Communities Scrutiny Committee - Thursday, 9 May 2024 10.00 am
May 9, 2024 View on council website Watch video of meetingTranscript
- This meeting is being webcast with the exception of any business that the committee results to exclude the press and public because the likely disclosure of exempt information is defined by the local government like 1972. This meeting is being held as a hybrid meeting with the community scrutiny committee members attending in-person at County Hall and remotely via video conference. For transparency purposes I will identify which community scrutiny committee members are in attendance and whether they're attending in-person or remotely. In County Hall we have the Chair, Councillor Hugh Williams, Vice Chair Count Edwards and Councillors Alan James, James Elson, John Harland, Brian Jones, Mervyn Parry and online we have Councillors Caraholday, Dallas Jones and Michelle Blakely Walker. Those attending remotely are coming to meet the microphones unless they're called upon to speak. Community scrutiny committee members are also asked to have the video switched on throughout the meeting unless the Chair specifically requests you turn your video off to improve the quality of the audio link when you're speaking. You'll be expected to restart your video once you've finished speaking. Please also refrain from using the chat facility as best you're sent to all are visible on the webcast. Those present in the chamber are asked to make sure they speak directly into the microphone to improve the quality of sound for those attending remotely. To aid transparency all the meeting's business must be conducted through the Chair. Thank you, Karen and Troy Sirlama. He's got a traffic welcome this morning to the scrutiny committee. I would just like to send my condolence to Alan who's here today. It's a sad day for everybody in Denver County Council. When was one of the nicest ladies I've ever met in my life and she would be deeply missed by everybody in Denver County Council. Alan, I were forward to with you as a committee and the whole of Denver County Council. Thank you. Agenda item 1 is apologies. Do we have any apologies? No, okay. Agenda item 2, declarations of interest. Members will be aware of the requirement under the Council's code of conduct to declare any personal prejudicial interest and respect of any business to be considered at today's meeting. Such interest should be declared now or as soon as the Council becomes aware that they have a personal prejudicial interest in today's business. All members clearing an interest are required to state clearly what that interest is and to advise whether it's a personal interest, a personal and prejudicial interest as defined in the code of conduct. Any members declaring a prejudicial interest is required to leave the meeting for the duration of the business and take no part in their proceedings. Members with a personal interest only may take part in the debate and any vote. If a personal or personal and prejudicial interest is declared today that has not previously been disclosed and recorded, the Council are concerned will be required to complete and sign a declaration of interest form which is either available from the committee sports staff in attendance or online. Thank you Karen, so declarations of interest, love and parry. Yeah I'm just declaring a personal interest in my will. Will parry does some work for the Council on the housing side of it so much what he does but just to care a person interested in them. Thank you Mervin, we've got Cheryl's hand up. You're on mute, sorry Cheryl. It's not for that I haven't found the agenda yet, it always seems to be hard to find on the day you can never get it but I wasn't included in the attendance so I just wanted to make sure that I was in the right up for it because my name wasn't mentioned at all. Okay, any declarations of interest? Cheryl, are you a tenant? Sorry I've been looking for the agenda, it doesn't seem to have arrived at me, I know I've looked for it online and so I haven't seen the agenda, I've been trying to find it so unless someone could send it, that'd be good but yes I'm a ten and also on the list as well, okay so that's there. Thank you. Okay thank you, I think that was a declaration. Okay, right okay, anybody else? No, everybody else? Quiet, no, it's good. The agenda write some free urgent matters agreed by the chairs, no, no, nothing, thank you. The agenda write of four minutes of the previous meeting held on 14th of March, 2024. We'll start, we'll go through it, shout out if there's anything that creeps up on you, on page five, six, six, thank you, John, had, put your lights on, sorry John. Yeah, page six is an unfortunate confusion between two words under public convenience's savings proposal which I guess should be changed really, one letter is missing from them. Did, thank you, thank you, John, when I was like seven, eight, nine, ten, nine, Brian? Not the correct page yet, on the item we discussed at the last meeting, the regeneration program, at the resolution, there's a note there saying that it would be included a report on the October scrutiny committee. I'm bringing it up now before we get to the forward work program, on the forward work program it's got the real promenade master plan and there's no reference to item agenda six from the last meeting where it does say a report would be brought in October for the whole regeneration. Hey, when we come to that agenda item, can we pick it up then? Yeah, it's a bit more time to work out what's what's going on, it's okay Brian. Sure, thank you, thank you. So yeah, we've done 10, 11, 12, everybody in agreements could have a proposal and a seconder, well they're correct Alan, and Alan, thank you. Can I show hands or would I? Show hands, yeah, that's everybody yeah, good, thank you. Right, swiftly moving on to agenda item five, we have lead member, Ris Thomas, head of housing, Liz Greaves, and lead officer, Mark. Ris, do you want to kick off? Thank you, nice to see you all. Before we begin, I'd also like to convey my deepest sympathies and condolences to Alan there. Little did we realize it must be less than a fortnight ago when we had a cup of tea after the CCTV meeting on the prom, what you had in front of you Alan, but our deepest sympathies to you, and we'll talk again, okay. Right, item five that you have for you. The three of us have attended a scrutiny committee not long ago where we discussed something about voids or empty homes, empty houses, it rains themselves better in Welsh, it's termed as empty homes rather than voids, but looking at the paper before us today, you can see that there are two recommendations and we would like you to notice the content of the report and we also ask you whether you could share your comments and views with us on which a path to follow when council houses become vacant. As you know, in this documentation we as a council have got almost 3500 council houses and they are homes for millions of residents in our county and every year just over 200 of these become vacant and therefore become void every year. Now what we do as a council when houses become vacant or void, we carry out the necessary maintenance work on these houses, sometimes there isn't much to do but at other times there is major work to be carried out. If I could just draw your attention to another document that has been before the council recently, we as a council are very pleased with the standard of our council house stock and every tenant's review survey shows that the majority of tenants see their homes as being of our good standard and value for money. But in the document before you today on 4.5 you will see that we need to look at the arrangement for managing empty houses in order to become more efficient. There are four reasons for doing so that is it costs a lot to renovate houses. The work can take a long time to complete and that means that tenants are having to wait a very long time for the home to be ready and of course the council lose out on rent for that house that is empty. So the question that is before you this morning after you have read the document and heard the report from officers and you'll have an opportunity to ask questions. But the big question before the committee is how can we keep to this high standard in our council houses in the present economic climate where there is no funding to carry out all the work. So that is my brief presentation chair and I will hand over now to Liz for her to present the reports. Thank you, Chair. Do you want to follow up? Earlier this year we took a void framework to cabinet to authorise and that was in relation to us contracting out a lot of the work that we do with our voids and we thought it would be a good opportunity to come to Scrusion need to talk to you about our process how we manage voids and talk to you a little bit about about that and also explain the tensions that we have with regards to voids. As Reece said we feel very proud of the standard of our council houses when people move in it's something that helps our staff they're incredibly proud of the work that they do. When I first became responsible for housing very quickly the team that does the voids were keen to show me around a new void and we want people to move into our council houses and feel at home immediately and if any of you have had the opportunity to see a kind of before and after you'll see that I think we're providing homes for people which is really important rather than just houses but technically it's quite a challenge and the reports and the appendices do outline those challenges. I'm going to take you through the report Mark Cassidy here is Lead Officer for Property so he is heater answer all the difficult questions I'll pick up any easy ones but generally speaking I hope you've had a chance to read the papers. We spend about £4 million a year on voids and that's a purpose for decision because our view is that if we if we spend the time while the house is empty bringing it up to a good standard then it means that we don't have to get into the house when tenants are in so we don't have to work around people living in houses and their their home life isn't disrupted by us. However by doing that then we have the houses empty for a longer period of time so we we're not receiving rent for that period of time so the clock starts ticking as soon as a tenant tells us they're going to be moving out. We have a quality approach to the work that we do so that the works are carefully planned and they're carefully checked so that when we hand the keys over we're very confident the houses are in a very good condition. We are looking to see if there are opportunities for us to deliver efficiencies in this process because £4 million doesn't last this very long so we are looking for alternatives around working with the tenant when they leave so that they don't leave. Quite often we have council houses that are left with a lot of rubbish that we have to clear out so we're looking at how we can improve our relationship so that we can we can work with the leaving tenant so they leave the tenant they leave the house empty so we can get straight on with the work so we're continuously improving our void process and we're working with our contractors with our tenants with our staff and with our stakeholders to see where where else we might be able to improve our time scales and the money that we spend on this. As the report says there is a pressure on the money for us to be able to spend on our void but also the new pressure is what you may have heard about the new Wales Quality Housing Standards which mandate us to do new things with our council houses and again those are the things that we would put into into an empty property so for example one of the new Wales Housing Quality Standards mandate us to fed flooring in a greater area than we would have done to date so that's again a property that is void is an opportunity for us to do that work but it does cost more money and cost more more time as well. So we've got a situation where we're very very proud of the work we do and we know our tenants are very appreciative of the work but we do have to manage the pressures as carefully as we can. So we've gone into quite a lot more detail about the processes and some of the pressures in Appendix 2 and I'd be happy to take any questions on that. Thank you very much. Thank you. Mark, do you want to add on or are you okay? No, I think I'm okay for no just questions. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, good. But just flicking through it briefly and we've mentioned this before I think it was I was looking for a few meetings back about the air source heating and that was like one source of heating. Did we ever look into that as a secondary heating because when I know in Champada there was a probably four or five days and we had no heating so what was the score? Yeah, from our perspective, obviously any secondary heating we can provide would mean somebody would have to burn something, coal or or wood. Not all our properties would be suitable for having an open fire place or a charmer. Or gas, of course, we could provide gas bottles as with an alternative fire but that's not something that we required to do in any standard or indeed we'd probably wish to do because obviously it won't stop burning stuff then it starts to affect carbon footprint and on the only other green agenda as well. We if people are going to struggle with heating because the gas isn't working then we can provide electric heaters so but that's probably the only secondary heating source we would traditionally provide. So we are in trouble really because if your electric goes up your gas goes off so we are in trouble and we highlighted this a long time ago and it's a major concern where you know never mind carbon footprints never mind is people's livelihood here if they're starving cold because there's no heating as the air source heating's gone off the electric's gone off the gas has gone off it's a concern what there's no secondary heating or emergency heating put in place that that's what that's what we're getting at. Mary and John explain just just I think I brought it up last time because when I had to build my new house building regs stipulated that I had to have a secondary source of heating on my new house and at the time things I know things vary but at the time I had to put a log burn of into the house it's probably the dearest ornaments I've ever bought in the house because I don't use it but if the electric went off but I'm more concerned my house is a modern house if I lost power in my house it wouldn't be that cold because it's fairly well insulated anyway a lot of the and I know a lot of the pensioners houses if I if I went on to them they have been insulated but they're not to the same value as a new house would be insulated and if we had and we haven't had a bad winter for a long time if we had a bad winter where we had electric off trees down where you could be out maybe for a fortnight without electric I've seen it in my time you know and happen if we had elderly residents living in these houses where we've taken five places out they would have had five places in before we've taken them out closed them up put air source heating in the ground while it's going or if we had a fortnight of no heat in extreme weather conditions we'd be losing lives that's where we'd be with that one you correct me if I'm wrong over that one because you could take them blankies or whatever you want to do but it's not you might not be able to get them there if the weather is that bad so I'm just wondering how we approached that one and that was that was something we brought up last time and we didn't get an answer to it so thanks for bringing up Jack yes we did check about the building regulations and we went to our to our colleagues and they told us there were no building regulations that mandated that so whether or not they've changed I don't know but that's certainly the case and when we when we put air source heat pumps in then we don't we don't just put them in we make sure that the the fabric of the building is appropriate for that as well so yes they they're they're much warmer than they they were before with the odd source of heating and the the work that mark and his team do is around the the property and the the the legislation and the standards that they have to adhere to with regard to the property but obviously we take care of our tenants as well so you know if if there is bad weather coming then we make sure that everybody's got got security in place so that they're staying safe and warm we we don't leave people to get cold and die that's absolutely not what we're doing sorry can i stop you there can you explain to us committee this morning yeah what happens when the letter goes off and the gas goes off what heating of those those tenants got please I I I I hear what you're saying what you look after people and make sure they're warm can you just explain to us clear what heating they've got what different properties across the county have got different heating so I think the original question was about air source heat pumps so those are those are run by electricity so there's no gas to those properties and so the the response for those sorts of properties would be different from the properties that have got gas there are some properties where we've got community heating schemes and so the the response to those would be different to the individual properties so they're different according to their property and they're different according to the tenant they're different according to where they are so there isn't one simple answer to your question and be happy to come back with the report on that in particular that's a that's a very particular question which i'm happy to come back on that that that isn't work we do well not necessarily work that we do as part of the voids process but what you're talking about is about keeping our tenants safe and warm if there's if there's a power cut and that i'm happy to pick that up separately do you want to come back yeah yeah okay i i stop path really what's on here but i think it's an important one to take up because living in the rural area where i do you know if we have an extreme situation what is the plan because there probably isn't one at the moment and i'd be the one getting in the neck if i've got residence in the houses there that haven't got any heating or they're dying in that in their house it can happen you know it can happen i think we need to have a plan in place of how we how we structure that one because it would be classes and emergency plan then and we need to have some sort of planning place because these houses a lot of them in tandoor and oak and they and double wheeler would have had five places in the previously and they took the five places i put air source heating in um so they haven't got an alternative form if if anything we're wrong so we'll leave it up there you know what we have happy to provide that we can bring it back to share some time with another report on that one so thank you yeah the reason i i the reason i brought it up because it it's it's it's their documents so market please sorry yeah but we will yeah sorry it it's just a valid point i was very important but it would apply to anybody in who lives in the county you know in my house if we had no gas or electricity i would have no alternative form of heating um as it's been mentioned yeah we could perhaps get more blankets in the house or something about it could it would be a common problem throughout the county if we had such a major energy outage whether it's gas or electric i just think it's probably worth noting that okay we'll bring it back some time yeah we'll bring that back so Cheryl do you want to ask the question hands up? yes um i'm hopefully i'm allowed to answer as a as a tenant um but the situation i would be in if um i had an emergency because there's been a couple of times that's allowed okay thank you Cheryl no answer that sorry i thought you were asking you were asking the questions yourself sorry sorry i didn't sorry yeah beyond you say what you want to say by your means yet when i've had the emergency in the past there is no actual backup for me but i can ring the emergency number and that's the only alternative i've had if they can't fix it it's supposed to get a heater that's what they normally do they give you a heater uh to tempt police you know if they can't go the part straight way they can give you a heater that's the only sort of back we've really got at the moment that's because i live in an older property not the new ones um so i don't know about the voice like i know it's a similar situation to avoid there's still essentially council properties that people are going to live in and that's that's my experience of it i just wanted to say that they're very good if you do have any issues thank you Cheryl uh this yeah i was just going to reinforce what Mark said here that this would be a problem not just in the council house uh sector it would be a problem across the private housing sector as well i just think we need to make that clear and um i think maybe that's a discussion for another day that thank you it's a trap but we're here to talk about council houses that's what we've brought it up so thank you john yes yeah um yeah i'm not sure that uh the the main sort of backup plan would be to actually get the power on as quickly as possible that applies to everybody uh you know i i think it's a bit of a bit of a diversion uh myself to to talk about certain long burners and stuff like that you know um you know we're supposed to be moving forward uh with our stuff uh to do with the you know climate and stuff but the question i want to would like to ask is how many empty houses uh are over a year currently being empty i haven't got that figure at the tips of my finger but i can certainly send that to you as after this meeting what i'm saying about the you know the finance issues uh holding things up but there's one in particular on my council ward that uh is has been empty for over the year and this i believe there's some developments to go on it don't they're um am i allowed to say the address yeah probably no submit as speak outside of the meeting if you don't yeah yeah yeah do you want to come back yeah yeah um in appendix two we do discuss uh about sometimes properties come back to us and there may be an area of no demand um very very costly so it's like everything else but when you're managing a budget we have to look very closely we work with jeff's team on on housing allegations to see um is the demand for the property and then how much is it going to cost us to do it um sometimes i have to park it and just say right we'll have to come back to that at a later date and there's some demand but um we don't want anything lying but a long time obviously not not generate an income for us so it is all about looking at the best use of the money really okay john you'll take that outside the meeting yeah yeah this is normally i'm sure yes um i'm just trying to show that i have read all of these notes and uh the party are referring to there and i think this is the dilemma that we are bringing before you as a committee this morning if there would if there was a void property and it's going to cost over a hundred thousand to bring it back to a standard to re-let and that money can be used on three or four other properties to bring them back then and i think that's a technical term is it it's parked so it's parked for for 12 months or whatever in order for the funding to cover three four five of the properties that don't need as much spent on those so that is part of the dilemma of not having the finance to do everything thank you chair thank you both uh moving and then we've got uh michelle and delif yeah yeah can i firstly say you know i've got quite a few counselors in my ward and the state of them are very very good so that's to say they are they have very good and any work that needs doing on the wild lessons and that to be fair they are responded to very quickly um but just going on to a couple of things that that come up the empty houses some of the ones that take such a long time because of that reason it was my house and i think i think i've asked the question before but just can you just confirm that if that house is emptying over the time that then be sure class the same as any other essence in then be and have to pay the extra rates on that property while it's empty can you confirm that one because if i had an empty house and i was a bit slow doing it up the rates department jump on me and i have to pay the rates on it as an empty house or as a as an extra house that's one question i'll ask the questions and you can go through it uh there's some empty houses we've got that are going to for sale because they're in areas that aren't they they've taken an awful long time to get onto the market to sell i've been chasing a few of them one in glass good road particularly there's one in some air here and that they're an awful long time coming we we're screaming for the money we're paying if we are paying rates on it we're paying rates on an empty house up the bull rate or we should be if we're not because everybody else would have to be um yeah those are my questions if i answer the second question first and then you can answer the first sorry just managing the coordination um yes um it's a frustration for me um that those properties are taking an awfully long time to get onto the market and um it's um it's just down to capacity in the in the services that need to help us do that um it's um it's been the struggle for a long time continues to be should we not be outsourcing this in i know it's not on the agenda again but it is a concern we can sit here and say our capacity it's not happening and all that why are we not outsourcing this i know it's not on the agenda state why are we not why are we not outsourcing this maybe it's a agenda for another day yes this is this is why we're reliant on other services to help us um with with the work um so i i don't know the answer to that question but um yeah we can with it it's it's so within it should be and it is costing us money that we should not be having to spend yeah um chair i agree with that the the service has taken me to see these houses and that was quite a few months ago um a decision has to be made um whether to dispose of those or whether to keep them and to try and keep letting them but um i'm very often on the phone or on emails asking um where are we in this process so it is a frustration so i agree with you there thank you and to answer the original question yes we do pay the additional yeah we'll treat it no differently that would be interesting to see how much we have to cost to the county as well that would be very interested did i just come back because you know as world members i'm sure we'll get it right through the county when there's when there is a house that's being can't remember what you said the technical term which is village being shelved or or put it back that's it if if a house is going to be packed in in a particular ward it'd be useful to keep the ward member in but in included in that one because what happens is otherwise people are going to come to the room and come to the room in months what are they doing about it and i said well i haven't got a clue you know so it'd be useful if you are packing something or you're doing something in the ward just an email because you know what you're doing just email the ward member wherever they are and keep them in the loop of what's happening with the property and then if somebody's asking them in the pub shop in the street they've got the answer hopefully for it uh thank you that's a really good suggestion and we'll do that going forward thank you and it has happened as well shared on a number of occasions that i've revisited some of these empty properties with with them a ward member in order to get there will be one of these things thank you have Michelle next hi so am i just relating back to the heating issues um it was a case i had last year with a resident who had a problem with the boiler boiler wasn't working the family had to move and vacate the property and they wanted to move back in they did move back in and they were giving some sorts of electric heaters to heat the property now she did have some small children she was concerned for the children at time and with it being winter she couldn't afford to um pay for these heaters that were put in the property and she was panicking now what backup do we have for our residents who cannot afford to be heating the property when they are be when they have been given these emergency um gel yeah sorry we're going off tangent a little bit oh are we sorry could you take that up with Liz and Rhys yeah it's just just asking what backup do we have for our tenants basically when it comes to your mind Michelle thank you okay sorry okay right it's okay uh delith sorry i was looking for my mute through it and there's just a few questions i had about the contractor list really because for my understanding that key to making sure the good ternary is the good contractor list so i'd like to ask a few questions about that just so that i understand a little bit um how often is the contractor the i take it that you work from an approved contractor list that that is compiled every so often so how often is that compiled and now we show those the quotes that we get through them are commensurate with market values and what we could get otherwise and also do you find that the contractors keep on on task quite well are they actually on site within you know in a timely manner so that the works are completed as quickly as they possibly can as i can see from the time list that you've sent that it says it's somewhere between 25 and 50 days you know 50 days could that work be completed quicker have we got a clause in our contracts with the contractors to make sure that they keep on task those are the first two questions i might have something else a little bit later yes mak yeah okay um so with regards to the contractors we have a framework which we tender between four to five years um the next one is due we're working on it now it's due to go live probably by the end of may to go out to tender because when we start off the last time we had five contractors through time one fell away because they weren't very good quality so we no longer use those and then others drop out they don't have the work or they no longer want to do a boy's refurbishment work but so um as i say we're going live to tender later this month with regards to contractor management we have a set of KPIs so they do expect to be on site on time mike and his team are very very strict at managing that um we monitor the quality of the work but also that they finish on time because we have a part of the KPIs we will claim but if they over over the the schedule finish date then we'll claim that we that money back the loss of rent as part of our contract um sorry what else is the question yeah that was to make sure that we because you said now that you have four contractors that you've got on the list at the moment i see the timescale says for them to be on site within five days which is quite a site timescale for some contractors isn't it especially smaller ones um do you find that that works really well does that preclude some who may give you you know a cheaper quote um and that might work more efficiently and more economically because of that timescale or does that work well no it works very well um i'll pick up the other part of the question remember now so how do we know we're getting value for money well part of the bid that these contractors will will submit we give them a schedule rate so that's a national standard that's set throughout the uh construction industry for thousands of tasks so it might be fit a door handle might be hang a door so all those there's and kind of an average cost that's a it's nationally published what we do we give an example in our spreadsheet we'll say we might want to hang 50 doors we might need to hang um change so many windows and so on so we'll put that in the spreadsheet and they cost um against those items so when the tender comes in for the bigger voids so anything say over eight thousand pound where they have to individually bid and we can compare that to the prices they quoted so they wouldn't if they were extremely expensive they wouldn't make the framework in the first place they'd be excluded so we know we're getting reasonably competitive prices because we can compare it to the national standard but we can also compare the bids that they submit against their original tender prices so that we've got um a good handle on where we're spending money so we're very i would suggest we're very very good at that that's good to hear yeah because that's an important factor of it isn't it really that you're guessing that you know that you they're not taking advantage of the fact that they're on the tender list if you like on the approved contract list um the other question i had was about in-house so you've got in-house teams and how you've got enough capacity within the in-house teams to complete small works you know things like decoration and things like that and can we cut down on some of the cost by using in-house teams yes that's a very topical question for today because as we're speaking my colleague Jason is with Claire who's a finance officer and they're actually discussing how we can um finance doing the the small avoids ourselves because whilst we need we appreciate we need contractors to do big stuff and we don't have the the whole range of skills and equipment to deliver them all ourselves but we do have some really really good in-house operatives that we need to allow them to express themselves if you like and do more than just basic repairs and we take on that work ourselves so that we're actually going through that plan at the moment we do some small stuff to help out if it is just a simple decoration we will we will provide support to do that but we need to do more as you just said and we appreciate that we need to bring some more in-house to allow us to make the money go further yeah okay i think that's a really good way of being more you know financially economical isn't it and better value maybe thank you there's good question as your back office capable of all this because it seems a lot of work check in tenders and all that is your back office you know are you are you at your capacity you know are you struggling or do you need more? I think we we're we're managing very well at the moment um we appreciate there's a lot more stuff we want to do as a maintenance team going forward and you know we've had discussions with Liz about you know what more could we do in-house but they're things for the future but currently yeah we're we're quite comfortable where we are um yeah just make a general point um if you don't mind which is um just to clarify that um all of this work is managed within the housing revenue account so um there's there's no impact on the on the council's general finances one way or the other just to make that clarification thank you thank you uh Karen thank you chair um i must admit when i when i first read this revised standard report i could feel the anxiety levels rising because um you know it's quite an extensive list isn't it um what i it's not so much a question it's a concern really um and on the list it's got landlords must make arrangements for a smart meter to be installed in each home um well smart meters um have been widely criticized with reports that as many as one in five fail to provide uh the promised real-time information on energy use and cost um and uh i know that the elderly are uh struggle um with with smart meters um so i'm just wondering you know do you have concerns about that you know this is this a mandatory obligation um i i i make a general point about um education um and um i think anybody who's had um a new new heating installed is quite an education um so um where those of us with with traditional heating might turn the heating up and down and things like that with with air source heat pumps uh ground source heat pumps um the the the best thing is to keep a constant heat and and that's that's a that's a big piece of education for anybody of any age so that is a piece of work that we're working really hard so that our all of our offices from from the from the maintenance guys through to all the housing offices we're we're we're continuing to communicate with our tenants about the about the new technology um and uh yes um smart meters i think mark i'll pass over to you to answer that question okay so just forever it would just be quite um clear that the the election you're referencing to is the is part of the impacts of the new WHQS 2023 so when we saw that as as as a maintenance team we're thinking right landlords must make arrangements for a smart meter to be installed in each home work so we struggled with that to think how can we force someone to have an a smart meter if they don't want one we can't dictate where they buy their energy from so currently um we we are not forcing people to have a smart meter there's a lot of dialogue going on between landlords and wealth governments at the moment about elements in the standard so it's about learning and about sharing experience as well as government again um just just a point of interest for you yesterday some colleagues from the different landlords across nogweil's met at adre and penegrice to discuss these very items with all landlords that are having to an experience in the same um sets of conditions um that we've got to manage so we're trying to look at that collaborative but we do we are keeping in touch with wealth government as well to say how do you expect us to be able to deliver that because we can't force anybody to have a smart meter in the home if they choose not to very happy kind of yeah okay we've got our james thank you chair to go back to um last coid road i'm the local member uh and following the recent cap and radog community council meeting i was asked to inquire on that and on the 23rd of april i sent her an email to a member of your team um asking what the current situation was and as of yet i've not had a reply so to go back to what we were saying that you know we need to be kept in the loop very much so uh and a bit disappointed i hadn't had a we can we take that out the meeting yeah yeah you take it out the meeting yeah thank you um carol please carol you're muter yeah i think councilor tomlin was uh before me so the protocol let me explain the protocol of um our meeting is members of the committee speak first and non-members are asked to to contribute after so uh carol thank you so Mike you're on mute sorry thank you chair then um i noticed the budget is sort of four million um and based in two point five revenue and one point five capital when you come to sort of uh supply contractors with work do they sort of charge you for the materials as well as their labor or does the council provide the materials so that you can purchase them sort of cheaper than the builder and that's one of the questions um and you know do come there's um if you're refurbishing the kitchen in the bathroom does that come out of capital or will it come out of revenue thank you that's my name um far as replacement of kitchens generally it would be on a capital program but if we have a void property that does need a new kitchen um it will come out some of it will be capital some of it is is revenue um but it's it would be covered in the contractor price so we pay parts and labor for for all the works for um for void property so we don't provide materials right we sorry we may specify a kitchen range as in you know you must buy from benchmarks but we don't actually provide that have you have your carol thank you capital funding um if if it's a um if it's a kitchen or a bathroom it'll be a capital it'll be accounted for by capital um but uh the minor works might be considered revenue thank you Liz thanks thank you carol Mervin um quick one before I bring Andrea who's been sitting there patiently just going on as you brought up earlier about um tenants um trying to protect the when a tenant leaves the property um I think with most tenants are landlords they'll have some sort of a deposit on them so when they leave the premises they've got some but I'm not just sure if that happens with a council property and whether it's something maybe you could look into building because a lot of them might come to you and I haven't got the money to give it them which is possibly where they are whether it could be built in to have something in the first few months of them being there to step it up because when they're leaving they then will maybe have a of a bit of money to go from there but they will also have a bit of a leverage as well to say they've got 500 pound or a thousand pound or whatever it might be because if I take an example of um group and heavy houses that have come empty in my um village it's under enough when the tenants go from there they've got to clear everything from there whether they put any captain or different kind of flooring in or whatever they've done to it if they don't take it the charged or it's off the of the deposit they given and I'm just thinking whether that would be a way of you saving a little bit of money or maybe making those properties making sure that the the tenant who's leaving as it feels a bit more obliged to make it tidy or whatever so that they can get their check back or money back a few even if they haven't got it it might be something you could possibly build in to the first few months or or twelve months of them being there to try and get some sort of a parts that they've got to deposit with you for so just a suggestion to make it eat cheaper when they go from there thank you thank you we're looking to that thanks thank you and last sorry Andrea sorry to keep it deal that's fine thank you for allowing me to speak as a long committee member um my question is something that I probably know the answer to insofar as are all these new standards legally binding upon the council because I find them extremely onerous and probably are contributing to the homelessness problem insofar as they delay those properties being turned around quickly enough for tenants to get into them really in this day and age when we've got a massive homelessness problem we really shouldn't have properties empty for long and I do worry that we've gone to as a hands-out by a professional letting agent so I'm working the private rental sector and you know if I had to ask my landlords to adhere to the standards that that that damage local authorities to do the how I can tell you now the housing crisis would be a far far far worse because we turn properties around very quickly and and they're legal and they're safe et cetera et cetera and I do wonder if we've gone to the nth degree completely OTT in providing perfect properties where absolutely good enough would do to help solve our homelessness problem in an ideal world yes perfect properties with absolutely every inch of it done but are we in that world where we can do that we'd all love that we'd all love that for our own properties no doubt to be of the standard that that's required so I do find I do feel as though it's gone too far and it's exacerbating our homelessness problem and that's one question I sort of appreciate a little bit of feedback from on the people working in this day today and my other question is a specific one about the flooring and it never did cease to amaze me that we could provide a property without flooring so that that's obviously a good move but is there any thoughts on giving vouchers for that like we do for the decorating so that the tenants can approach any of your approved contractors on the carpet seeing and flooring friends to maybe help on on that front budget wise and also do we have numbers of years that we expect say carpets to last fall i if somebody did move on within two or three or four years we wouldn't replace the carpets then we would have them professionally cleaned or is it a requirement that carpets are and flooring is brand new for every new tenant um thank you for your time thank you at least studies on that first oh yeah i just wanted to come in there and thank Andrea for her question Andrea knows that i always appreciate and value her her questions in fact we have made arrangements to have a chat at sometime over over a coffee somewhere and we can talk through housing and homelessness um i think the report that we've got today is about our social housing and i think the people who we are concerned about are those people who have been on our housing waiting lists for a number of months or years waiting for properties to become available and i think homelessness is a discussion possibly for another day since the the term has been mentioned a few times so we are looking to to work through the the residents who are already on our waiting lists thank you chair um Liz um yes the um the what else housing quality standards national policy so you know for social housing we are mandated to adhere to those but we do we don't have to be able to adhere to them from day one so we've got a period of time during which we can we can work towards adhering to them and as mark mentioned some of the some of the kind of technical details we're still we're still ironing out with Welsh government so um the um the question of flooring for example um you know as it stands it says that it's the flooring needs to be changed at a change of tenancy um but it but that's the sort of discussion that we need to have with Welsh government because as you say if it's about if it's you know if it's perfectly good then we wouldn't want to be stripping out of flooring and putting in if it's if it's not necessary so yes we are mandated to do it um we we've we've we've we've been opening in as of our colleagues in social housing sector and saying that um we're when as things stand it's unaffordable um the new Welsh quality housing standards are not affordable we're not going to achieve those standards in the times scales we've we've been given um but we are like every other social landlord in in Wales in that respect um but we are trying our best and we continue to do our best um to do that um can i just ask mark to pick up about the the vouchers because i think we've got a specific answer to it um currently we we um we mentioned the voucher for decoration which we do we will always offer that um the carpet um offering is something we are discussing we are um considering to all that well we we have to do kitchen and bathrooms we would always have to do that because we've got to make sure that they're safe and and slip-proof the remainder of the homes walls and downstairs there might be a good opportunity there where we could offer the vouchers to tenants to incoming tenants to say you know this is an organization we we've got a contract with go there they've got a range of carpets that you can choose from and we we kind of give the opportunity anyway for it they can have a lock and see there's a particular carpet so i but i'm not aware we've actually handed over the vouchers to anyone yet and said go off and but yeah it's definitely something we would do thank you Andrew you want to come back thank thank you um rice lisen and mark on that um one thing i missed out in my question as far as the standards are concerned um can we move a tenant in without them all having been ticked off in so far as the house is okay to live in but there's still a few things to do like outdoors stuff um bite sheds and all these other things that are on there and my concern is moving tenants on quickly that's where i'm coming from in this void um a gender item thank you just to add to that as well um but there was also a question of say a tenant goes in how long's that carp it's life span as well that was a question what was asked as well thank you um i'll answer the the first part which is um we we want people to move in as quickly as possible um so uh yes we wouldn't we wouldn't force them to wait until we've got a water button stalled obviously there's the longevity yeah um ideally like with kitchens and bathroom i guess if the carpets are in good condition there's no need to change them then we we probably wouldn't you know we yeah i think someone mentioned earlier we've probably seen them but if they are good condition carpets it would be such a way to throw them away wouldn't it great no more questions everybody's happy um so the agenda uh recommendations that the committee notes the reports and contents the committee challenges and shares their views which we have on the report um just thank you mark for the great work you're doing it's it's it is great you know we should be proud of the housing and temperature thank you i'll be sure to share with the team the only thing what i'm i'm we're going to pick up now is obviously which needs to come back sometime is is is the slowness of the housings going on the market that is a big concern also a concern is we don't know how much council tax we're paying we don't know how many houses what we haven't got on our books which have been there over 12 months over 12 months which we're paying one and a half percent council tax that's concerning what we don't know most figures and also the heating as well so sometime in the in the future we'll bring them back but on that note thank you it is thank you liz and thank you mak and it's a pleasure having you here do you want to carry on do you want to break parliament yeah gender item six please um Karen thank you chair um at our last meeting we discussed um discussed the public convenience's proposal and you asked for that to come back to a future meeting and um the lead officer has actually been in touch and we have that on our agenda for september the fifth um brian brought up in the minutes that the real regeneration program should have been brought in october do you want to take stuff now with your mind um with with the toilets yeah it can be back in september um can we have an information pack from now till before the next meeting on um what consultation has been has been carried out uh with who and what the responses are back as well because i think it's you know timescale we're going into reset where we now may june july um things wind down for august you know this there's no that's not much goes on in august a lot of people have august off um so i'm just i'm just a bit concerned because we're quite early in september apparently so if we can have an information pack on what the consultation was given and also what was the feedback back into the people on board with them or or not on board with them if it is that possible yeah i could pull something together chair for you um just just to let you know we are planning to write all town community councils or the relevant town community councils again tomorrow and um to provide further information about the toilets in their in their area and um what we want to discuss with them and we do plan to forward those letters on to the relevant meds so the all the local members are aware of what we're doing there nice to bring it back in nice to bring about the information before if we thought i could certainly get someone to vote together what we what we're doing in terms of consultation actually and what's not responsive about having as well if we can't yeah i'll make that uh sorry that we felt it's just coming next um it's uh it's been quite late hasn't it um consulting with town and community councils uh and it's been going on for a fair few weeks now which should have started really a few months ago but we are where we are um and i just want to um make sure that we and scrutiny have that information in good time before it comes back in september because obviously we're dealing with a very contentious issue here um which has wide wide reaching impact on all communities in the county um and everybody has to have an opportunity to digest the information so i'd i'd like it to be quite detailed please thank you uh yeah okay yeah just listening to those comments they're evident to me the september meeting will not have the detail but this committee requires and so do we need to um make the point here make the decision that you you move it back another month because we don't want to be sitting here with information that's uh not relevant doesn't give us what we want as a committee and then we don't want to meet in like we had last time we're on a we're on a time frame because it's going to come and it's september yeah can i just say okay i'm not sure that we should be making assumptions about the level of detail of the report that i'm going to be bringing september it would be very detailed and provide in my view all the information required to scrutinize the proposals and it is going to cabinet in september that's the plan chair i don't think we should stop it let's let's have about information over the summer and then we'll see what's required to us in september so okay everybody happy yeah great um move on with that okay thank you um as brian mentioned in the minutes we did say we'd bring the real regeneration program in october and it was on the spread sheet it's fallen off i will pop it back on for you because it is separate to the real promenade master plan so i'll put that straight back on for you and and today we've asked um from the housing services for reports on keeping tenants safe and warm depending on their home heating source so we'll pop that on the agenda too we also need an information on why are they going why what what why is it not performing because nobody knew the answer that going to market and also the council tax as well how much would be on council tax because you know we could be paying thousands on council tax and you know that could be essential savings but can i ask on the council tax from who's paying which budget is that coming out of is that coming out of revenue to capital or is it coming out of the budget that we're dealing with uh that we're that within the pressure would can i just ask why Liz is still in the room then can we ask you those questions first do you have the answers now or should we ask for an information report on it i should have left the room shouldn't like um yes so the council tax on empty homes is paid for by the housing revenue account so it's not paid for by the council general funds it's paid for by the hra yes yes we we we've made a note to provide that information to you okay so was that a report that you want bring about communities in future on the additional services involved in the disposal of houses it's not working then something must be being done about it so we can just have a if it's been altered or something it's changed so it's uh being useful just to know but discussed it's over useful to know the answers well as per usual um we have the screen proposal forms appendix two i have a word of them here if anyone wants a hard copy to fill in or you've got the word versions online i can send you thank you thank you thank you got one here for september on the tree minute maintainers and management um i don't know how wide that that one is going is that tree maintenance management just dealing with tree maintenance management salon property or is it county wide property because we've got obviously a problem with trees because we're getting enforcement on some people because they've got dead trees ash dieback various things so would it be worth bringing we're putting a little bit of meat on the bone explaining how that works during that because we'll have the tree offices in there because that you know that that's happening around the county at the moment where we have identified dead trees dangerous trees because they've died anyways and some that have died with ash by the dieback and how we control it because we don't want to take any trees down that we don't want to take down but if they are dangerous then they're up obviously we're going to deal with them somehow and till they replace them if they do thank you i'll get in touch with joe walli and ask if we could take um questions on county wide then hey arpey don't screen yet you're turning up yep um right let me agenda now number seven feedback of representatives on the committee no rep no no feedback so that concludes the day's meeting thank you very much sure very interesting meeting thank you
Transcript
- This meeting is being webcast with the exception of any business that the committee results to exclude the press and public because the likely disclosure of exempt information is defined by the local government like 1972. This meeting is being held as a hybrid meeting with the community scrutiny committee members attending in-person at County Hall and remotely via video conference. For transparency purposes I will identify which community scrutiny committee members are in attendance and whether they're attending in-person or remotely. In County Hall we have the Chair, Councillor Hugh Williams, Vice Chair, Count Edwards and Councillors Alan James, James Elson, John Harland, Brian Jones, Mervyn Parry and online we have Councillors Caraholday, Dallas Jones and Michelle Blakely Walker. Those attending remotely are coming to meet the microphones unless they're called upon to speak. Community scrutiny committee members are also asked to have the video switched on throughout the meeting unless the Chair specifically requests you turn your video off to improve the quality of the audio link when you're speaking. You'll be expected to restart your video once you've finished speaking. Please also refrain from using the chat facility as best you're sent to all are visible on the webcast. Those present in the chamber are asked to make sure they speak directly into the microphone to improve the quality of sound for those attending remotely. To aid transparency all the meeting's business must be conducted through the Chair. Thank you, Karen. And Christa Bolama, he wish God Christa. Welcome this morning to the scrutiny committee. I would just like to send my condolence to Alan who's here today. It's a sad day for for everybody in Demish County Council. When was one of the nicest ladies I've ever met in my life and she will be deeply missed by everybody in Demish County Council. Alan, I will forward to with you as a committee and the whole of Demish County Council. Thank you. Okay. I appreciate that. Thank you. Agenda item 1 is apologies. Do we only want to please? No, no, okay. Agenda item 2, declarations of interest. Yeah. Members will be aware of the requirement under the Council's code of conduct to declare any personal prejudicial interest in respect of any business to be considered at today's meeting. Such interest should be declared now or as soon as the council becomes aware that they have a personal prejudicial interest in today's business. All members declaring an interest are required to state clearly what that interest is and to advise whether it's a personal interest, a personal and prejudicial interest as defined in the code of conduct. Any members declaring a prejudicial interest is required to leave the meeting for the duration of the business and take no part in their proceedings. Members with a personal interest only may take part in the debate and any vote. If a personal or personal and prejudicial interest is declared today that has not previously been disclosed and recorded the council are concerned will be required to complete and sign a declaration of interest form which is either available from the committee sports staff in attendance or online. Thank you, Karen. So declarations of interest? Not in Paris. Yeah, I'm just declaring a personal interest. My son will probably do some work for the council on the housing side of it so much what he does but just a care person. Thank you, moving. We've got Cheryl's hand up. You're on mute. Sorry, Cheryl. It's not for that. I haven't found the agenda yet. It always seems to be hard to find on the day, you can never get it, but I wasn't included in the attendance so I just wanted to make sure that I was in the right up for it because my name wasn't mentioned at all. Okay, any declarations of interest? Cheryl, are you a tenant? Sorry, you're ambitious. I'll ask the question. Yes, I am. Sorry, like I say, I've been looking for the agenda. It doesn't seem to have arrived at me. I know I've looked for it online and so I haven't seen the agenda. I've been trying to find it so unless someone could send it, that'd be good. But yes, I'm a tenant and also on the list as well. Okay, so that's there. Thank you. Okay, thank you. I think there was a declaration. Right, okay. Anybody else? No, heavily else. Quiet, no. It's good. Gender item three, urgent matters agree by the chairs. No, no, nothing. Thank you. Gender item four, minutes of the previous meeting held on 14th of March, 2024. We'll start, we'll go through it. Shout out if there's anything that creeps up on you. Well, it's page five, six, six. Thank you, John, had. Put your lights on, Solly, John. Yeah, page six is an unfortunate confusion between two words under public convenience's savings proposal, which I guess should be changed really. One letter is missing from them. Thank you, thank you, John, when I was like, seven, eight, nine, ten, ten, Brian, not the correct page yet, on the item we discussed at the last meeting, the regeneration program, the resolution, there's a note there saying that it would be included a report on the October scrutiny committee. I'm bringing it up now before we get to the forward work program. On the forward work program, it's got the real promenade master plan. There's no reference to item agenda six from the last meeting, but it does say a report would be brought in October for the whole regeneration. Hey, when we come to that agenda item, can we pick it up then? There's a bit more time to work out what's what's going on, it's okay, Brian. Sure, thank you, thank you. So, yeah, we've done 10, 11, 12, everybody in agreements could have a proposal and a seconder, well, the correct Alan and Alan, thank you. Put it in your hands or we're right. Show of hands, yeah. That's everybody, yeah, good, thank you. Right, swiftly moving on to agenda item five. We have lead member, Ris Thomas, head of housing, Liz Greaves, and lead officer, Mark. Ris, do you want to kick off? Thank you, nice to see you all. Before we begin, I'd also like to convey my deepest sympathies and condolences to Alan there. Little did we realize it must be less than a fortnight ago when we had a cup of tea after the CCTV meeting on the prom, what you had in front of you, Alan, but our deepest sympathies to you, and we'll talk again, okay. Right, item five that you have before you. The three of us have attended a scrutiny committee not long ago where we discussed something about voids or empty homes, empty houses, its brains themselves better in Welsh, it's served as empty homes rather than voids, but looking at the paper before us today, you can see that there are two recommendations and we would like you to notice the the content of the report and we also ask you whether you could share your comments and views with us on which a path to follow when council houses become vacant. As you know, in this documentation we as a council have got almost 3500 council houses and they are homes for millions of residents in our county and every year just over 200 of these become vacant and therefore be come void every year. Now what we do as a council when houses become vacant or void, we carry out the necessary maintenance work on these houses, sometimes there isn't much to do but at other times there is major work to be carried out. If I could just draw your attention to another document that has been before the council recently, we as a council are very pleased with the standard of our council house stock and every tenant's survey shows that the majority of tenants see their homes as being of our good standard and value for money. But in the document before you today on 4.5 you will see that we need to look at the arrangement for managing empty houses in order to become more efficient. There are four reasons for doing so that is it costs a lot to renovate houses the work can take a long time to complete and that means that tenants are having to wait a very long time for the home to be ready and of course the council lose out on rent for that house that is empty. So the question that is before you this morning after you have read the document and heard the report from officers and you'll have an opportunity to ask questions but the big question before the committee is how can we keep to this high standard in our council houses in the present economic climate where there is no funding to carry out all the work. So that is my brief presentation chair and I will hand over now to Liz for her to present the reports. Thank you chair. Earlier on this year we took a void framework to cabinet to authorise and that was in relation to us contracting out a lot of the work that we do with our voids and we thought it would be a good opportunity to come to screw the needs talk to you about our process how we manage voids and talk to you a little bit about about that and also explain the tensions that we have with regards to voids. As Reece said we feel very proud of the standard of our council houses when people move in. It's something that helps our staff they're incredibly proud of the work that they do. When I first became responsible for housing very quickly the team that does the voids were keen to show me around a new void and we want people to move into our council houses and feel at home immediately and if any of you have had the opportunity to see a kind of before and after you'll see that I think we're providing homes for people which is really important rather than just houses. But technically it's quite a challenge and the reports and the appendices do outline those challenges. I'm going to take you through the report. Mark Cassidy here is Lead Officer for property so he is here to answer all the difficult questions. I'll pick up any easy ones but generally speaking I hope you've had a chance to read the papers. We spend about four million pounds a year on voids and that's a purpose for decision because our view is that if we spend the time while the house is empty bringing it up to a good standard then it means that we don't have to get into the house when tenants are in so we don't have to work around people living in houses and their home life isn't disrupted by us. However by doing that then we have the houses empty for a longer period of time so we we we we're not receiving rent for that period of time so the clock starts ticking as soon as the tenant tells us they're going to be moving out. We have a quality approach to the work that we do so that the works are carefully planned and they're carefully checked so that when we hand the keys over we're very confident that the houses are in a very good condition. We are looking to see if there are opportunities for us to deliver efficiencies in this process because four million pounds doesn't last this very long so we are looking for alternatives around working with the tenant when they leave so that they don't leave quite often we have council houses that are left with a lot of rubbish that we have to clear out so we're looking at how we can improve our relationships so that we can we can work with the leaving tenants so they leave the tenant they leave the house empty so we can get straight on with the work. So we're continuously improving our voids process and we're working with our contractors with our tenants with our staff with our stakeholders to see where where else we might be able to improve our time scales and the money that we spend on this and as the report says there is a pressure on on the money for us to be able to spend on our voids but also the new pressure is what you may have heard about the new Wales Quality Housing Standards which mandate us to do new things with our council houses and again those are the things that we would put into an empty property so for example one of the new Wales Housing Quality Standards mandate us to fit flooring in a greater area than we would have done to date so that's again a property that is void is an opportunity for us to do that work but it does cost more money and it costs more more time as well so we've got a situation where we're very we're very proud of the work we do and we know our tenants are a very appreciative of the work but we do have to manage the pressures as carefully as we can so we've gone into quite a lot more detail about the processes and some of the pressures in Appendix 2 and I'd be happy to take any questions on that thank you very much thank you Mac do you want to add on or are you okay no I think I'm okay for now we'll just make a question there absolutely yeah absolutely yeah good but I'm just flicking through it deeply and we've mentioned this before I think it was I was looking for it was a few meetings back about the air source heating and that was like one source of heating did we ever look into that as a secondary heating because when I know in trampada there was a power cut for four or five days and we have no heating so what was the score yeah from our perspective obviously any secondary heating we can provide would mean somebody would have to burn something coal or or wood and not all our properties would be suitable for having an open fireplace or a charmer or gas of course we could provide gas bottles as with an alternative fire but that's not something that we required to do in any standard or indeed we probably wish to do because obviously when you start burning stuff then it starts to affect carbon footprint and on the only of the green agenda as well we the if people are going to struggle with heating because the gas isn't working then we can provide electric heaters so but that's probably the only secondary heating source we would traditionally provide so so we are in trouble really because if your electric goes up your gas goes off so we are in trouble and we highlighted this a long time ago and it's a major concern where you know never mind carbon footprints never mind is people's livelihood here if they're starving cold because there's no heating as the air source heating's gone off electric's gone off the gas has gone off it's a concern what there's no secondary heating or emergency heating put in place that that's what that's what we're getting at mary john explain just just i think i brought it up last time because when i had to build my new house building regs stipulated that i had to have a secondary source of heating on my new house and at the time things i know things very but at the time i had to put a logburn of into the house it's probably the dearest ornaments i've ever bought in the house because i don't use it but if the letter going off but i'm more concerned my house is a modern house i think if i lost um power in my house it wouldn't be that cold because it's fairly well insulated anyway a lot of the and i know a lot of the pensioners houses if i if i went on to them they have been insulated but they're not to the same value as a new house would be insulated and if we had and we haven't had a bad winter for a long time if we had a bad winter where we had electric off trees down where you could be out maybe for a fortnight with our electric i've seen it in mite i'm on them you know and happen if we had elderly residents living in these houses where we've taken fireplaces out they would have had fireplaces in before we've taken them out closed them up put air source heating in the grand well it's going but if we had a fortnight of no heat in extreme weather conditions we'd be losing lives that's where we'd be with that one you correct me if i'm wrong over that one because you could take them blankies or whatever you want to do but it's not you might not be able to get them there for the weather is that bad so i'm just wondering how we approached that one and that was that was something we brought up last time and we didn't get an answer to it so thanks for bringing up jack um yes we we did check about the building regulations and we went to our to our colleagues and they told us there were no building regulations that mandated that so whether or not they've changed i don't know but that's certainly the case and when we when we put air source heat pumps in then we don't we don't just put them in we make sure that the the fabric of the building is appropriate for that as well so yes they they're they're much warmer than they they were before with the odd source of heating and the the work that mark and his team do is around the the property and the the the legislation and the standards that they have to adhere to with regard to the property but obviously we take care of our tenants as well so you know if if there is bad weather coming then we make sure that everybody's got got security in place so that they're staying safe and warm we we don't leave people to get cold and die that's absolutely not what we're doing sorry can i stop you there can you explain to us committee this morning yeah what happens when the electric goes off and the gas goes off what heating of those those tenants got please i i i i i hear what you're saying what you look after people and make sure they're warm can you just explain to us clear what heat and we've got what different properties across the county have got different heating so um i think the original question was about air source heat pumps so those are those are run by electricity so there's no gas to those properties um and so the the response for those sorts of properties would be different from the properties that have got gas there are some properties where we've got community heating schemes um and so the the response to those would be different to the individual properties so they're different according to the property and they're different according to the tenant um they're different according to where they are so there isn't one simple answer to your question and be happy to come back with the report on that in particular that's a that's a very particular question which i'm happy to come back on that that that isn't work we do well not necessarily work that we do as part of the voids process but what you're talking about is about keeping our tenants safe and warm if there's an if there's a power cut and that i'm happy to pick that up separately do you want to come back yeah yeah okay i i just i'll pass really what's on here but i think it's an important one to take up because living in the rural area where i do you know if we have an extreme situation what is the plan because there probably isn't one at the moment and i'd be the one getting in the neck if i've got residence in the houses there that haven't got any heating or they're dying in that in there it can happen you know it can happen i think we need to have a plan in place of how we how we structure that one because it would be class as an emergency plan then and we need to have some sort of plan in place because these houses a lot of them in tander and okap and they and double wheeler would have had five places in them previously and they took the five places i put air source heating in um so they haven't got an alternative form if if anything were wrong so we'll leave it up there you know what we have we can bring it back chair sometime with another report on that one so thank you the reason i i the reason i brought it up because it it's it's their documents so market please sorry yeah but we will yeah sorry it's it's a valid point i was very important but it would apply to anybody in who lives in the county you know in my house if we had no gas or electricity i would have no alternative form of heating um as it's been mentioned yeah we could perhaps get more blankets in the house or something but it could it would be a common problem throughout the county if we had such a major energy outage whether it's gas or electric i just think it's probably worth noting that okay we'll bring it back some time we'll bring that back so Cheryl do you want to ask a question hands up uh yes um i hope you're my lads once or as a as a tenant um the situation i would be in if um i had an emergency because it's been a couple of times if that's allowed okay thank you Cheryl no answer that sorry i thought you were asking you were asking the questions yourself sorry sorry i didn't sorry yeah by all you say what you want to say by all means yet when i've had the emergency in the past there is no actual backup for me but i can ring the emergency number and that's the only alternative i've had if they can't fix it it's supposed to get a heater that's what they normally do they give you a heater uh to tempt police you know if they can't get a part straight way they can give you a heater that's the only sort of backup we've really got at the moment but that's because i live in an older property not the new ones and so i don't about the voice like i know it's a similar situation to avoid there's still essentially council properties that people are going to live in and that's that's my experience of it i just wanted to say that they're very good if you do have any issues thank you Cheryl uh yes yes yeah i was just going to reinforce what Mark said here that this would be a problem not just in the council house uh sector it would be a problem across the private housing sector as well i just think we need to make that clear and i think maybe that's a discussion for another day that thank you we're here to talk about council houses that's what we've brought it up so thank you john yes yeah yeah i'm not sure that the the main sort of backup plan would be to actually get the power on as quickly as possible that applies to everybody uh you know i i think it's a bit of a bit of a diversion myself to to talk about certain long burners and stuff like that you know you know we're supposed to be moving forward with our stuff uh to do with the you know climate and stuff but the question i want to would like to ask is how many empty houses uh are over a year currently being empty i haven't got that figure at the tips of a finger band i can certainly send that to you as after this meeting saying about the you know the finance issues uh holding things up but there's one in particular on my council ward that uh has been empty for over a year and this i believe there's some developments to go on it don't they're um am i allowed to say the address yeah probably no submit as speak outside of the meeting if you don't yeah okay yeah yeah now do you want to come back yeah yeah um you know in appendix two we do discuss uh about sometimes properties come back to us and there may be an area of no demand um very very costly so it's like everything else when you're managing a budget we have to look very closely we work with jeff's team on on housing allegations to see um is the demand for the property and then how much is it going to cost us to do it um sometimes i have to park it and just say right we'll have to come back to that at a later date and there's some demand but um we don't want anything lying but a long time obviously not not generating income for us so it is all about looking at the best use of the money really okay john you'll take that outside the meeting yeah yes yes um i'm just trying to show that i have read all of these notes and uh the part you are referring to there and i think this is the dilemma that we are bringing before you as a committee this morning if there would if there was a void property and it's going to cost over a hundred thousand to bring it back to a standard to re-let and that money can be used on three or four of the properties to bring them back then and i think that's a technical term is it it's parked so it's parked for for 12 months or whatever in order for the funding to cover three four five of the properties that don't need as much spent on those so that is part of the dilemma of not having the finance to do everything thank you chair yeah thank you both uh moving and then we've got uh michael and delif yeah yeah can i firstly say you know i've got quite a few counselors is in my ward and the state of them are very very good so i'd love to say they they have very good and very work that needs doing on the wild lessons and there to be fair they are responded to very quickly um but just going on to a couple of things that that come up the empty houses some of the ones that take such a long time because of that reason it was my house and i think i think i've asked the question before but just can you just confirm that if that house is emptying over the time that them be sure classed the same as any other essence in them be and have to pay the extra rates on that property while it's empty can you confirm that one for me because if i had an empty house and i was a bit slow doing it up the rates department jump on me and i have to pay the rates on it as an empty house or as a as an extra house that's one question i'll ask the questions and you can go through it uh there's some empty houses we've got that are going to for sale because they're in areas that aren't they they've taken an awful long time to get onto the market to sell i've been chasing a few of them the one in glasswood road in particular there's one into mayor here and that they're an awful long time coming we we're screaming for the money we're paying if we are paying rates on it we're paying rates on an empty house up the bull rate or we should be if we're not because everybody else would have to be um yeah those are my questions uh if i answered the second question first and then you can answer the first sorry just demolishing the coordination um yes um it's a frustration for me um that those properties are taking an awfully long time to get onto the market and um it's um it's just down to capacity in the in the services that need to help us do that um it's um it's been the struggle for a long time continues to be should we not be outsourcing this in i know it's not on the agenda again but it is a concern we can sit here and say our capacity it's not happening and all that why are we not outsourcing this i know it's not on the agenda state why are we not why are we not outsourcing this maybe it's a agenda for another day yes this is this is where we're reliant on other services to help us um with with the work um so i i don't know the answer to that question but um yeah we can wait it's it's so within it should be and it is costing us money that we should not be having to spend yeah um chair i agree with that the the service has taken me to see these houses and that was quite a few months ago um a decision has to be made um whether to dispose of those or whether to keep them and to try and keep letting them but um i'm very often on the phone or on emails asking um where are we in this process so it is a frustration so i agree with you there thank you yes and to answer the original question yes we do pay the additional yes we'll treat it no differently that would be interesting to see how much we actually cost the county as well that would be very interested could i just come back uh because you know as world members i'm sure we'll get it right through the county when there's a when there is a house that's being can't remember what you said the technical term was village being shelved or or put it back that's it if if a house is going to be packed in a in a particular ward it'd be useful to keep the ward member in but included in that one because what happens is otherwise people are like you've had a room and comes to us here empty room in months what are they doing about it and i said well i haven't got a clue you know so it'd be useful if you are packing something or you're doing something in the ward just an email because you know what you're doing just email the ward member wherever they are and keep them in the loop of what's happening with the property and then if somebody's asking them in the pub shop in the street they've got the answer hopefully for it uh thank you that's a really good suggestion and we'll do that going forward thank you and it has happened as well shared on a number of occasions that i've revisited some of these empty properties with with them a ward member in order to get there be one of these things thank you have the shell next hi so managed just relating back to the heating issues um it was a case i had last year with a resident um who had a problem with the boiler boiler wasn't working the family had to move and vacate the property um they wanted to move back in they did move back in and they were given some sorts of electric heaters to heat the property now she did have some small children she was concerned for the children at time and with it being winter she couldn't afford to um pay for these heaters that were put in the property and she was panicking now what backup do we have for our residents who cannot afford to be heating the property when they are when they have been given these emergency um shell yeah sorry we're going off tangent a little bit oh how are we sorry could you take that up with Liz and Rhys yeah it's just just asking what backup do we have for our tenants basically when it comes to your mind Michelle thank you okay sorry okay right it's okay uh Delith sorry through it and there's just a few questions i had about the contractor list really because from my understanding that key to making sure the good ternary is the good contractor list so i'd like to ask a few questions about that just so that i understand a little bit um how often is the contractor the i take it that you work from an approved contractor list that that is compiled every so often so how often is that compiled and now we show those the quotes that we get through them are commensurate with market values and what we could get otherwise and also do you find that the contractors keep on on task quite well are they actually on site within you know in a timely manner so that the works are completed as quickly as they possibly can as i can see from the time list that you've sent that it says it's somewhere between 25 and 50 days you know 50 days could that work be completed quicker have we got a clause in our contracts with the contractors to make sure that they keep on task those are the first two questions i might have something else a little bit later yes Mac yeah um so with regards to the contractors we have a framework which we tender between four to five years um the next one is due we're working on it now it's due to go live probably by the end of may to go out to tender because when we start off the last time we had five contractors through time one fell away because they weren't very good quality so we no longer use those and then others drop out they don't have the work or they no longer want to do void refurbishment work but so um as i say we're going live to tender later this month with regards to contractor management we have a set of KPIs so they do expect to be on site on time Mike and his team are very very strict at managing that um we monitor the quality of the work but also that they finish on time because we have a part of the KPIs we will claim but if they over over the the schedule finish date then we'll claim that we that money back the loss of rent as part of our contract um sorry what else is the question yeah that was to make sure that we because you said now that you have four contractors that you've got on the list at the moment i see the timescale says for them to be on site within five days which is quite a site timescale for some contractors isn't it especially smaller ones um do you find that that works really well does that preclude some who may give you you know a cheaper quote um and that might work more efficiently and more economically because of that timescale or does that work well no it works very well um i'll pick up the other part of the question remember now so how do we know we're getting value for money well part of the bid that these contractors will will submit we give them a schedule rate so that's a national standard that's set throughout the uh construction industry for thousands of tasks so it might be fit a door handle might be hang a door so all those there's an kind of an average cost that's a it's nationally published what we do we give an example in our spreadsheet we'll say we might want to hang 50 doors we might need to hang um change so many windows and so so we'll put that in the spreadsheet and they cost um against those items so when the tender comes in for the bigger voids so anything say over eight thousand pound where they have to individually bid and we can compare that to the prices they quoted so they wouldn't if they were extremely expensive they wouldn't make the framework in the first place they'd be excluded so we know we're getting reasonably competitive prices because we can compare it to the national standard but we can also compare the bids that they submit against their original tender prices so that we've got um a good handle on where we're spending money so we're very i i would suggest we're very very good at that that's good to hear yeah because that's an important factor of it isn't it really that you're guessing that you know that you they're not taking advantage of the fact that they're on the tender list if you like on the approved contact list um the other question i had was about in-house so you've got in-house teams and how you've got enough capacity within the in-house teams to complete small works you know things like decoration and things like that and can we cut down on some of the cost by using in-house teams yes that's a very topical question for today because as we're speaking my colleague Jason is with Claire who's a finance officer and they're actually discussing how we can um finance doing the the small avoids ourselves because whilst we need we appreciate we need contractors to do big stuff and we don't have the the whole range of skills and equipment to deliver them all ourselves but we do have some really really good in-house operatives that we need to allow them to express themselves if you like and do more than just basic repairs and we take on that work ourselves so that we're actually going through that plan at the moment we do some small stuff to help out if it is just a simple decoration we we will provide support to do that but we need to do more as you just said and we appreciate that we need to bring some more in-house to allow us to make the money go further yeah okay i think that's a really good way of being more you know financially economical listening and that's it finally maybe thank you there's good question is your back office capable of all this because it seems a lot of work checking tenders and all that is your back office you know are you are you at your capacity you know are you struggling or you need more I think we we're managing very well at the moment we appreciate there's a lot more stuff we want to do as a maintenance team going forward and you know we've had discussions with Liz about you know what more could we do in-house but they're things for the future but currently yeah we're quite comfortable where we are yeah just make a general point if you don't mind which is just to clarify that all of this work is managed within the housing revenue account so there's there's no impact on the on the council's general finances one way or the other just to make that clarification thank you thank you karen thank you chair i must admit when i when i first read this revised standard report i could feel the anxiety levels rising because you know it's quite an extensive list isn't it um what i it's not so much a question it's a concern really and on the list it's got landlords must make arrangements for a smart meter to be installed in each home well smart meters have been widely criticized with reports that as many as one in five fail to provide the promised real-time information on energy use and cost and i know that the elderly are uh struggle um with with smart meters um so i'm just wondering you know do you have concerns about that you know this is this a mandatory obligation um i i make a general point about um education um and um i think anybody who's had um a new new heating installed is quite an education um so um where those of us with with traditional heating might turn the heating up and down and things like that with with air source heat pumps ground source heat pumps um the the the best thing is to keep a constant heat and and that's that's a that's a big piece of education for anybody of any age so that is a piece of work that we're working really hard so that our our all of our offices from from the from the maintenance guys through to all the housing offices we're we're we're continuing to communicate with our tenants about the about the new technology um and uh yes um smart meters i think mark i'll pass over to you to answer that question okay so just for everybody to be quite um clear that the the election you're referencing to is part of the impacts of the new WHQS 2023 so when we saw that as as as a maintenance team we're thinking right landlords must make arrangements for a smart meter to be installed in each home work so we struggled with that to think how can we force someone to have a smart meter if they don't want one we can't dictate where they buy their energy from so currently um we we are not forcing people to have a smart meter there's a lot of dialogue going on between landlords and wealth governments at the moment about elements in the standard so it's about learning and about sharing experience as well as government again um just just a point of interest for you yesterday some colleagues from the different landlords across nogweils met adra and penegrice to discuss these very items with all landlords that are having to an experience in the same um sets of conditions um that we've got to manage so we're trying to look at that collaborative but we do we are keeping in touch with wealth government as well to say how do you expect us to be able to deliver that because we can't force anybody to have a smart meter in the home if they choose not to be happy gonna yeah okay we've got our james thank you chair to go back to um laskoid road i'm the local member uh and following the recent cabin radar dog community council meeting i was asked to inquire on that and on the 23rd of april i sent her an email to a member of your team um asking what the current situation was and as of yet i've not had a reply so to go back to what we were saying that you know we need to be kept in the loop very much so uh and a bit disappointed i hadn't had a we can we take that out the meeting yeah yeah you take it out the meeting yeah thank you um carol please carol you're muter yeah i think councillor tomlin was uh before me so the protocol let me explain the protocol of our meeting is members of the committee speak first and non-members are asked to contribute after so carol thank you so Mike you're on mute sorry thank you chair then um i noticed the budget is sort of four million um and based in two point five revenue and one point five capital when you come to sort of uh supply contractors with work do they sort of charge you for the materials as well as their labor or does the council provide the materials so that you can purchase them sort of cheaper than the bill there um that's one of the questions um and you know do can't does um if you're refurbishing the kitchen and the bathroom does that come out of capital or will it come out of revenue thank you that's about it um far as replacement of kitchens generally it would be on um a capital program but if we have a void property that does need a new kitchen um it will come out it some of it will be capital some of it is is revenue um but it's it would be covered in the contractor price so we pay parts and labor for for all the works for um for void properties so we don't provide materials right we sorry we may specify a kitchen range as in you know you must buy from benchmarks but we don't actually provide that happy carol thank you capital funding um if if it's a um if it's a kitchen or a bathroom it'll be a capital it'll be accounted for by capital um but the minor works might be considered revenue thank you Liz thanks thank you carol mervin um quick one before I bring Andrea who's been sitting there patiently yeah just going on as you brought up earlier about um tenants um trying to protect the when a tenant leaves a property um I think with most tenants are landlords they'll have some sort of a deposit on them so when they leave the premises they've got some but I'm not just sure if that happens with a council property and whether it's something maybe you could look into building because a lot of them might come to you and i haven't got the money to give it to them which is possibly where they are whether it could be built in to have something in the first few months of them being there to step it up because when they're leaving they then will maybe have a of a bit of money to go from there but they will also have a bit of a leverage as well to say they've got 500 pound or 1000 pound or whatever it might be because if I take an example of um group and heavy houses that have come empty in my village it's under enough when the tenants go from there they've got to clear everything from there whether they put any captain or different kind of flooring in or whatever they've done to it if they don't take it they're charged or it's off the of the deposit they given and i'm just thinking whether that would be a way of you saving a little bit of money or maybe making those properties making sure that the the tenant who's leaving as it feels a bit more obliged to make it tidier or whatever so that they can get their check back or money back a few even if they haven't got it it might be something you could possibly build in to the first few months or or 12 months of them being there to try and get some sort of a parts that they've got to deposit with you for so just a suggestion to make it eat cheaper when they go from there thank you thank you we're looking to that thanks thank you and last sorry Andrea sorry to keep it deal and that's fine thank you for allowing me to speak as a long committee member um my question is something that i probably know the answer to insofar as are all these new standards legally binding upon the council because i find them extremely onerous and probably are contributing to the homelessness problem in so far as they delay those properties being turned around quickly enough for tenants to get into them really in this day and age when we've got a massive homelessness problem we really shouldn't have properties empty for long and i do worry that we've gone to as a hands up i'm a professional letting agent so i'm working the private rental sector and you know if i had to uh ask my landlords to adhere to the standards that that that damage local authorities to do the how i can tell you now the housing crisis would be a far far far worse because we turn properties around very quickly and and they're legal and they're safe etc etc and i do wonder if we've gone to the nth degree completely OTT in providing perfect properties where absolutely good enough would do to help solve our homelessness problem in an ideal world yes perfect properties with absolutely every inch of it done but are we in that world where we can do that we'd all love that we'd all love that for our own properties no doubt to be of the standard that that's required so i do feel as though it's gone too far and it's exacerbating our homelessness problem and that's one question i sort of appreciate a little bit of feedback from on the people working in this day today and my other question is a specific one about the flooring and it never did cease to amaze me that we could provide a property without flooring so that that's obviously a good move but is there any thoughts on giving vouchers for that like we do for the decorating so that the tenants can approach any of your approved contractors on the carpet seeing and flooring friends to maybe help on on that front budget wise and also do we have numbers of years that we expect say carpets to last for i if somebody did move on within two or three or four years we wouldn't replace the carpets then we would have them professionally cleaned or is it a requirement that carpets are and flooring is brand new for every new tenant um thank you for your time thank you at least studies on the first yes i just wanted to come in there um thank uh Andrea for her question Andrea knows that i always appreciate and value her her questions in fact we we have made arrangements to have a chat at some time over over a coffee somewhere and we can talk through housing and homelessness um i think the report that we've got today is about our social housing and i think the people who we are concerned about are those people who have been on our housing waiting lists for a number of months or years waiting for properties to become available and i think homelessness is a discussion possibly for another day since the the term has been mentioned a few times so we we are looking to to work through the the residents who are already on our waiting lists thank you chair yes the um the way else housing quality standards national policy so you know for social housing we are mandated to adhere to those but we do we don't have to be able to adhere to them from day one so we've got a period of time during which we can we can work towards um adhering to them and as mark mentioned some of the some of the kind of technical details we're still we're still ironing out with Welsh government so um the um the question of flooring for example um you know as it stands it says that it's uh the flooring needs to be changed at a change of tenancy um but it but that's the sort of discussion that we need to have with Welsh government because as you say if it's about if it's you know if it's perfectly good then we wouldn't want to be stripping out flooring and putting in if it's if it's not necessary so yes we are mandated to do it um we we've we've we've been open in as of our colleagues in social housing sector in saying that um we're when as things stand it's unaffordable the new as quality housing standards are not affordable we're not going to achieve those standards in the timescales we've we've been given um but we are like every other social landlord in in Wales in that respect um but we are trying our best and we continue to do our best um to do that um can i just ask mark to pick up about the the vouchers because i think we've got a specific answer to that um currently we we um we mentioned that the voucher for decoration which we do we will always offer that um the carpet um offering it's something we are discussing we are um considering to all that well we we have to do kitchen and bathrooms we would always have to do that because we've got to make sure that they're safe and and slip-proof the remainder of the homes falls land and stairs there might be a good opportunity there where we could offer about your attendance to incoming tenants to say you know this is an organization we we've got a contract with go there they've got a range of carpets that you can choose from and we we kind of give the opportunity anyway for it they can have a look and see this particular carpet so i but i'm not aware we've actually handed over the voucher to anyone yet and said go off and but yeah it's definitely something we would do thank you and do you want to come back thank thank you um rice lisen and mark on that and one thing i missed out in my question as far as the standards are concerned um can we move a tenant in without the mall having been ticked off in so far as the house is okay to live in but there's still a few things to do like outdoors stuff um bike sheds and all these other things that are on there um my concern is moving tenants on quickly that's where i'm coming from in this void um uh a gender item thank you just to add to that as well um but there's also a question of say a tenant goes in how long does that camp its life span as well that was a question what was asked as well thank you um i'll answer the the first part which is um we we want people to move in as quickly as possible um so uh yes we wouldn't we wouldn't force them to wait until we've got a water button stalled obviously there's the longevity yeah um ideally like with kitchens and bathrooms i guess if the carpets are in good condition there's no need to change them then we we probably wouldn't you know yeah i think someone mentioned early we've probably cleaned them but if they are good condition carpets it would be such a way to throw them away wouldn't it great no more questions everybody's happy um so the agenda uh recommendations that the committee notes the reports and contents the committee challenges and shares their views which we have on the report um just thank you mark for the great work you're doing it's it's it's it is great you know we should be proud of the housing and temperature thank you i'll be sure to share with the team the only thing what i'm i'm we're going to pick up now is obviously which needs to come back sometime is is is the slowness of the housings going on the market that is a big concern also a concern is we don't know how much council tax we're paying we don't know how many houses what we haven't got on our books which have been there over 12 months which we're paying one and a half per cent council tax that's concerning what we don't know those figures and also the heating as well so sometime in the in the future we'll bring them back but on that note thank you it is thank you liz and thank you mark and it's a pleasure having you here yourself do you want to carry on do you want to break parliament yeah gender item six please um karen thank you chair um at our last meeting we discussed discuss the public convenience's proposal and you asked for that to come back to a future meeting and um the lead officer has actually been in touch and we have that on our agenda for september the fifth um brian brought up in the minutes that the real regeneration program should have been brought in october do you want to take stuff now with your mind um with with with the silence yeah maybe back in september um can we have an information pack from now till before the next meeting on um what consultation has been has been carried out uh with who and what the responses are back as well because i think it's you know timescale we're going into research we're now may june july um things wind down for august you know this there's no there's not much goes on in august a lot of people have august off um so i'm just i'm just a bit concerned because we're quite early in september don't we so if we can have an information pack on what the consultation was given and also what was the feedback back into the people on board with them or or not on board with them if it's not possible yeah i could pull something together chair for you um just just to let you know we are planning to write all town community councils or the relevant town community councils um again tomorrow and um to provide further information about the toilets in their in their area and um what we want to discuss with them and we do plan to forward those letters onto the relevant meds so the all the local members are aware of what we're doing there nice to bring it back it's nice to bring about the information before i could certainly get someone's thoughts together what we what we're doing in terms of consultation yeah actually and what's not responsive about having as well if we can yeah okay oh sorry that's right it's just coming back um it's uh it's been quite late hasn't it um consulting with town and community councils uh and it's been going on for a fair few weeks now which should have started really a few months ago but we are where we are um and i just want to um make sure that we exclusively have that information in good time before it comes back in September because obviously we're dealing with a very contentious issue here um which has wide wide reaching impact on all communities in the county um and everybody has to have an opportunity to digest the information so i'd i'd like it to be quite detailed please thank you yeah okay yeah just listening to those comments there evident to me the september meeting will not have the detail that this committee requires and so do we need to um make the point here make the decision that you you move it back another month because we don't want to be sitting here with information that's uh not not relevant doesn't give us what we want as a committee and then we don't want to meet in like we had last time we're on a we're on a time frame because it's going to come in in September yeah yeah can i just say yeah i mean i'm not sure that we should be making assumptions about the level of detail of the report that i'm going to be bringing september it would be very detailed and provided in my view all the information required to scrutinize the proposals and it is going to cabinet in september that's the plan check i don't think we should stop it let's let's have that information over the summer and then we'll see what's we've gone to is in september so okay everybody happy yeah great um move on with that thank you um as brian mentioned in the minutes we did say we'd bring the real regeneration program in october and it was on the spreadsheet it's fallen off i will pop it back on for you because it is separate to the real promenade master plan so i'll put that straight back on for you and today we've asked um from the housing services for reports on keeping tenants safe and warm depending on their home heating source so we'll pop that on the agenda so we also need an information on why are they going why what what why is it not performing because nobody knew the answer that go into market and also the council tax as well how much would be on council tax because you know we could be paying thousands on council tax and you know that could be the essential savings can i ask on the council tax one who's paying which budget is that coming out of is that coming out of revenue to capital or is it coming out of the budgets that we're dealing with that with that within the pressure with can i just ask why Liz is still in the room then can we ask you those questions first do you have the answers now or should we ask for an information report on it i should have left the room shouldn't like um yes so the council tax on empty homes is paid for by the housing revenue account so it's not paid for by the council general funds it's paid for by the hra yes yes we we we've made a note to provide that information to you okay okay so was that a report that you want bringing about communities in future on the additional services involved in the disposal of houses it's not working then something must be being done about it so we can just have a if it's been altered or something it's changed so it's uh being useful just to know but discussed it's over useful to know the answers well as per usual um we have the screen proposal forms at appendix two i have a word of them here if anyone wants a hard copy to fill in or you've got the word versions online i can send you thank you thank you got one here for september on the tree maintenance and management um i don't know how wide that that one is going is that tree maintenance management just dealing with tree maintenance and management is alone property or is it county wide property because we've got obviously a problem with trees because we're getting enforcements on some people because they've got dead trees ash dieback various things so would it be worth bringing or putting a little bit meat on the bone explaining how that works during that because we'll have the tree offices in there because that you know that that's happening around the county at the moment where we are identifying dead trees dangerous trees because they've died anyways um and some that have died with ash by the dieback and how we control it because we don't want to take any any trees down that we don't want to take down but if they are dangerous then they're obviously we're going to deal with them somehow and do they replace them if they do i'll get in touch with joe wally and ask if we could take questions on county wide then hey happy no screen yet you're turning up yep um right let's my agenda now number seven feedback of representatives on the committee no rep no no feedback so that concludes today's meeting. Thank you very much, all. Very interesting meeting. Thank you.
AI Generated
Summary
The council meeting focused on various administrative and operational aspects of local governance, including the management of council properties, particularly in relation to voids and housing standards. Discussions also touched on public conveniences and the upcoming regeneration projects.
Decision on Void Properties Management: The committee reviewed the process and challenges associated with refurbishing void council properties. The discussion highlighted the financial and operational strain of maintaining high standards within budget constraints. The decision to continue with current practices was driven by a commitment to providing quality housing, despite the high costs and potential delays in making homes available. This decision underscores the council's prioritization of housing quality over rapid turnover.
Public Conveniences Proposal: The committee agreed to revisit the public conveniences proposal in September, with additional information to be provided over the summer regarding consultations and community feedback. Concerns were raised about the timing and depth of consultations, reflecting the committee's cautious approach to ensuring comprehensive community input before final decisions.
Real Regeneration Program: It was noted that the Real Regeneration Program was mistakenly omitted from the forward agenda and would be included for discussion in October. This oversight highlighted the need for careful agenda management to ensure all significant projects are adequately reviewed.
Surprisingly, the meeting also delved into issues of emergency heating in council properties, sparked by concerns over the adequacy of heating solutions in emergencies. This discussion revealed a gap in contingency planning for heating outages, which the council agreed to address in future meetings. In the recent meeting of the Denbighshire Community Scrutiny Committee, the primary focus was on the management of council housing, specifically addressing the issue of voids (empty homes) and the associated costs and strategies for maintenance and renovation. The meeting also touched on the transparency of the meeting process, the importance of declaring interests, and the review of previous meeting minutes.
Council Housing and Management of Voids The most significant discussion centered on the management of voids in council housing. Ris Thomas, the head of housing, and Liz Greaves, along with lead officer Mark Cassidy, presented a detailed report on the current state and challenges of managing approximately 3,500 council houses, of which over 200 annually become void. They highlighted the financial and operational pressures of renovating these void properties to maintain a high standard for new tenants. The council spends about £4 million annually on maintaining voids, aiming to ensure homes are in excellent condition before new tenants move in, which sometimes leads to longer vacancy periods and lost rental income.
The committee discussed the new Wales Quality Housing Standards, which impose additional requirements such as installing smart meters and ensuring properties meet certain energy efficiency standards. These mandates are challenging due to their financial implications and the practicality of implementation.
Heating Concerns in Council Properties A significant concern raised was the dependency on single sources of heating like air source heat pumps, especially in rural areas prone to power outages. The committee debated the need for secondary heating sources to ensure tenant safety during extended power failures. This discussion underscored the need for a robust emergency plan for heating, particularly for vulnerable residents during severe weather conditions.
Operational Challenges and Transparency Operational issues such as delays in selling void properties and the financial impact of paying council tax on empty homes were also discussed. The committee expressed frustration over the slow process of putting void properties on the market, which incurs unnecessary costs and reduces the financial resources available for other housing needs.
Future Actions and Recommendations The committee requested detailed reports on several issues for future meetings, including the financial impact of council tax on void properties, the efficiency of processes for selling these properties, and a comprehensive plan for secondary heating sources in council homes.
Overall, the meeting highlighted the complexities and financial challenges of managing council housing, especially in maintaining the balance between high standards for habitable conditions and the practical aspects of financial and operational efficiency. The discussions pointed towards a need for strategic adjustments in handling void properties and preparing for potential emergencies affecting tenant welfare.
Attendees
Documents
- Agenda frontsheet Thursday 09-May-2024 10.00 Communities Scrutiny Committee agenda
- DeclarationofInterestFormNov2014L
- Draft minutes Communities Scrutiny Committee 140324
- Communitites FWP Report 09052024 Eng
- Housing Maintenance Voids Process Cover Report
- App 1 Housing Maintenance Voids Process WBIA
- App 1 Communities FWP
- App 2 Housing Maintenance Voids Process
- App 2 FWP Proposal Form Eng
- App 3 Cabinet FWP
- Public reports pack Thursday 09-May-2024 10.00 Communities Scrutiny Committee reports pack