us online. Susanna, your question. Hi, thank you. Yes. Thank you, Chair. I think the question I wanted to ask is partly explained by Karen. Karen Swift, thank you. Because I feel that it's not just the delay in the surveys, but it is like the massive delays in major works, and the less than satisfactory repair system that we have, that probably constituted to this huge, you know, the higher propensity for homes falling below decent standards. I guess my question now would be, with 140 million pounds in capital, you know, to fund the capital works, is that really sufficient? That's a question here. And just from my personal experience on the boundary estate, we had major works delayed, not just for years, but for decades, and a lack of cyclical maintenance, which I feel is not just unique to my estate on the boundary estate, but probably to other estates as well. So I think my question is, are we going to see some light at the end of the tunnel here, or will we be looking at this situation and this problem, like, years from now? Thank you. Yeah, thanks, Suzanne. That was a great question. I mean, what I would say is, it doesn't stop 140 million pounds. That's a levelling investment over four years. After the end of the four years, then there will be another programme. So this is not 140 finished. We don't do anything more. This is continuous investment in our homes. And bear in mind what Karen said about capacity. That's a lot of work to deliver over four years. And I'm confident we can do that. We couldn't do more, but I'm confident we could do that in four years. But at the end of the four years, then we will prioritise the next round of expenditure and the next round of expenditure. Suzanne, do you want to follow up on that, or are you happy with the answers? Yeah, I'm happy with the answer. I just want to say one more point that it is not for this team that the problem existed. It is something that existed for many, many years. So I just want to frame that context, yeah. Thank you. Any questions, anyone? No? Okay, now we will move on to our next agenda, 4.2, resident engagement. And particularly the work of the tenant voice panel. Thank you. Sorry, Chair. Sorry. I think our co-op team, Mr. Anam, had a follow-up question to the Tukhuf, and why about additional members joining? I don't think that was addressed. If you don't mind, if I could just quickly address that. Is that okay? So... Sorry, if you couldn't speak, I can't. I could barely hear you. Can you hear me now? Yes. So, Mr. Anam had a question regarding about external memberships for various RPs, such as, obviously, those who aren't already members of the TAMLIS Housing Forum. And I don't think that was addressed. So, if you don't mind, I'll just quickly address that right now. So, obviously, the TAMLIS Housing Forum is an RP-led forum. It has the executive. It has subgroups within it that tackle salient topics such as, obviously, fire safety, community investment. And those, even the subgroups are chaired by the RP execs themselves. Andrew is, obviously, the leader of the executive, who kind of follow up in terms of the strategic objectives. The issue we have in terms of wanting more RPs to come on board is the fact that they own stock elsewhere, say, on the other side of London. So, they pool all their resources and most of their efforts to where most of their stock lies. So, that's where we have an issue of saying, please come to our forum, join in, help us tackle these salient issues that, obviously, affect you all within the housing sector. But, because of, obviously, maybe capacity resources, they often decline or are unable to. However, we are still looking at ways where we can get them involved. So, as Karen alluded to earlier on, we actually had a meeting about a week ago regarding the Phase 2 Grenfell report and fire safety. And we invited everyone from RHAG to MTVH. The list goes on. And we had a total member of about 39 attendees attend who aren't members of TOHOF, who took an active interest in, obviously, what we're planning to do in terms of our borough statement as well. And I think this is where we obviously want them to engage, be part of the subgroups. However, it is actually optional for them. And that's where we kind of have to look at ways to try and sell the forum to them. But it's for not wanting them, for wanting to join, basically. I hope that answers your question. Okay, thank you. We'll move on now. Thanks for that. Thank you very much. Obviously, Councillor Kabir Ahmad is not here tonight. He's got an extraordinary meeting with the audit committee. I would like to ask David Joyce, Director of Housing and Regeneration, to present this item. Thank you. David, over to you. Yeah, I will do. I will just say that the tenants voice panel is a crucial part of our overall resident engagement structure. We're really grateful for the work that the residents do. And, you know, they're really getting stuck into some very important topics. But I am going to hand over to Leslie, who's going to introduce the item, and then introduce the member of the panel, who's very kindly come tonight. Thank you. Yes, I'd like to introduce Danielle Lamarche, a member of the tenants panel. Paula Cottage, the Chair, was due to attend tonight, but she hasn't found the illness. So, Danielle has stepped in at the last minute, so we're very grateful to her. The ask of the presentation was threefold. What work the panel has done so far? Are residents voices being heard? And has engagement with those residents improved? And we did discuss this at the last meeting of the Tenants' Voice in January, which was a meeting observed by the regulator. And we've drawn it together together, and hopefully it'll all make sense. So, the Tenants' Voice panel was established in 2004, in May, following the insourcing of Tower Hamlets Homes. And it was set up as a resident-led voice to ensure that the tenants of the council have their needs, concerns, and aspirations listened to, heard, and acted upon. And its scope and remit was threefold. It was to be a consultative body on policies, strategies, service design for housing management. It was also an advisory and challenge forum, using data to oversee performance and make recommendations. And thirdly, a scrutiny function, to undertake its own reviews and make recommendations. And in our approach, we've tried to be very open and to listen, and it has been reported back to us that they've noticed. Tenants have noticed a change in tone since we started our panel meetings. The composition is up to eight tenants and three leaseholders, but we currently have three tenant vacancies. And the current governance is that the lead member for housing, who is not with us tonight, attends a couple of meetings a year. But we're now going to strengthen that with the establishment of the new subcommittee of the Cabinet. And the terms of reference are going to be reviewed in conjunction with the panel, who have also made some recommendations around expanding its focus on vulnerability in particular. I've just set out on the next slide some training program that we've devised. Training has already been delivered on regulation, making scrutiny work. But this isn't the end of the program. This is the beginning of the program. And we are going to get, we're looking at some tailored training from TPAS. And Danielle will talk later about some other suggestions that the panel have for their own training. So, at this point, I'll hand over to Danielle to talk about the work of the panel so far. Thank you. So, just in summary, we've, so far we've attended five meetings. And they occur bimonthly, so every two months. And we've agreed to a work plan for the 2024-25 financial year. So, we've agreed to performance measures, which were reported at each meetings. In other words, what sort of information we find helpful. We've talked a bit about formats, whether there's too much in there. You know, how better to make that accessible for people who might not read these sort of reports every day. And we've looked at complaints analysis, which we'd like to have reported to every other meeting. It's the sort of topic that comes up most frequently amongst tenants. A lot of our work, even though we're resident-led, because we only meet every two months, very often we're asked to give our views on subjects. In that sense, sometimes our agendas are actually being led by the local authority leading us to say something about subjects, something about subjects which we sometimes feel we don't know enough about, because we don't know about the resources available, et cetera. So, just jumping back to what we said about training, some of us who sat on the former Tower Amherst Homes panels were given the opportunity, for example, to go and visit HSC, or we wanted to go and visit the repairs, see how the repairs team operates, because it's very easy to say, we want this, that and the other, without any idea of what the competing priorities might be, what the size of these facilities might be, what the issues might be about stout maybe. Language, I personally have to say, I bank on a lot about language, about how to access people who might not be digitally inclined, who might not use emails, who might have language barriers, who might have mental health issues, et cetera, et cetera. So, communication, how does this work? But we have, so in that respect, we have given feedback, for example, to consultations about ASBOs, estate patrols and proposed changes. We're often given the opportunity, for example, to join other groups outside of the panel to give feedback. For example, I sat in an ASBO meeting recently and made myself very unpopular, because my line is that there is flurries, people are kicked out, there's a lot of drama, the drug dealers come back. It doesn't feel like good value for money. But my personal question is, if these are the people who are going to be taking care of our services as we get older, which we are, surely we should be investing in their skills rather than criminalising them. That's my personal position on that, which never goes down very well. We've talked about engagement strategies, particularly around vulnerable tenants. Information leaflets, videos on damp mould were asked, for example, whether the presentation is accessible, is the language accessible, the visuals, is it easy to understand? We've looked at the council strategic version. We've looked at a draft policy for vulnerable residents, which, given that a lot of housing is allocated to the most vulnerable residents, is a constant phenomena, not very easy to deal with. And questions about how do you deal with these things without creating a major, without throwing people out of their flats? What kind of breaks are there? What kind of opportunities are there for residents to actually be able to help monitor and communicate? Very often residents are actually excluded from resources. It doesn't feel like it's being met in the ways that it might be. It needs to be discussed. I'm ad-living because I didn't write this. The work so far, we've looked at updates on regulation on social housing, consumer standards. We've attended training on these sort of topics. A little bit light, could be more in depth. We've attended workshops focused on repairs, end-to-end reviews. The feeling was to understand repair issues. We need a better understanding of the trails that get followed, possibly visits. As mentioned, we looked at vulnerable residents, HSC. What happens when my neighbour who's called five times cannot get through to SHC? There's a huge repeat. What does come up a lot is people saying that more face-to-face, office-based, neighbourhood-based services would really be a help. But again, we don't know about your constraints. We've been observed by the RSH on the 23rd of January. We've provided feedback as part of the inspection process. We're keen to know what's going to come of that. And the feedback. One of the strong, strong views is that there needs to be more accountability, that we need to be able to see more outcomes. Sorry, Daniela. You've got a minute. Sorry, thank you. I'm almost there. The current structure of meetings. I'm sure you can come back with the questions. You can come back and give us the... Okay. Well, just quickly. Yeah, thank you. The current meeting structures, we have a very short time to meet, to discuss things. We want to do more subcommittees, a bit more depth. And more work like looking at the end-to-end repairs. More looking at... Okay, well, I'll skip these bits. We want to know more about how the council deals with vulnerable residents. Again, that's something that residents might be able to give some input to. And how do we improve engagement, communication for people who might not be digital, who might have language challenges and obstacles to face. It's really early days. The council itself, the housing department has gone through a lot of changes. So it's, in fairness, going through transition, it's harder for us to be able to meaningfully input. And I think I've covered everything, let's see. Anything glaringly important? Very happy to have things like East End News, which goes out to everybody. More needs to use that rather than duplicating. I hope that's helpful. Okay, thank you. Councillors, members, any questions? Mahbub? Thank you. Hiya. Thank you for the presentation and also stepping in last moment. I guess probably more question to perhaps Leslie or, I don't know, Karen if that's. So I think there are eight tenant spots of which three are vacant. And I remember when the recruitment happened last year, one of the things that was decided that to exclude TRA members or chairs of TRAs from being on it. And I'm part of my local TRA. And I think where we now have a case of three vacant tenant spots, I think we should increase that scope and fill those spots and bringing residents who are passionate, who are experienced, who would like to contribute, instead of leaving them empty, is the kind of first thing I would say. Second thing I think around the scope and the remit, and to make it effective, I think, you know, it's probably, and I say this because previously when there was THH, I used to be part of the residence panel, I used to be part of the board. So I do have a bit of an engagement. I think to give it teeth, I think it's about looking around specific scrutiny issues, and then the residence panel to be able to make specific recommendations, whatever it might be. It might be ASB issues, it could be damp and mould, you know, it could be the state of our state. So whatever it is to pick one or two specific issues to work on it as a residence body, and then to make specific recommendations to the council right to the senior top. And then that's how it will be effective, and then that can come and report it out future scrutiny sessions here. Thank you. I completely agree, but that's why we brought up the factor of time. We wind up having to look at other issues, and so the reason that we're interested in subcommittees, which used to happen with the Tower Helmets Homes residence panels, was that that gives you time to actually begin to come to grips with the issue. In terms of vacancies, one of the things I personally have repeatedly asked for is whether we could have some young people represented on the panel. Young meaning, you know, over the age of 16, 18, whatever. But I think if we're going to talk about problems with ASBO and young people on estates, we need to hear those voices too. And we also talked about, you know, trying to get different profiles. We used to have, in the previous incarnation, Somali residents. And also people who might, I don't know if we're allowed to do this, but we had the voices of people who sublet from leaseholders. Because very often they have a very different situation to the rest of us when things go wrong. We are trying to find people to fit those. I think just a quick follow up. And I think it's good to kind of increase the scope and the demographics of the group. And one of the challenges, especially to get young people in kind of post-16 or post-18. And although I, you know, accept the fact that the role is voluntary, is there any capacity, especially in trying to engage young people in the capacity to kind of do certain things to encourage? Could you say on the recruitment, we did do a couple of big campaigns. We wrote to everybody who was interested in, as part of the in-sourcing consultation. 1,400 people said they would be interested in getting more involved. We did write to all of those people. The reason for the exclusion of post-holders in TRAs was that we wanted a variety of voices. And I agree that it's not really worked, and we need to go out again. I don't know how we get young people involved, but I think it's a really good conversation for us to have. Can I throw that out? I've actually signposted, I've worked with people at local mosques who've done leadership training with young people, who've developed quite a range of skills and who would be very good candidates. So looking at projects around the borough with young people where those skills have already been worked on. Citizens UK also does that kind of thing. Thank you, Daniela. Yes, that could be noted. To involve the local LMC, are you talking about the mosque? There was a, I mean I was personally involved with supporting a program which was developing leadership with young people around issues of life crime. And the whole point being that they learn communication skills, they learn to think through strategies. So going to people who've done that kind of training so that they might have better skills to be able and confidence to get involved, who've actually spoken publicly. Thank you. Thank you. Councillor Kabuy, your question please. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for the presentation and thank you for attending last minute for covering someone. I have a question. And at the Council considering the feedback from the tenants was given the presentation and when will the respond be sent? So we absolutely agree that it's very early days. We've had five meetings so far and a lot of that's been finding our feet and choosing, getting the terms of reference discussed. And I know we haven't done it properly, and choosing the performance indicators for example. So there, but there is a, definitely a feeling now that there's a rhythm to the meetings. And you'll think you're, the panel is focusing now on issues of vulnerability and issues around the HSC. But both two areas that we want, very much encourage a scrutiny review of. In terms of response, when we did it together, we absolutely agree with what's written down here. But you know, it was co-produced. So there won't be enough formal feedback as such. We're just going to try and put some of these recommendations. I think you can see the challenge that the panel members are giving us. But also really positive, optimistic, helpful suggestions on that final slide. And we're going to try and put as many of those into place as possible. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Now, questions from . Your question, please. Thank you. Yes. Thank you for the update. Really appreciate it. Especially considering it's not even been a year yet, and you've only had five meetings. That sounds a hell of a lot of work that's already gone into this. I think it's quite amazing to see that while this is set up, like the training, the consideration for training and lots of training has already been taken up. And hopefully we see a lot more of that as a continuous capacity building for this panel. I would say because housing is such an overarching theme that we should really make sure that the chair and all the members actually have the training when it comes to how to support vulnerable residents, tenants, the safeguarding aspect of domestic violence, all of that. And advice, like housing is linked into so many other things. Like I know we've talked about antisocial behavior. We talked about knife crime. We talked about just that neighborhood, that whole placemaking, how all of that fits in. And that could be really helped with some training. I'd like to ask a question about, as a committee, how would you like us to work with you? What would work? Is there anything we can do to help? I also want to second what my colleague has said about the vacancies that are available. I absolutely believe that TRAs have a lot of experience, skills, skill sets that's already there. And if they, you know, if chairs and other members want to be part of this, I really do think we should explore this because there's expertise already there that can help really make this panel really strong. And I also want to say that from my own experience sitting on the board for so many years of Tahamnus Homes that having subcommittees. So I also do absolutely endorse the idea of having subcommittees. For example, we are from Tahamnus Homes when we had the customer experience task force. That was really eye opening and it really did help improve some of the service. And I know if Goulam is in the room, I don't know if he is today, but he can speak to that a lot. And so there's lots of good work that's been done basically. And I look forward to hearing what happens next. But how can we help? How can this committee contribute towards all the work that you're doing and the capacity building that you're trying to do? Thank you, Councillor. You said some of it when I was going to say, how can we help? Thank you. Over to you. So, a really small thing. And so whenever you sit on a panel like that, and I think anyone who does, there are times where you feel like, you know, is this worth it? Am I wasting my time? Because you sometimes feel like you repeat yourself. And there is one little thing I haven't got my head around. And I'm speaking as an individual. I think my colleagues would agree. For example, I know for a fact that there's housing advice offered here in the town hall in the front, right next to the entrance. And on two occasions, I've even heard a poor Peruvian man who spoke very little English trying to get help. But on two occasions, the people at the reception were not aware of what happens, what housing advice is offered at the door. And I've raised this both at the reception and said, has anybody, you know, told you this? Have you got a list of things that, you know, services like voluntary sector services where you could send people? Or, you know, can the panel maybe get this signposted? These are really simple things that shouldn't require a meeting. And I don't know how those sort of really simple fix-its could be better addressed from outside. Or, let's see, I don't know. It's a really small thing, but it's just an illustration of something that's really simple to do. And when you go to a reception and 50 yards away there's someone who could help the person asking for help. Who's been sent away with nothing. Those sort of things. I don't know. That's communication. Maybe there's some accountability service that, you know, check us. I think Karen wants to come in. Thank you. Yes. So, I'm more than happy to have a conversation with you, you know, not in a meeting. We can be housing management officers there. Sorry. You have officers there who are from the housing management service. So, if you're a tenant or leaseholder, you can have a conversation with them. But there were people coming in for lots of other queries which might be related to their homelessness or their threatened with homelessness. So, what I'm saying is that housing management colleagues are sort of guests in what is a bigger council offer. But what you're saying is that we're not necessarily joining up that council offer as best as we could in that residence hub. So, I'd be interested in hearing your experience and then I can link you up with our manager of the residence hub. Sorry. On that particular point, my understanding is that the Limehouse project, which is a community project which gives advice, actually offers services sessions weekly from here. Yes, they do. And that's all they do. They just help members of the public. So, that kind of little service, I don't understand why it's not signposted. So, it's a stupid example, it's a small example, but I don't know how the mechanisms could be better when we raise this among a hundred things in a meeting. How could those be followed up better? I don't know. If you're raising it here, but I'm sure when you have the meetings, the tenant voice meetings, I'm sure Leslie could, if she feels there's another way in which she could pick that up. I mean, Leslie and I see each other in the office every day. If she feels something's come up at the tenant's voice, which requires a more of a, in a sort of iterative, intuitive way. Leslie, did you want to come in? If I could just add, in terms of the new governance arrangements, that will strengthen things a lot because there'll be feedback from the panel regularly. They'll be updating on their work plan and they'll be making recommendations and you can have your input there and your support will be most welcomed. Councillor Asma, did you have a follow up or you've got another question? I have to make this comment and I can't get away with it. I mean, thank you for volunteering and doing this and it's absolutely worth it. You know, you were saying you ask yourself if this is worth it. This is totally worth it because this will improve the lives of people that, you know, are living in council stock, firstly, and secondly, you said you don't know what the answers are. It's not necessary for you to have the answers. Keep reporting. Keep telling us what the problems are. Keep using the structures. And our job is to find those solutions. Thank you. That does actually, that's really helpful. Thank you. It gives us hope. And thank you. That was very kind. We'll move to the next question. Susanna, your question, please. Thank you. Yes. My question is directed to, sorry, Karen, probably to you. With the different groups that we formed and I definitely echo the fact that we are all trying to be effective in what we do. How do we then kind of make sure that not any single group are working in silos and how are we communicating as a total group? Because there's a lot of talk about linking the tenants voice to the scrutiny subcommittee and also linking them to the cabinet that's newly formed. And of course, to the residents, the wider group, you know, the public and the residents who have concerns. So so how what is the kind of linkages that we are seeing going forward and to make sure that it's a coherent kind of communication chain and not not in silos. So, Susanna, I think Leslie started to allude to that at the very end of that last discussion when she talked about how the governance has been strengthened. So I don't know if you saw the housing cabinet subgroup that met a couple of weeks ago, but there will be a place that the report from the tenants voice will go to the cabinet subgroup every every time the cabinet subgroup meets. So there is a join up in terms of the work that you're actively doing on the ground and your feedback and your reports. They will be they would want to engage. Thank you, Susanna, do you have a follow up or you're happy with that? Yeah, maybe a follow up comment, probably through the work plans, we could we could. Do you think it's an area that we could kind of align to to to make sure that through the work plans? Paul would like to come in on that, Susanna, if you could just bear with us. Thank you. Yeah, what we did because of course we set our work program last year before the tenants voice panel came into being. A lot of it was set, but we did have this slot here where it was going to be some sort of resident engagement. And as soon as we found out about the voice panel, we put that on because we were very anxious to to work with them. But Susanna, you're absolutely right. Obviously, in the summer, again, we will be reviewing the work program. And then members can have their say about how much involvement I'm sure that we want to have some more involvement with the tenants panel. But we can formalize that because there's a lot of changes that are coming along with with the cabinet subcommittee and the tenants voice panel. But certainly all of that can be considered then. But we were you're right. We were very anxious to work with the panel as soon as it came into place. And that's why we put this spot on here. Thank you. Next question. Councillor Chowdhury, your question, please. Thank you, chair. Thank you for your report. How are you promoting or doing the publicity? Because as a councillor, this is the first time I've come across this tenant voice, because I think in my area, there'll be many residents, they'll be very happy to engage. So that's one thing. How are you promoting yourself? Number one. Number two, we have TRAs in most of the areas. So is that something, a duplication? I mean, why do you need a tenant voice? Because we have TRAs in most of the areas and they're working very, I think, engaging with the residents and they have got first-hand experience. They're listening from the, so why do you need this or how you collaborate, how you work, liaise with them? Thank you. Good question, Councillor. Any officers or maybe you could answer? I think the difference, and I was having this conversation earlier today, the difference is that when you're a TRA, and I know that the block I've lived in the same block for 40 years, we've never had a TRA because we're too small. So the blocks just down the road, no things, have meetings in power that we don't. So I think it's really important to have the groups who don't have that, have the TRA there. But I think the difference between a TRA where you would bring issues, like if somebody needs repair help or something's not working, to the attention of whoever might be able to help. I think the difference is that the resident's voice is meant to be stand back and instead of my saying my neighbour needs help, which they probably do, it's like, okay, my neighbour's not getting an answer on the phone. Something in the system isn't working. So it's not about the individual, it's about trying to scrutinise how the system overall works and whether it works for somebody who might not have the network with the TRAs. So I think they both have really important functions. In terms of representation, one thing that I'm conscious of is that we've tried to, there's an effort to try and get representatives geographically spread so that you don't have a lot of people from one area speaking and nobody represented other kinds of estates or other kinds of places. So that kind of variety is important. In terms of publicity, we don't do it ourselves. I mean, I have my networks where I live and people I know across the borough. So we do have information on the website. And as I say, we do big mail outs and we have done things online, but it's something we could do a lot more on. We're planning a little insert in the East End newsletter. But yes, we do need more members and there is a slot within the terms of reference for a sub-tenant of a leaseholder, which again, we weren't able to fill this time. We had that in a previous iteration of the resident panel. So it's all a work in progress. And the TRA element, I think we probably could do more to work with the TRAs. We had a nice joint meeting, didn't we, when you were interviewed by the inspectors. We used to attend, and I'm speaking, I know it's a different body, but in the Tarahum Homes Residence Panel, which I took part in, we used to have more crossover meetings with Residence Association. And that was really useful. There was very strong bonds and it helps each group inform the other. So, yeah, agreed. Okay, thank you for that. So, yeah, carry on, Councillor. Thank you. Thank you for the answer. So I try to understand, yes, there are people who cannot have a TRA, you know, the minority group or, you know, hard to reach. But what I, from your answer, what I didn't understand, how are you reaching those people? I mean, you want to represent them. Obviously, this, I mean, one of the justification to have a tenant voice. Yes, I understand. But how are you reaching those people now? I think I didn't get that from you. Thank you. I mean, speaking as an individual, because, you know, there are people on the panel who have been in Residence Associations, et cetera. So those networks are there. In the case of, for example, my block is very small. So when we wanted to create a Residence Association, we were told you had to have 100 people. We'll never have that. So we often get ignored. We often don't get the same services that bigger blocks do. In terms of hearing voices for myself, I mean, I both know residents in my area. But, and I also have worked for 40 years across the voluntary sector, which helps because I hear all the time about people whose needs might not be met in the way that they feel it should be. And so, again, the difference, I think, between a TRA, which will raise issues and try to improve services for residents, is also trying to stand back as a scrutiny panel to say, not, I want someone to help my neighbour who needs some work done and this hasn't been done, although that will come up as an example, but to try and see, okay, if we can't find information on the website about parking, for example, nobody can. So instead of it being about a particular group of tenants and their needs, it's about trying to look at overall everybody who might and might not be able to access service. And we, our observations are informed by our own, but also from the feedback we get from other people around us, other residents that we know, other networks that we have about what's not happening, which is supposed to be happening for them. So not too similar in that sense from a residents' association, but less focused on a single estate or a block or, you know, this area needs this. It's trying to look at it a bit more broadly. I don't know if that helps. Thank you. Councillor, happy? Sorry, I didn't initially get the answer. My question is, was... Sorry, Councillor, sorry, just bear with me. Can I, it might help, bringing David, please, over to you. Just bear with me. Thank you. Yeah, and if I can just say, I think Daniela's really eloquently sort of described how tenant voice complements some of the other mechanisms that we've got, like our TRA chairs. And I suppose, and I don't know if this is answering your question, but when you said, how do we get to those voices as well? And to be fair, I don't think that's the voice of, that's the role of tenant voice. I think that's the role of officers within my housing department. And in particular, we've got Folk Row Hawk and his community partnerships team who do a lot of work supporting tenant and residents association, supporting residents who want to set up a TRA as well. So in areas where there isn't one, but perhaps they want to have one, we go in and do a lot of work to try and support residents there. But also, I think, although the tenant voice, for instance, have done amazing work on our damp and mould campaign and shaping the, the literature and the adverts that you would have seen all around the borough. But we would also share those kind of consultation materials with our TRAs and other involved residents and the other various channels. Obviously, we put things on our website, we put things in East End Homes. So I think coming back to the tenant engagement strategy, that has a whole range of ways that we talk to residents. And that's probably the role of officers to make sure that we're using all of those mechanisms. But I can say the tenant voice is definitely having an impactful role within the mix. Because everything that we look at now that comes through, we ask what, what, what view is coming from the tenant voice? What are we hearing from TRA chairs? What are we hearing from other residents who actually have no time to get involved in any of this, but still might respond to an online consultation? Thank you, David. Council Chair, did you want to come in or follow up on that? Thank you. I hear the importance in how they're working and what they want to do. That's great. While I'm trying to understand that those people who cannot have a TRA, how tenant voice is engaging with them and encouraging them to join tenant voice. What's the method being used to reach to this, those groups, those isolated or who cannot have a TRA? What's the method being used? Thank you. I mean, I would say that that's our job. I don't think that's the job of the tenant's voice to go around and try and form TRAs where there aren't TRAs. We have a particular team called the community partnerships team who really try to support TRAs being formed. So I would, I mean, I would say that it's the Council's job to try and strengthen the TRAs that exist but enable new ones to be formed. They've got, they've got their work cut out. I mean, I was, I was just looking at the things then trying to make that distinction between what a TRA does and what a testing of those. Are these the right sort of, you know, content for, for residents. They looked at the draft vulnerability policy and they also, they looked at the, they did a focus workshop on repairs end-to-end review. So just, you know, those have just probably happened in the last particular block, which is what I would want a TRA to be telling us. In fact, we're actually specifically in, in TPAS training told that it's not the place to raise complaints or repairs. That isn't the role of the scrutiny. The scrutiny is to be able to take a broader view and to be able to help inform how all tenants could access information or services. If I feel we don't do it deeply enough, it's because it's, it takes a bit of time for each new person to, to find their feet and understand what they're meant to be doing. And also that, as I mentioned, sometimes if you don't know what resources are involved, it feels like you're skating the super, the surface of an issue, rather than having the time to really understand a bit better how it works, one end to the other. Thank you. Councillor Asma Islam, your questions, please. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for those answers. I think for my colleague Councillor Chaudry, I think he's a bit confused because, and this part hasn't been explained by officers, is where, where our stock was in-house as an Almore, Talhamnets Homes. We had a board and we had a governance structure with that board. And we also had obviously housing subcommittee and we had the cabinet and decision-making within the council. When the stock came in-house, that board had to dissolve. And this is an extra layer of a structure that helps. It's not supposed to combat being a combative format with TRAs or the housing subcommittee or the cabinet. It's supposed to work in collaborative way along. So it's like a machinery. Every part has a part to play and it feeds into each other. And the other thing about this is you've got to understand like other council, local authorities, where they haven't got an Almore, or they do have an Almore, they have a setup of this in their local authorities in some shape or form. Every local authority differs, but a voice, a resident voice panel is a common thing amongst other boroughs. And once this, hopefully this panel is fully fledged and it's working and it's had all the support it needs, I think it will make more sense as we go along. But there was a question that was put to the committee about it really depends on us on how we want to engage and how often we want to engage. Can I please, Paul, can I please propose that if it's possible, can we put this, can we have this recorded that we should really as a committee have a discussion for the next annual work plan about having this as a standing agenda. So it could be every other meeting that we have this as a quick agenda piece, like we do with the RSL performance. Maybe this is something, but it's definitely a conversation that I think we should have within the committee, please. Thank you, Councillor. Yes, Paul will respond to that. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor. Yes, I will make sure that when the meeting to work out the work program is done in the summer, that this is definitely an item that's on the agenda. Thank you. Any other questions? No, thank you. Thank you, Daniela, Leslie, for that. And we are always grateful for the contribution. You know, you're doing it as a volunteer. Thank you very much. Just a quick question before you leave. How many people sit on that body? Currently. Yes. Three vacancies. Three vacancies. Three vacancies. So in total, there will be ten. If they all... No. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much for that. And we are always there for you. As any time you need us, just call us or email us. We will always be there. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's really encouraging. Thank you. Thank you. Now we will move on to our next item tonight, 4.3. Next item is to review compliance and regulations regarding fire safety and treating dampened mould. I would like to welcome again David Joyce. Obviously, Councillor Abbott can't join us. David, you have five minutes for your presentation. Thank you. Yes. So, I mean, again, I will do the job of handing over to Ian and Darren, but this is an update on how we are doing around our compliance, our sort of, the issues around fire and building safety that form part of our regulatory referral. So, you know, I think this is something that's very important to come here so we can describe what the issues are and what we're doing about it. And so I'm going to hand over to Ian. Thanks, David. It will be Darren who will be taking us through the building safety slot. Yeah. Thank you, Chair. I'll be quick because we've only got five minutes and I think we've got dampened mould as well. So, I've done a few slides very high level just to set out our legal obligations and you can see that on the slide that says what is the law. It's interesting to note that it was 20 years ago that the fire safety order was introduced which set out the responsibility to carry out fire risk assessments. What everyone will have seen on the news, of course, is the building safety act and this has followed the Grenfell fire and this is for us a very pertinent act because we have nearly 80 high rise buildings. And it's very onerous in the responsibilities that it imposes on us and we have to provide to the regulator a building safety case. That is an argument with evidence to demonstrate that all our high rise buildings are safe and we've started to do that like other landlords across the country. We've submitted three so far. We have another 75 to submit over the next four years. And there's a lot of work that goes into doing those in terms of programs of surveys and you may have noticed we had a lot of additional funding in the last couple of years that was given to us to be able to commission those surveys. And we have to speak with residents and engage with them and have strategies. And so there is a lot going on. And our homes, we have over 930 blocks of flats over 330 of them are over 11 meters and they have additional duties that we have to comply with. And as I said, 78 are over 18 meters. We have a lot of leaseholders and you will all know that. And sometimes that can make things more complicated in terms of responsibilities. It's more challenging. For example, we have about 13,000 front doors that we have to inspect every year in our blocks over 11 meters. So that if you just think about the numbers involved in that, that's a really difficult target, a really challenging target. And then in the following few slides are really just a couple of pictures of some of our buildings, Randall House, where we're currently removing cladding. And we have some great buildings, but they can also be very challenging, like the Cranbrook Estate, some of you may recognize those blocks, and Latham House. And I've got a slide here called our approach, and that's really very high level, how we do our fire risk assessments. We now have specialist officers in my team who are qualified. We have assessors, we have the best fire engineers in the country, BB7, who do all of these very technical engineering reports. And we have a great team of building safety officers, there's 10 people, all of whom have a portfolio of high rise buildings. So they provide extra care to make sure our tower blocks are very safe. Finally, a couple of slides. One is about residents with additional needs. We have lots of residents who have additional needs. And there's some recent consultation the government concluded, and there's some additional duties coming our way on that. But our building safety officers or our fire safety team go out and they visit any resident with additional need who requests that. And we will implement additional actions, for example, additional safety devices that we can use. So if somebody's blind or somebody's deaf and they can't hear, if there's a problem in the building, there's things that we can give them and help. And we can also refer them to the fire brigade. And just a final slide on assurance and governance, and this is really about how you can be assured as members that we're doing what we should be doing. So we have a monthly compliance dashboard. We meet, I meet with my boss Ian every two weeks and we look through all the remedial actions that we're supposed to do. We meet with David and we've just done that today actually for a monthly compliance board that looks at our performance. And we have specialist audits. We had a compliance audit by Pennington's. We're just about to start a data validity audit and we also had a building safety gap analysis. And that's me. Thank you. Thank you. Any, did you want to add anything, Ian? No, happy to join in answering the questions though, if there are any. On the damper. Do you want to do the damper mould together so we can take the questions? Yeah, no. All together. Thank you. Thank you. Damper mould is me. It is five minutes as well, is it? OK. Well, I'll be kind to you. Thank you. Six minutes. I could speak about this all night. I won't. I've been at the council for months. One of the first things I looked at when I joined was how we're managing damper mould. I saw lots of really, really good practice. But I've also seen lots of things that we can do much better. And I know many of you have seen some very challenging cases. Thirty years ago, I went into a local authority property, Noctow Hamlets. And as a junior surveyor, I remember seeing for the very first time a bathroom ceiling full of black mould. A kitchen ceiling full of black mould. And I went into the family's bedrooms and the mould was up the walls. And I remember thinking to myself, how can this be? It took me a lot of persistence, perseverance at that local authority to get attitudes to change. And I don't want Tower Hamlets Council to be a council that puts up with damper mould. I want us to be a council that supports residents to live in healthy homes. So I'm just going to pick up some of the good practice areas and some of the areas I think we can do better. There are three types of damper mould. There's condensation, which forms on a cold surface. A bit like if you take a can of coke out the fridge and put it on the worktop. In seconds it's running with water. That's what happens to some of our walls. And then there's rising and penetrating damp. That's dampness coming up from the floor or through the wall. And then lastly, and I think this is where we get most of our cases, and that's persistent leaks. Leaks that go unchecked from the washing machine, from plumbing, from tanks, roofs. Because if they go left unchecked, over time that water builds up and we get conditions of damper mould. Now as a council, we prioritise our damper mould cases as a priority one or a priority two. And to triage that, our contact centre asks lots of questions around is there damp in this room, is there damp in that room? What are the occupants of the flat? Are there any vulnerable residents in there? Are there any young children, older persons? So we're constantly building a picture of risk. And our priority ones are more of our severe cases. And the priority twos are more akin to the photograph on slide two where there might be low level damper mould. But if it's a priority case, we may even in extreme circumstances decal the family while we undertake some major works in that home. So it's safe to move the family back. Just very quickly, we often talk about mould washes. And going back 30 years ago, mould wash used to be water mixed with bleach and a bit of washing up liquid. And we used to wipe the wall and that would kill the mould. But in two or three weeks, it would come back. A mould treatment nowadays usually takes all day. It's a three-stage thing. And we've got guarantees on this. So it can last two or three years before the mould comes back. So a mould treatment now is so different to the way it used to be. I said we are doing some good practice. There's lots more we can do. But one of the things I was really impressed about and the housing ombudsman said to landlords, find your silence. They also said take a zero-tolerance approach to damper mould. And in the middle of last year, KNTR heating contractors were asked to go into every property when they're doing a gas service and do a damp and mould survey. And up until December, we surveyed 4,500 properties. And out of that, we generated 793 tasks, jobs to go on. Now, you can imagine that not every resident in those homes would have reported that to us. We haven't had the opportunity to find our silence, to go out and support those families with work to combat damper mould. What we don't have, but we will have soon, is a great way of reporting our data. So we're working with an organisation called MobiSoft. And next month, we'll have a new damper mould dashboard. It's the full slide from the end in your pack. The data in there is dummy data. It's not the real data. But what we will have in April is the ability to track cases through the MobiSoft dashboard. The ability to compare our performance with what's coming down the track from government in October. Because in October this year, AWAB's law is coming into place. AWAB's law places some specific time duties on the landlord to inspect a property and begin repairs. So what we'll be able to do next month is start to report against our performance, against AWAB's law. And I know we're not quite there yet. There's a lot more we need to do. But we've got eight months to get there. I've got a team looking at it at the moment. Last couple of points from me. You've probably, and I think it was mentioned by Karen earlier, or David earlier, we are being a lot more proactive in damper mould. If you've walked around the borough, you may have seen some of the bus stop signs, asking residents to contact us if they've got cases of damper mould. I even think the revolving sign in the cafe outside has got that advice on it. Just a last point, we're looking to run a pilot with an organisation called SwitchE. SwitchE produce digital thermostats. They're a bit like a thermostat you have in your home. But these are a bit different. They may measure air change, temperature and humidity. And they're a great tool for providing an early warning of where damper mould may form in a home. So we, and the residents we're working with, can get early intelligence when a home is at risk of damper mould. When we've got that early intelligence, we can be proactive and go and speak with the family. Thank you. We will move on to the questions soon. Thank you very much for the updates. Susanna, your question please. Thank you. Yes. So, as your slide, one of the points mentioned that there are some dam and mould issues that are probably caused by water ingress. And I have to relate it back to lots of, you know, the delay in the capital works. And in the past, the lack of maintenance for very old estates. Would one of these, you know, for example, in your eight months towards working towards compliance, in situations of severe dam and mould that are caused by neglect of the estate, as in delay in major words. Would that form part of your prioritisation in terms of the 140 million that you have and how you're going to prioritise to prevent dam and mould and worsening dam and mould that are caused by issues such as this. Thank you, Susanna. Thank you. Thank you, Susanna. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks, Susanna. It's a great question. What we don't have, but we will have through the Mobisoft dashboard, is the ability over time, not immediately, because we'll need to have ran a year, but over time, the ability to see where cases are coming back. And if we've got particularly challenging and difficult blocks, so if we've got difficult blocks where we're seeing continuous issues, then yes, we will bring that work forward. But that doesn't mean if there is a particular block or building right now that has an issue with water ingress, if we need to do some significant repairs, we will do them now. We won't wait until the capital programme is ready to do them. So, two important things there. Thank you. David? Thank you. Sorry, I just also wanted to add that the points that Ian made earlier about the stock condition information and getting to 100% will also improve our understanding of the stock and where we have significant issues. And I think that, that together of what Ian's just described, will be, you know, will put us in a much better position than we're in today. Thank you. Susanna, did you want to come back on that? No, no, I'm all right with the answers, but thank you both, David and Ian. Thank you, Susanna. Councillor Asma, your question, please. Thank you. Yeah, so on fire safety, by the way, both these pieces of work for every council is necessary, very important, but one of the most trickiest and more challenging things that have come about in the last few years for all the right reasons. With fire safety, just wanted a quick update on when it comes to planning for should the worst happen in an estate or a block is that how do we communicate this and how do we take into account any needs that residents might have regarding, you know, vulnerability and disability and everything else like that? How do we communicate that? Do we do we give out them, you know, taking Grenfell Tower as an experience like, you know, the messages they put or what they can do in those in those kind of circumstances? It would be really good to see here how we advise them and what message that goes out to residents. And on damper mode, I just wanted to say, so it's been a few years that we've been working on this. And obviously, all local authorities are having to do this piece of work because Tower Hamlets is so dense. We've got so many flats, we've got older stock, you know, the pollution levels is really high as well. Are we finding that we're any different from any of the local authorities as to the volume that we're having to deal with? Or do you think we're around the same kind of benchmark? Thank you, Councillor. Thank you. Yeah, so thanks for the question, Councillor. If I give you the example of Randall House, which was one of the slides actually. So we discovered that there was a problem with the insulation and a risk to residents there last year. And we introduced a team of fire marshals based in the building 24 hours to provide additional support for residents. My team of building safety officers also visited every single resident inside their home and went through with them any issues or concerns or anxieties, any disabilities, any additional support that they would need to help to leave the building in the unlikely event of a fire. Since then, we've moved very quickly. And we're on site and we're on site and you can see one of the slides is the scaffold from Mears. And we used our Mears, our repairs partner, because we could move quickly to remove the cladding. And we've done a whole series of letters to residents to tell them what we're doing, when the cladding is going to come off. Plus, we had a meeting with residents with the previous corporate director, not with David, it's before David's time. And we went through with residents what the issues are and what we're doing about it. So I hope you can see just from that one example that where there are serious issues, we put a great deal of effort into speaking to residents about that. And it's one of the key roles of the building safety team. Thank you. Councillor Kabir, your question, please. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Darren and Ian, for a lovely presentation. I would like to ask a specific question about Crown Booker Street. You know, there is a few five or six block, highest tallest block there. And I believe the block has cladding there. And I got many phone calls from the state and they want to know the update. And also they just kind of recently they apply for right to why and they want to know how long does it going to take to are you going to solve the problem of the cladding or can you get update from it, you know. Thank you. Thank you. The six blocks on Crown Brook and the panels are the insulated window panels beneath the actual windows. And what we need to do is we need to replace some of those, not all of them, but we need to replace some of them. And, and we got very close to having our contractor waits on site, not just on the Crown Brook estate, but there's another five or six blocks of flats where they were going to do a big package of works. And, and then the regulations changed and the building safety regulator now has to approve the work that happens and you have to put an application in and there can be six, seven, eight months delays whilst we get that approval. So we do need to do it and we're very conscious of how that impacts on people either who want to buy their home or who people who bought their home already and they want to sell it. And, but we can't just go and do the work. We need to get that permission first. And we've had a lot of queries. My team have had a lot of queries about that. And we're trying to write to people to tell them that. So we are conscious it will just take us a bit of time to, to, to replace those panels. How long do you think roughly just, uh, it's not to be specific, just roughly so I can explain them what's going on basically. Well, I, I think we will do it this year, but I, I'll be honest with you. I don't want to, you know, if you ask my best, what's my best guesstimate, I would say it's this year, but we're in the hands of the regulator. They have to approve the works we do. Last year at one point they had delays of eight or nine months. I think at the moment it's four months that the, the most recent, and we can't do anything until we've done that. So it, we are dependent upon partly on, on others. If it, if it wasn't for that, we would have already done those panels because we were, they were literally on site about to do them. And then, and then the regulator, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, spoke and we, we've had to stop. Uh, I mean, quickly, Councillor. Sorry, just before, can I just stop you there? I think David would like to come in on that. It might help you. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, when I signaled, um, it was just before Darren made his final points, but just to emphasize the, the step of having to go through the building safety regulator is causing delay across the industry. Cause it's not just this kind of stage. It's also new builds at various stages of the planning processes as well that all have to go to the building safety regulator. And, you know, I don't think they've resourced appropriately. I mean, although at national level, everyone talks about planning delay. The one thing I hear from every developer or contractor is it's the building safety regulator that's holding things back at the moment. Obviously they're doing really important work, but they need to resource up, um, a lot more than the, the, the current position. But I think what we can do is, um, we'll take an action. Um, if you agreeable to, um, update yourself and your fellow work members on, you know, what the plan is around this particular estate, um, and, you know, give you that full update. But what the next steps will involve. I really appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah. And you have, do you have, uh, Darren, do you have any plan like CCTV, like the, on the conscious there, the camera there is not working. So do you have any plan to change those while you are working this, uh, cladding, uh, the safety? I don't, I don't think those specifically are part of the plans on the cladding. I think there is a bigger picture on Cranbrook with fire safety and, and there is a lot of money we need to spend. It's cladding is part of it, but there's further works that we need to do inside the buildings because they're so unusual the way they're designed. And they've got those very narrow staircases, haven't they? And then those kind of large void areas with our fire engineers are looking very carefully at the moment. And, and we will need to spend a lot of money in the future on those buildings. And, and when we do that, then we will probably pick up everything else. Roofs, windows, concierge, you know, um, but yeah, we're just focused on the cladding at the moment. So thank you, uh, Mabu, your question, please. Thank you. Thank you for both the presentation. I think it's more around kind of, um, damp and mold. Um, so we've encountered the, actually the formulation of the, uh, our PISACs law. I was actually part of it. Um, in the days of when Susmeeta was still the CEO, she recommended me for me to apply for the national social housing residence panel. So that's what I kind of applied. And I was actually part of that formulation of it and looking at decent homes measures and so on. Um, and I think what would be useful for, for us as scrutiny is, I think when that, I think prior to the law coming in place, I think what would be useful is to actually say what impact and what measures and what the reporting mechanisms are for the council to actually, um, report back to this scrutiny. And I think once, um, it then comes into place, it's about how are we reporting, what mechanism, how are we measuring, what are we benchmarking against other authorities, housing associations, and then that will allow the scrutiny to actually scrutinise and look at performance of what the council is doing, what it's doing against legislation, um, where there may be gaps, how we can improve and how we're performing against other councils and housing associations. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Very happy to do that. Sorry. Uh, if you would like to respond. Thank you. Yeah, just saying I'd be very happy to do that, come back when we've got the data to present that. Thank you. Thank you. A question from Councillor Mohamed Chowdhury. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Uh, in terms of dampened mould, uh, it was very good to, uh, good to know today that there's a T3 stage of the, you know, the treatment, because recently I was involved, uh, quite a few, and, uh, it's counselling stock, and, uh, mould came back within two, three months. If I had the information that it would have been quite useful. Uh, in terms of counselling stock, obviously we, uh, as a counsellor, I find myself quite, you know, empowered. I can come to the offices, uh, put pressure, you know, do everything, uh, to support the residents. But when it comes to, you know, uh, you know, housing association, at this moment, I think the disastrous condition in the, most disastrous condition in Tower Hamlets is the Coniston House, is, is a stock of, uh, Eastern Homes. Uh, they, uh, doing an extension, and there's a crack on the roof. Uh, who Karen knows, I think, initially I contacted, and I'm grateful for the support at that time. Uh, but it's still, uh, the pictures I get during the, you know, when there's a rain, there's a few buckets people put in to hold the rain. And I really cannot justify my position as a counsellor, or this is scrutiny committees or maids, or the council, because we feel, like, very helpless. So, my question is, how we can help support, because they are our resident. Yes, they live in the, uh, you know, the housing stock of, uh, you know, the, uh, of Eastern Homes, but that are homeless residents. And how we can support them in a best possible way. Thank you. Uh, thank you, Councillor. Uh. I think I'll ask Andrea to have a first go at answering that, um, on behalf of the registered providers in the borough. Yeah, it, it, it's a really difficult one. Um, I can't imagine that East End Homes aren't taking it incredibly seriously. Um, I'll raise, um, that you've raised this tonight with the, the interim chief executive, um, and ask her to, to make a response to you on that. But no landlord would just ignore it. Um, I'm sure that it's incredibly, so is it where the, they're doing the flats or roofs? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it can be incredibly complex, but that doesn't mean that residents should be suffering, um, ongoing problems without support, um, and without some sort of idea about what the remedies are going to be and when they're going to happen. So I'll certainly take that up, uh, with them, with Yvonne, um, and get her to respond personally to you. Okay, Councillor. Sorry, uh, Karen, you want to come in? Thank you. And I'll, I'll do the same thing because I'm meeting Yvonne tomorrow. So East End Homes are coming here for a meeting on another matter. So I'll pick that up as well. Uh, sorry, uh, Andrea, if there is any correspondence, if you could keep us in the loop, I would be grateful. Thank you, Councillor. Happy with that? Thank you. Darren, sorry, David, did you want to come in or say a few words? Oh, no, sorry. I don't have anything to add to what, um, Karen and Andrea have said, but we'll, we'll obviously follow up on it, um, for you. Thank you. Uh, any other questions from members? Anyone online? No? Thank you. Thank you very much. And, uh, it's always, uh, grateful to have you guys here giving us the, uh, answers that we are here to ask questions and get the answers for. Thank you very much. We will move on to our next item. Uh, we will move to any other business. And, uh, Paul, you had something to say. Thank you. Um, thank you, Chair. Just a reminder to all, um, scrutiny members that on Thursday, there's, um, an overview of scrutiny improvement plan workshop here in the council chamber at six o'clock, where we'll get a chance to, um, to, to discuss the, um, scrutiny improvement plan. So I've been asked to just remind members about that. Thank you, Paul. Very kind of you. Any, any other business to discuss? Anyone? Can I come in? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just on the back of what Paul said, actually, it's not just the scrutiny plans. It's the entire council's, um, improvement plan on the back of the best value report. So it's not just scrutiny is the overarching councils improvement plan. Um, I don't know if that was not communicated properly. If not, then I'm happy to have Daniel, um, send that out properly. The other thing I was quickly going to say is, are we going to get a quick update about, uh, the housing, um, cabinet scrutiny housing subcommittee cabinet subcommittee? That's what it's called, right? Uh, are you finished? Uh, Paul has some updates for us. Thank you. Um, the only thing I can say, so, um, an email was sent around to, um, OSC and, uh, housing, um, scrutiny members to say that, um, but at the moment what we're going to do is, uh, there are, there are two, two processes. We're looking at how we're feeding into that, uh, for this municipal year, and then going forward how we're going to feed into them in the future. So currently, because we only have, uh, one meeting left of our committee, we are, um, what we're going to be doing is circulating the papers for housing, um, cabinet, uh, subcommittee to members to be able to ask, uh, pre-decision scrutiny questions, uh, until that takes us up until the end of the municipal year. But going forward, the plan is to align the, uh, housing, um, scrutiny committee and the housing cabinet committees together. So it will work very similar to the way that OSC works, where, um, scrutiny will be held one or two days before cabinet, and there'll be an opportunity for people to discuss the, the papers there, and for, uh, our chair will, will be, uh, attending both those, uh, meetings, and people will be able to, uh, feed in. And in order to do that, we're, uh, we need to add an additional, um, scrutiny meeting. So next year, we will have at least six meetings of, uh, scrutiny, possibly a seventh one to be able to discuss business outside of cabinet. Um, and that's the plan going forward that I believe the chair has spoken to the chair of OSC with about the way to go, go on that. Uh, Asma, happy with that? Thank you. Thank you, Paul. Appreciate that. Uh, just a quick one, uh, Justina, you have a question. Sorry, Chair. No, not a question. I just wanted to let members, um, make members be aware that there is a, um, members, uh, survey, if anyone's had any issues with tonight's meeting. Details are over there on the QR codes. I just wanted to let everyone know about that, but no other questions. Thank you very much. Thank you, Justina. So if there's no other meeting to discuss, business to discuss, I call this meeting to a close. Thank you very much to all of you who are always here attending. The next housing in a region meeting will be on the 1st of April, 2025. Thank you very much. So.