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Community & Housing Overview & Scrutiny Committee - Wednesday, 6th March, 2024 10.00 am
March 6, 2024 View on council website Watch video of meetingTranscript
- Good morning everybody and welcome to this morning's hybrid meeting of community and housing. For those online, I'm Council Helen Brown and I shall be chairing the meeting this morning. First, do we have any apologies?
- Thank you Chair. We haven't got any apologies. Sorry, just realized when my phone was on.
- Did you hear that online? Oh, sorry. We haven't received any apologies but we have one substitution. Councillor Rob Davis is subbing for Councillor Daylle, so that's there. Thank you.
- Okay, so we have any declarations of interest, please. Councillor Tagg Palmer.
- Councillor Terres.
- Okay, Jen Dryton number three is the forward work program and action tracking. (paper rustling)
- Thank you, Chair. Members will see the forward work program on page nine of the agenda with the next meeting scheduled for the 12th of June. There has been one change since the last meeting and that is that the together we can community resilience and self-reliance item has been added to be considered at the June meeting. I'm not proposing any changes to the forward work program as it stands. Moving on to the action tracking document from the last meeting on page 13, you will see that the letter has been posted to us government on the 23rd of February with the agreement of the chair. I have had an email confirmation that they've received the letter, so once a response is received, I will circulate that to the committee and all the actions from the last meeting on the 2nd of February have been completed. Thank you, Chair. Councillor bit.
- Yeah, thanks very much, Madam Chair. Just a quick query in regards to the letters that have been sent to Welsh governments and the communications that have even been sent to Welsh governments or UK governments. I haven't been able to catch sight of them, so I'm just wondering, as the cabinet member, can I be copied into sent to local governments?
- Yeah, apologies, yeah, it's just I haven't seen them, so just for my own reference.
- Absolutely, yeah.
- Any comments at all, please?
- Yes, a lot, Madam Chair.
- The forward work program. Okay, we've got three recommendations. We have a mover, please. Councillor Tack Palmer, seconder. Councillor Kevin Roch, all in favour, please. unanimous, thank you. Okay.
- I hear you online.
- Sorry, my briefly mentioned it to Mr. Cool as we came in. I've had issues now for several months in the particular property, and I don't want to go any further by way of identification of that. I'll deal with it with Mr. Cool. However, if it's not being dealt with from a source, where do I go? I know I'm a very experienced Councillor. I don't know who the health has been to, and it's a nuisance, it's a very big nuisance, and that's the reason I have half an hour conversation with the lady on my phone this morning, before leaving home. We should not be subjected to that, and certainly neither should she. I'm asking for your, through your good services and the chair, ma'am, that we deal with it ASAP, and get it sorted once and for all. I'll leave.
- Okay.
- And Councillor Bebe as well, if we can just have a word later on. Okay.
- And help to help to get it sorted for you.
- Okay, moving on to agenda item number four. It's the Audit Wales Report for the Homelessness Service, and it will be Martyn Cool. I'll just give a brief introduction. No, it's fine, don't worry. I'll give a brief introduction, and then we'll bring Martyn in. So, as part of the Audit Wales Program for 2023, one of the areas of interest for them was homelessness, and the Council's asked to participate in an audit review. So, the review took place over several months, and there was a range of activity under taken by Audit Wales, and we received the final report in January. As part of the process of responding to the Audit Wales Report, we've brought the recommendations to this committee today, and also outlined our response to those recommendations. This will go through to Cabinet next week, and then on to Governor Zorvik Committee in April.
- One of the members, as Vicki said, Audit Wales, as they routinely do, identified homelessness as an area that they would like to look at. They're, I believe, looking at homelessness broadly across a number of local policies in Wales. And this came about as a result of the Council ourselves highlighting homelessness as a risk area. So, they came in, a team of auditors. The method of the audit was documentation review, key personnel, interviews, meetings with senior management, meetings with the leader, portfolio holder, stakeholder engagement workshops with partners working with the local authority on homelessness, stakeholder, frontline worker workshops for staff who are delivering homelessness services and support services in the Council, and also a open invitation to over 500 residents to engage in service user involvement events. As outlined in section 101, you can see the types of questions that Wales Audit Office were looking to answer, looking to delve into and get answers to, and overall, I'm pleased to say that the findings were positive. The overall finding was generally that we deliver a high quality homelessness function. We could have good strategic oversight with regards to our levels of risks and we are planning robustly. They do, however, as would be expected, highlights some areas for improvement or attention, and they are detailed within the report in section 202. The first recommendation relates to sustainability financially for homelessness services, which, as we've briefed members, is an ongoing challenge across the whole of Wales, and we need to ensure that our services are sustainable, meet our statutory needs, and can continue to offer the high quality services that we are now recognised by Wales Audit Office to be delivering. There's also a second recommendation that looks at, we need to improve our cost benefit value for money judgments on our interventions that we deliver in order to demonstrate to the public and to members and internally that the money we spend when we do do it proactively, as opposed to just hemorrhaging money on emergency accommodation, that that offers value. An example of this that the auditors were particularly impressed by was we are incredibly good at target hardening for people who are experiencing domestic abuse. A few thousand pound can be invested in a property to make a family or a resident safe, and this would avoid them from going into a domestic abuse refuge or emergency accommodation at great cost at the local authority. So noted as good practice, but we don't actively and routinely cost-analyze those types of benefits so that we can save for every pound we spend. We saved X amount of pounds through that type of intervention. So we'll be doing some work in that regard. And also a third recommendation that we need to engage more with our residents so that when we are developing services, we are confident that they will meet the needs of residents, can be quite challenging with residents who are experiencing homelessness, because perhaps the last thing they want to be doing is turning up to a focus group to talk about services, when they want to be focusing on how are you actually going to help me fix my homelessness on a very personal level. But that is something, again, that we will have to respond to as a result of this third recommendation. Overall, I'm incredibly proud of that report. It's really encouraging for staff. It has been a morale booster. It often feels incredibly challenging working in the homelessness and housing support sector. And we're expecting staff to do a job without them having the tools that they need, which is the accommodation and the supply of housing. So it has been positively received by the staff. Staff and partners that engaged in the process found it to be really informative and was a good reflective opportunity for them to recognise how hard everyone is working on this incredibly tough agenda. And I hope that members will view this as a positive report as well.
- Questions, anybody? Sean.
- Yeah, I think, you know, has been presented by Vicki Martin. You know, this is a positive report. It's a positive report in an incredibly challenging environment, an incredibly challenging situation. And I think is a vote of confidence of those working at the front line. It's an incredibly difficult job. And as Martin said, you know, the staff we've got working there just simply aren't committed with the supply of accommodation. Clearly, you know, a very, very difficult and challenging situation, again, also to emphasize, you know, the very distressing circumstances that many of our residents find themselves in. So, you know, I'm very pleased to see that there's been a very positive audit. And, you know, and that gives a vote of confidence to those members of staff who, yeah, as I said, are on the front line in incredibly challenging environments.
- Thanks, Sean. It is a good report. And I think the recommendation won. It didn't really need to be a recommendation. Did it from Wales audit? Because we absolutely know that we don't have the funding or we've not got enough funding to be able to, to meet the needs realistically. And that falls on the taxpayers, including ourselves. Councillor Dolphin, please.
- Thank you, Chair. Wasn't really a question. It was just to say, well done. As you say, it is a really struggling part of homelessness that we don't have the properties to place these people in. And I think we're doing an excellent job, considering the restraints that we have. I just wanted to say, well done. Thank you, Chair. (gavel bangs)
- Thank you. Do we have anybody else that would like to ask any questions, make any comments at all? No, we've got two recommendations. Do we have a move for those recommendations, please?
- Move the recommendations.
- Thank you. A seconder, please. Councillor Dave Evans, all in favour? That's unanimous. Thank you. Okay, moving on to agenda item number five. It's the homelessness and sleep and update report and the homelessness policy. Again, thank you. Sorry, just a brief introduction from me. So this is an annual report that comes to this committee to provide an update on homelessness and the sleeping. But in addition to that today, we're also asking for comments on a new homelessness accommodation policy, which is attached to the report. So I think this committee is very clear, given that we've provided a number of updates that the service continues to be under significant strain. And that's, you know, a number of external factors are influencing that. Also, in addition to that, continue changes in legislation, mean that there are, as well as less stringent conditions on the right over the border in England in terms of homelessness and the fact that we continue to sustain the normal left out policy again, these are, we are more duty, but more accommodation duties to individuals. Attached to the report is an appendix one, these data, there's much more data available to us now, so it's supposed to be working really hard on building that information. So that for members to understand, I say what those demands look like, but we also thought it would be helpful to provide an overview of a day in the life of the homelessness teams so that people could see what is coming through the door in a daily basis and the type of pressures that the service are experiencing. So I'll just pass you over to item.
- Thanks, Vicki. In terms of the report, if I just work my way through a few with a few comments and then we'll go to the appendices and touch on the data, which as Vicki said is much more informative. Now we've done a heck of a lot of work on our systems so that we can improve the information we put in and then how we extract it so that we can monitor this high risk area far more robustly. As Vicki said, homelessness is statutory duty and we do have some of the most progressive and supported legislation in the world in Wales with regards to helping people. Great work done during COVID, then we enter the cost of the living crisis and Welsh government have made a commitment to sustain the principle of what's called no one left out, which is offering accommodation to people who are in need and supporting them to sustain it and then exit homelessness as quickly as possible. As you'll see in section 1.02, we have our costumes, budgets and expenditure over recent years in regards to homelessness and the various grant funding regimes that we have available to us. Homelessness, as it's a statutory service, case officers, accommodation and managers in relation to the homelessness service, delivering those statutory services have to be casted by other council funds. We do receive housing support grants, but these are for non-statutory prevention and sustainability services. Picking up on the letter that was sent to ministers by this committee a few weeks ago, many of you may have seen in various press outlets associated with the housing and support homelessness sector that the house been a significant uplift in the last two weeks announced for the housing support grant with an additional 13 million going into the national pot and we are expecting approximately 7.8% uplift for the Flincher Award. That's not confirmed yet. Neither is our awards for no one left out or discretionary homelessness payments. We expect those awards to be confirmed by no later than the end of this week. Homelessness presentations, it's a 24/7 job, as you know, and we will go through some of the data shortly, but just to remind councillors that if you have any residents who are struggling with homelessness issues or worried about their housing, we do have the house and helpline, which is a 1352-703-triple-7. And the usual routine for emergencies of evenings and weekends and bank holidays is their council standard emergency contact. If I can just start by looking at appendix one in terms of the data, you'll see table one evidence that our homelessness assessments are up significantly over a two-year period from 824 in 22 to 1,111 in 2023. This is assessments where people have approached the council by the helpline because they believe that they are homeless or at risk of homelessness and each and every one of those inquiries that is made as then resulted in homelessness assessments. That's significant demand and you may recall from our common housing register report, a couple of meetings previous that over 50% of our overall housing inquiries at the present are in relation to health and homelessness. When people are presenting, bearing in mind that we talk a lot about prevention, tables who highlight how significant a challenge that is when around 41% of our residents who are asking for help are homeless on the day. So whilst the perception may be that we get lots of opportunity to prevent homelessness, loads of time to work with people, it's not the case for 41% of our residents. They are contacting us on the day and we have to deal with their homelessness on the day. Further, 23% roughly are homeless within either the next 48 hours or seven days. So that leaves a big chunk of people where we might have chance to do some meaningful prevention work. Reasons why people present as homeless on the day, as you can imagine, could be young people or family members kicked out of their home by parents, family, friends, relationship breakdown, domestic abuse, the reasons can be very wide and ranging. Every single case needs interrogating and responding to on the day. So that's 41% of our 111 cases. We talk quite often about notices in the private rented sector and I'll draw you attention to table three, which is where we can monitor our numbers of private sector notices, where we do have generally lots of time to try and find a solution to someone's homelessness. And you'll see that in the run up to the implementation and rollout of Renting Homes Wales Act 2016 legislation, where the six month notice period kicked in for existing tenants and all tenants, now known as contract holders, at the end of May, end of June, it may well have been. You will see that there was a big increase in the months prior with landlords serving notices when they had the opportunity to serve a two month notice to get into their talent much quicker. We've had seen a reduction in notices from the private rented sector, immediately thereafter for a few months, but those notices are now starting to creep up again. And the challenge as we know for the private rented sector is that a lot of the notices that are being issued are so landlords can sell. So the private rented sector is generating homelessness, but we also have fewer properties to successfully discharge our housing students into as the market availability is down 60% in the last five years. Okay. Table five shows you that the homelessness case load. So this is what offices are working with on a day-to-day basis. So people who are homeless or homeless in the next two months, those numbers have increased by approximately 73% in two years. Not unique to flincher, the cost of living crisis is a significant driver for this. But what we are seeing is because we don't have the available properties, particularly for singles and couples under 55, people are getting stuck in that system for much, much longer. So we do have people who've been open to the homeless in the service for the duration of that two year period. Although case loads have gone up by 73%, our staffing resources have not, and that's something that we're looking to address at the earliest opportunity. Table five gives an indication of the out of hours inquiries that we receive. Some people may think one or two calls a month. Note in the month of July, we were over 50 out of hours an urgency calls that we received by the homelessness service. We've made some really positive changes in the last 12 months around the way that we handle our out of hours inquiries, everything initially goes to Delta via the council's emergency helpline, then it works its way through to the Wallach, who are a 24 hour service operating at the Atlanta Avon homeless hub for them to do an initial assessment and triage and complex cases and any placements that are required, we have a number of staff who is on call every evening or weekend and those duties are shared across the homeless team. (keyboard clicking) The big cost expenditure item, as we've reached members on before, is around hotel accommodation and table six, highlights, as we've said before in various committees, that trend of increasing numbers over the financial year with a particular spike noted within December to January, where an additional 20 placements were made in one month. January is always a busy period, but this January, and continuing into February, has been extremely busy. Lots of people facing homelessness, caseloads, increasing, and as you can see, we were creeping under the 200 mark for households in emergency accommodation. We were likely, we're just verifying the data now, likely be over there, the 200 households, by the time that we report our February out there. It's not all bad news, when we think about the challenges that all the local authorities are facing, we've said for some time that this challenge is not unique to Flincher, this is a Wales wide, indeed UK wide issue, and table seven, shows you some of the nationally available data now, that highlights the number of people who are in various forms of homeless accommodation across Wales. Welsh governments have collected this data at the local level and pushed this information out nationally. For some time, they are now pushing this information out with a headline national figure, but also broken down by the number of people that are in emergency or temporary accommodation each month. There is a lag in the data, October 2023 was the first period that they've reported on at the local level, and that information was published at the end of January, and as you can see, compared to some of our neighbouring authorities, on those are significantly lower. It's also worth noting, and I believe to be encouraging, that our proportion of homeless people who are under the age of 16, classed as dependent children, is significantly lower than some of our Welsh authorities and particularly regional neighbours. Our numbers come in at about one in seven, one in eight, apart from which we've brought our children under the age of 16, many other local authorities are reporting that as one in the week. So we will monitor the regional variations in the local authority level data, and there is a link that I've put in the appendices. In the appendices next to table seven, the members to have a look at that data because it is catching up. So there are now three sets of data for October, November, December that are available. Table eight shows data around Welsh sleeping. Again, for the first time, Welsh Government have now published that at the local level, as well as a headline national figure. And as you'll see, the old Wales trend between April to October was numbers going up. However, our trend has been numbers going down. We have reported, I think, in November zero, what sleepers, December one, January zero, February one. So we are sustaining to know one left out principles. When people are rush sleeping, they are supported into accommodation as quickly as possible. And our number of people who are continuing to rush sleep are single figures, very, very low, one to two people. Finally, on table nine, positive outcomes, 'cause we do get them. This table shows you, this chart shows you a breakdown of the split of the type of outcomes that we are achieving. Obviously, we wish to be preventing homelessness as much as possible, but where that's not possible, we have to help people to secure alternative forms of housing. And there is a breakdown there in terms of successful outcomes that we receive, which unsurprisingly are quite social housing heavy via the Council and via our Housing Association partners. And because the private rented sector is becoming increasingly unaffordable and has reduced in its availability by 60%. I don't know if there are any questions that members have now before we move on, Chair.
- Councillor Evans, do you wanna come in now and?
- Thank you, Chair. Thanks, Martin. Can I just ask a couple of questions? Table two, timeframe for homeless risk. The table sort of seems to be an obvious one, but on the homeless, on the day, 41%. My question is, how many of those did we previously know about? And of course, it might be said that, well, they're captured in the other data that's there. However, if somebody, my point being is, if somebody is contacted, you say I'm in an overcrowded house, and I've been in an overcrowded house for 12 months or whatever, but then they declare themselves homeless. So I'm just wondering from that homeless on the day, is that completely unknowns to us? Or is that individuals that have previously contacted? So what is the completely unknown percentage to those that we have on our record database because they've made contact, they're living in an overcrowded property, they're trying their best, but it's reached a point where they can't go on anymore. And my second question is on table five, just curiosity on this really. The years where you get the homeless out of ours call, I can see obviously peaks in July and December, until January, obviously December, January is a bad time a year for a lot of family breakdowns and the issue. As there in any analysis on why certain months in the year are worse than the other, I mean, why July? It seems a strange one, but I would think that generally throughout the year, it would be just sort of a rolling sort of graph, but to have a few peaks says to me, must be a particular reason for those particular types of the year. So I wonder if there's been any analysis on that? And my two questions, thank you.
- Excellent, good questions as always, Councillor. In terms of the 41% presenting on the day, I think it's fair for us to say that this is the first time that we've really collected and made an effort to try and understand some of this. Service capacity has been such that we've been head down doing the doing, whereas now we are being more proactive with our data. That's required some work from IT to improve the system 'cause we can only use good data if we put good information in and can extract it via a good system. So we've been working on this for about 18 months in terms of getting the system reporting functions improved and pleased to say that we can now see this type of data. What it's telling us though is that we need to dig deeper. Some of that 41% will be people who might be on the common house and register, they may have presented previously and we've put a sticky plaster type solution in place by negotiation and mediation with friends and family. So I would imagine a significant portion of the 41% at least half will be people who will be known to the housing support homelessness service in some form. It could just be, they applied for a house on the common house and register 'cause they're living with mum and dad a year ago and they're still waiting, then there's a big barny and they've been asked to leave. So we can start to ask the question and dig a little bit deeper in that regard. But we haven't had the data to prompt the next level of inquiry. So a bit of a half-hearted response and shirking it somewhat but demonstrating that we are doing the digging that's needed to be able to respond to those issues. In terms of question two, the out of hours function, I think there is a perception that hot weather can drive tensions within homes. I know it used to be a common comment within domestic abuse circles, the periods of football tournament, there's rugby tournaments where alcohol consumption's go up can generate additional pressures on domestic abuse and homelessness services. The honest answer is again, we need to delve into it a little bit more.
- Yeah, thank you. Thank you for that, Martin. I suppose it's a questionnaire of when those people report in themselves what to capture that data, isn't it, at that time? All right, thank you.
- I think we must have been reading each other's minds 'cause those are the two things that I wrote down. So thanks for asking the questions and thank you for the answers. Is there anybody else that's got any questions at all, please?
- No, Councillor Sean, baby.
- Yeah, just briefly, I can just pass comment. I think the data that's been compiled for members is obviously very informative. And I think that the comparative data with the rest of Wales that we're now able to access via Welsh Government is also quite interesting. You know, I thought things were absolutely horrendous here, but to see some of the figures in some of our neighbouring authorities that seem to be an even worse situation is certainly quite sobering. Totally agree that the legislative framework from Welsh Government in terms of tackling homelessness is very progressive, very forward thinking. I think it's probably some of the most wide-ranging within the United Kingdom. Very positive to see that there has been an uplifting housing support grants and everyone in. But I think the message to Welsh Government has to be in order to deliver this ambition and this wide-ranging level of support that has to be adequate resource because clearly it's putting an enormous amount of pressure on our general budget. We're all sitting around the table as members and officers have gone through a very difficult budget phase, you know, clearly what we need is to make sure that this is adequate resource so we can deliver it. And, you know, the ability also to be able to secure that accommodation because without the accommodation, you know, we are under an enormous amount of pressure. Okay, thank you. Martin, do you want to speak? Yeah. Well, thank you. Appendices. Sorry, Councillors, you didn't see your hand up. Do you want to speak just before Martin continues? I'd just like to say, you know, I really appreciate such a difficult job you're doing and we're just not funded enough by Welsh Government, are we, to meet all these challenges? It's just an uphill struggle. I really don't know how it made such sobering reading. These reports, I just don't know how we're going to manage to meet the need of all these people. But I would like to mention the staff have a really difficult job, but I think Councillors also need to be informed of what's going on in their wards. I know at the moment, Conest Key Councillors are being really put under the cosh by their residents. So, if large numbers of people are being drafted into certain areas, as seems to be happening at the moment, I think elected members need to be informed. You know, it could cause unrest of people. Residents aren't clear on facts as to why this is happening. So, I don't know whether it's clear springs in action in the Conest Key area, but I would be really grateful if Conest Key members could be informed about. My question is, are we spending the 1.6 million that we've had from the TACP around acquiring properties, particularly in that area? Thank you.
- Thanks, Councillor Thio. And I think it's quite sobering to all of us, isn't it? When the private rented sector is utilized by others rather than the council, then that puts a pressure upon ourselves and on our budget. But again, we've got no control over what the home office do with the private rented sector. As much as we're all quite, you know, we want more social housing. We want to get our numbers down from the homelessness. We want people out of hotels, but again, we've got nothing. We can't control what the home office do and the contracts that are data take up with private companies. But I'm going to bring Martin in because of the stigma.
- Yes, where we are procuring accommodation for our needs, for those people who are owed statutory duties by Flinch Accounting Council, if we are to be developing or doing intensive work in any community, we would of course notify the local member, certain elements of information with regards to what believe is going on in Connor's key at present. That is not a homelessness issue. That is a home office initiative. And we're not in a position to comment as the chair has done, but nonetheless does create pressures. TACP, yes, the 1.6 million is being invested in purchasing a number of properties, where we can, we are now exploring the opportunity to purchase properties from landlords when they are selling. And as a result of giving notice to their tenant, and that's a really good outcome if we can prevent homelessness by keeping someone where they are. That's always what we want to do. And certainly the TACP funding and the flexibility within it means that in certain circumstances, not every instance of course, 'cause the numbers are too great, but in certain circumstances we can buy property, keep residents where they are, and then issue them a contract as a necessary tenant. We're also looking at buying properties on the other market. So there are a number of properties that we purchased in the last 12 months, and plans for the next 12 months as well. Some of those properties will go into the HRA, and some of those properties will be used as temporary accommodation. If the member wanted numbers on the workflow that we've got in process, we can ask our service manager for strategy and development, Paul Callum to share those.
- Okay, thank you. Councillor Bivvie.
- Yeah. What I was gonna say, yeah, in terms of the TACP funding, that has been very, very helpful. I know that we've had some criticism whilst government, but that's certainly welcome capital funding, grant funding that we're able to utilize to, I think there's members here that we've had direct discussions in where we've been able to procure properties. We've been able to procure quite a few X right-to-buy properties, but again, if Councillor few, we're quite happy to compile some of that data for you. If you're information and reassurance, just to give you a snapshot of what that money that funding has been used for.
- Okay, Martin, do you want to carry on?
- Thanks, Chair. Appendices two, as Vicky referenced at the start of the paper, is a day in the life of the homeless team. We can talk about data, we can talk about numbers, we can talk about budgets, but there's nothing more important to me than the people who were caught up in the process of homelessness, whether that be the residents who were experiencing the trauma of homelessness, or also the staff who were experiencing the relentless pressure around homelessness and the vicarious trauma that's associated with it. So we just thought it would be interesting to share this type of a case study about a day. We often have case studies that we share about specific applicants, specific circumstances for homelessness, but this is a slightly different type of a case study. It's from June 2023, which is when we said we had that big spike in private sector notices. And as you can see, it was a particularly hot and tough Friday when this case study was developed. Any questions with regards to the day in the life of a homeless officer? No, wonderful. With regards to the final appendices, this is a draft, hopefully soon followed this meeting to be final version of a new accommodation policy for homeless accommodation. A temporary accommodation audit was requested by myself a number of years ago because it was an area of risk and an area that we knew we needed to improve performance on. And that audit came back as red and you've received the initial report and update reports in regards to that audit progress. A big milestone for us is adopting a new accommodation policy. It's attached to the appendices three. It focuses on the aspect of homelessness being brief because we want to prevent people going into homeless accommodation. And when we move them on, we want their homelessness to be unrepeated so that we can avoid them coming back through the system. And the policy itself is lengthy. And however, I'm happy to take any questions.
- Okay, Councillor, Dan is watching. The Councillor had promised so far.
- Yeah, it's just a comment that I think the cabinet member made, Adam Chair, in relation to right to buy. Now that normally is music to people's ear, I think, but it seems to have dropped off the radar in recent times. Is that so? If not, can you elaborate on what you were saying, please? Thank you.
- Just to confirm, to Councillor Hutchinson in Wales, there is no longer the right to buy council properties. That was alleged to have changed by Welsh government, and I believe prior to that, there was an option for local authorities to decide that they would end rights by sales and Flincher did that number of years ago. Just not sure if you were just confused about my, just a comment, but properties that had been sold onto the right to buy prior to that coming in, we've been able to purchase a number of those properties. Yeah, so yeah, hopefully, hopefully, Councillor Hutchinson's, yeah.
- No, and that was on the back of when we started the new council house building program. So it was, we were building council property so that they weren't then eligible for the right to buy. So that's got a number of years ago. Councillor Ted Palmer, please.
- Thank you, Councillor.
- Aye, 62.
- Aye, 62, number two.
- What?
- On page 62, number two, eligibility for homeless accommodation. There are 11 bullet points, and you made reference to yourself to, earlier on to relationship breakdown. I don't see that covered in number 11 bullet points, unless you can enlighten me that it is under one of them.
- If I can respond to that one first, Councillor. The 11 bullet points there are the categories of people, not the reasons for their homelessness. So for example, if a pregnant woman had a relationship breakdown, she would be accepted because she is pregnant, not just because she's had a relationship breakdown, and the same is applied within each of all of those categories. So that's the 11 priority need categories. The reasons for homelessness are slightly different as to why they approach us for a request for assistance.
- And also on page 68, number five.
Accommodation charges and income management.
Is that in the private sector, or is that as as well?
There's one there that says,
How share 81 pound?
Now if three people share the three bedroom house, which should be 117 pound, 99, that would be 240 pound, or not more. It's a real interesting quirk within the housing benefit regime this one. So for example, if we had a three bed house, and we were letting that to a family who had a three bed need, they would be eligible for 117 pound, 99 benefit, and that would be what we would charge them. If however, that three bed house is used as a two person house share, we could generate an income and charge two times 81 pounds. So we would generate an income of 162 pound for the two people sharing a three bed property. However, because it would be considered a house share, although below the HMO thresholds, there are additional responsibilities that we would have to pick up, such as gas, electric, council tax costs. So it is a quirk within the system. We do have a few two person house shares and they work really well, and that's one of our targets for the next six to 12 months to procure more three bed accommodation and use them as two person house shares to get people out of B and B. Temporary accommodation charges are charged on the household type, not the accommodation. - So correct if I'm wrong, you mentioned two people sharing the three bedroom house, what if three people share the three bedroom house, or do we not do that?
- Sorry, we can do that. We do do that where we have properties that are clusters, mini HMOs, and have been through the planning process to get that permission and that license for the properties that we are looking to take on as three beds. We're starting with them as two person house shares, ahead of them putting in for the mini HMO licensing in order for us to be then able to increase to a three person, three bed house share.
- And finally, I promise if you said these two people sharing a three bedroom property, they then charge bedroom tax.
- No, the temporary accommodation rent regime is actually completely outdated, an absolute nightmare scenario that hasn't seen an uplift in any of the rates since 2011. And I believe that about the time that the bedroom tax came in, bedroom tax does not apply. So in theory, the other quirk is, if we had a single person who was in a three bed property because they couldn't share, we could charge them and they would be eligible for the three bed rate, 'cause they have exclusive use. It's a complex, slightly outdated and difficult rent regime. The real kicker, Councillor, is that hotel accommodation, the cost for us is massive. The amount of rents that we can collect is minimal. We don't apply service charges to people who are in bed and breakfast, like a number of other local authorities do because we know how expensive it is to live in bed and breakfast. It's not a holiday. Families and other residents really struggle without having access to their own cooking facilities. So we make a conscious decision not to charge a service charge, but when we have people in hotels where it's costing 100 pound a night and we can, regardless of household size, only collect 90 pound per week benefit, that's where the real financial pressure is. The other forms of accommodation kind of cover themselves cost wise because we manage them well.
- Great questions.
- Thanks for the explanations as well. Do we have anybody else that would like to ask any questions or comments? No, we've got the two recommendations and then that's to note and report and continue to support the work undertaken by the Housing and Prevention Service and to approve the draft homeless accommodation policy. Do I have a mover, please? Councillor Dennis Hutchinson. Councillor Ted Palmer seconded all in favour. Again, unanimous, thank you. Okay, January item number six is the Dynamic Resource Scheduling System DRS Update. Thank you, it's Denise.
- Thank you, Chair.
- Great, Sean.
- Great, Sean, Andy, thank you.
- Thank you, Chair, sorry. So this is just an update paper. We provided members of scrutiny an overview of DRS a number of months ago. Again, we've left a lot of the narrative within just to again explain what it's doing. So the DRS Dynamic Resource Scheduling has been brought in to help us prioritise and organise and schedule the repair and maintenance work that we undertake. The pilot commenced by looking at just one of the district areas in Flincher. So I'm aware that Councillors and aware that the capital work team created these districts and a number of years ago, these district areas to assist with the WHOS programme. So we've remained them. We've kept them as they are. They work really well. So we've used the same district areas for DRS. So we went ahead with one area. We've opened that area up. We've moved into two areas. And just this week, we've opened the third area, so three of six areas. And that district map is detailed further on the report. What we're currently doing is in the pilot area, we're trying to test what works and what doesn't work. We've been trying to intentionally break the system to see how far we can push it. Flincher are unique in the way we schedule and organise our work. Every council, every RSL is different. We have 120 operatives, cross repairs and maintenance and the voice teams. Again, flexible in terms of where they work. But in terms of the work content they undertake, again, it's very different to other RSLs and councils. So what we've been trying to do is work out what is going to effectively be able to schedule through the RSL system and what isn't. So that's where we are at the moment. We're on the third area. What the third area allows us to do is to test the system's route planning, sort of options in the background in terms of how effective that can be. So members will recall the aim of this is to obviously get the operative to the first job as quickly as possible, take them to the furthest point during midday and then bring them back towards where they live. Again, so they can get home at a reasonable time, they're not stuck in traffic, but also to effectively use the operatives' time during the working day. We focus on a one job at one time and we've had some good feedback from some of the operatives on that and some negative as well. So I'll come onto that later in the report. So we're currently in the pilot area of District Area 3. When this is finished, we will open all the three areas in one go. We're sort of at a catch 22 scenario where we've left half the operatives off DRS and half of them are on. And that's Robin resources from Denise's planning team but also from Kev Repair's managers team as well in terms of where those resources are. So we've come to the collective decision when this third area has been finalized and we've tested everything we can, we're going to open all three district areas in one go and then we'll know by that point in terms of what's working and what's not working through the DRS system. It starts a little bit of an overview in terms of where we are. I'll just hand over to Denise for 102 just to give a bit of a background in terms of where we are with the planning and customer contact center as well. Thank you.
- Okay, yeah, thanks Sean. Yeah, just as Sean has said really, the planning team come into myself. We established that planning team before the DRS came in so that they had time to train on the system and we're ready to go with that. So we've got one lead planner and two planners. They've done a lot of work in the background. They've had to collect all the data from the operatives for the home addresses, the skill sets and the working patterns. This has all been fed into the DRS system, which then allows it to pick up the right skill set for that operative in that area. And obviously the first job from home and the last job from home. It's been vital there that they've built up some good working relationships with the call center who are making the calls and taking the calls and making some of the appointments and then the team leaders for the operatives and also the operatives themselves. So they've done the pilot schemes who started in November in Flint, moved onto Hollywell in April 23 and just this week we've moved into mold and they have fed back that they've seen a big differences with moved into mold and with more operates on it. They can actually see the screen working now how it should be, where jobs are shifting around, where it's obviously picked up, who's going to be finished first and who's closest to that job with those correct skill sets. So they're finding that quite interesting now that they've seen it actually moving as it should and going full rollout. That will work. I will attend a lecture today and be successful because we've done a lot of work on scenarios of what's worked in the pilots, the want-to-ones with the operatives. They're the people that are there on the front. It's been important to get their feedback of what's working well, what solutions we can make if they've hit any concerns and we've put those through. We have had a few but they've worked through them together. I said with the call centre, with the operatives themselves and with the team leaders because they know the systems as well as the operatives. It's picked up on the schedule of rates, the SMVs, which is the standard minute values against that because it works heavily with those standard minute values of how much time they're given for each job and in those areas. So we have picked up some things on that that, again, the feedback on that and those have been resolved. The lead planner has now got more involved in the info suite side of it, which is the report inside. We've started running some reports. We're accustomed to how we want those to run and what we want reports to pull from it. Again, we'll get more reports from that once that's full rollout because to pick out how many nows of how many jobs we're doing that, it wouldn't be quite fair because it's just in pilot areas, but we can get that sort of information and its information like that that we're working on to see what sort of historic repairs we've had in certain areas and what trades we need in certain areas, mostly and that's what we've worked on when we've been choosing the areas and how many opportunities we need in those areas. So yeah, it's been good working relationships and that has built up well. The team have really gelled well together and we're hoping that this is going to be a success because it is really starting to all live together through working on these pilots and making the decision to do the pilots and do them in stages, ready for a full rollout.
- With regards to just an update from the assets team, so in terms of an overview of where we are, as Denise mentioned, and I've appeared up previously, if members will recall we had in the chamber, we had the presentation, it showed a diary and it shows you which is the most effective nearest operative to select to slot my operative into that job. We're also text messaging our tenants, our contract holders in advance, just to remind them that an operative is on the way. Again, it'll pick up on some of the feedback. That is working really well and times it's not. So again, with some glitches within the system. The main focus of this is obviously to get the repairs scheduled in the most effective and efficient way for us as the service as a council, but to also provide that customer focus as well. So tenants know, contract holders know, when that job is going to be allocated and when an operative is on the way. So just having that information is quite important. We all get that now through through Amazon. So again, if anyone orders anything through Amazon, we get live updates in terms of when that delivery's on its way and that's something we're looking at implementing as well moving forward. So some of the feedback we've had from the operatives, we've sat with the operatives. Again, this is a collective thing we're bringing in. We want to make sure that if things aren't working, what can we do to address it? So I've got some examples of some what operators have said. One of the officers have said it takes the pressure off them, not having to plan their own day, not having a PDA full of 30 to 40 jobs, again, trying to work out which is the one they need to go to next. So again, that's the pressure that's taken off. The routing, how the RS plans the route of the journey of the operative, again, that's been working well. But just within two areas, that's been quite restrictive. So the more areas we open up, we'll be able to see how those routes have been planned. There has also been some feedback in terms of what's not working so well. So again, we're looking at the materials that we've got on our vehicles, how we got the materials to do the job right first time. So we're currently doing an audit separately on them. But also some officers have said they've gone to stores, they've gone to pick an item up, they've gone to the next job, always to find they need to go back to stores for something else. So again, we're looking at that, we're looking at an electronic system that can integrate into the RS, which then says, well, your next job is gonna be such and such whilst you're in the stores, please pick one of these items up. So that's been some useful feedback as well. And some really good examples of that. Again, officers have said they're finding it really sort of positive, having their first job close to home and their last job close to home as well. So again, we're effectively using their time during the working day. But there are some things that we do need to work on. So for example, working very, very closely with the contact center who take that call first time from the contact holder, from the tenant, to get as much information as possible about the job. So again, it's the urgency of the job, if it's a leak or if it's some plaster work that needs to be looked at. How urgent is it? What is the volume? What is the location? And the next is what is their availability? When can we come to see you? So that's what the contact center are focusing on. Also making sure that their contact details are up to date. So again, when we found that tenants haven't had a text message from us, it's because we've got the wrong mobile number for them on the system. So again, just making sure that our tenants, our contract holders, update us when they've changed their mobile phones or contact details. So again, working with the contact center on that. So there's a couple of things that we're working through. This is a pilot still. So we're really, as Denise mentioned, having the third area open now, we're able to test a little bit more, explore what is working well and what's not. So that's the next, if we just bring members attention to 106, that's the district area map. We've got the six districts there. So we have gone live with Flint, Hollywood, Mould. They're quite rural areas, so we'll be able to test the planning items of the journeys, are the operatives journeys being effectively planned? And again, looking at the store scenario as well, before we open the other three areas up in one go. So that's our current position and that is detailed on 107. And that's an update from each area. Thank you.
- Okay, thank you. I've got Councillor Dave Eppins and then Councillor Ted Farma.
- Thank you, Chair. Just first one, 106, the map. I can only see five shaded areas. You mentioned six and I thought you said six right at the beginning.
- Yeah, it's just the colors with the Connesky and Schotten and then the Hardman Saltney are both green. So the areas are Hollywell, so it will be Hollywell and then the rural areas surrounding Hollywell Flint, which pre-Flint and Bagels, Mould, which pre-Mould and the rural areas surrounding Mould.
- Well, please.
- Okay, thank you. Councillor Bibi, I've got that.
- I've got that. (audience laughs)
- The greens on my thingy are blending into each other there.
- So let's do that for a few minutes.
- So, okay, I shall move on. Thank you. Now, this sounds really good, and I'll be interested to see how this progresses. It's a positive thing. And is it exclusively for the housing section or are other areas of the Council using it? And if they're not, I do think there's something that the street scene might be able to take up unless they already do. But...
- Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Councillor. Yeah, at the moment, it's focused on the repairs and maintenance section within the housing portfolio. We are looking up bringing inspections onto there as well. So again, so when a tenant requested inspection or a survey or assessment, I do believe street scene have their own system. But again, DRS might be utilised for them. So we are gonna do some staff briefing workshops across both of us as well. So we'll share what we've done and what we've achieved up to now. Again, as I've mentioned, 'cause we're in a pilot area, there are some things that aren't quite working for us. We're quite unique. As Denise has mentioned, we've had to look at that. Operatives work in hours, they're skill sets. We've got a lot of operatives that are highly skilled. They have a lot of knowledge across the assets we've got. But some are more knowledgeable about certain assets than others. So for example, the commercial heating systems that we have, the district heating system. So again, the DRS system hasn't got that sort of human element of it, so that's where Denise's team and Kevin's team's come into that planning side of things. So yeah, that is something we will be sharing with street scene. Definitely, yeah. Thank you, Councillor.
- Councillor Ted Palmer, please.
- Thank you, Chair. I think you've sort of already have answered my question. The first bit was this going out to all the everyday stuff like coming to change to inspect your electric, so coming to inspect your gas. For one, as a person who works and lives in a council house, that would be a godsend, knowing when somebody's gonna come. And I think for other people as well, to be able to carry on with their everyday life and be there at that appropriate time.
- So I welcome it, thank you.
- Yeah, thank you, Councillor. In terms of, for us, as a service area, what hurts us the most really, in terms of our effectiveness and lots of time and resource and cost, is that no access? It's that journey. If you can imagine a good example of this is where an operative has made an appointment with someone in one of the high-rise buildings, so they go and have to park up, may have to go and get a ticket. They get the lift to the top floor to find that the tenant's gone out, because they've had an emergency, or they've had to go and pick the children up. So again, having that information come through from the contact centre to find out when a tenant is available, which is why we're asking all our tenants contract tools, please contact the contact centre, 'cause they'll get as much information as possible. We're looking at getting pictures through as well, but we'll also get their availability. So when will they be free? And that's how then that will be planned in. So the no-accessors for us, again, they're ineffective, aren't they? Because we're sending a resource to someone, we just can't get in, so it means we've got to go back. So yeah, this is why the system's brought in. But also to give that customer-focused approach as well, we all want to know when that person or that team are coming, especially when a tenant's got an urgent repair that's needed or an urgent inspection that they're concerned about. So having that information sent over and conveyed is, yeah, I'm sure it'll be positive. So thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks, Chair.
- Thank you, Councillor Lundeth, yes.
- Thanks, Chair. I'm just interested in the contract surrounding DRS. Who is the provider for it? When do you have to review the contract and what will the renewal costs be? It's all sounding much more positive than when you discussed it last time. And I know it's taken a while to roll out. So are we coming up to a time when we have to renew the contract? Thank you.
- Thanks, Chair. Thanks, Councillor. Yeah, that was highlighted in the previous paper. So the contract costs were on the previous paper. I can share those with you again. I'd have to refer to what the exact costs are. I think we've got a couple of years yet until we're looking at an extension anyway. And we do have an optional extension within the contract. But I can share them with you. I do believe they're in the first paper. Apologies, if not, but I'll extract them out and share them with the exclusive members, Chair. That's okay with you. Thank you. Thanks.
- Okay, do we have any, Councillor Schonberry.
- Yep, just like to say, thank you very much to Sean, Denise, for the report. Good to see that things are progressing well. Again, I think a very good point made by Councillor Palmer as a tenant, being able to know exactly when the operative is going to be at the property. Again, makes life a lot easier for the operatives. Do some personal experience in that, prior to my father's recent retirement, he was an operative registered social landlord with something very similar. And his feedback, it made his life a lot easier trying to get in with the job day to day rather than having to plan. And again, example of going to a property that's closest to the operatives' property, going outwards dinner time and then coming back, it makes it a lot more efficient for the operative. So I think it's definitely a positive step. Things are moving in the right direction. Obviously there's going to be a snag here and there, but I think it's definitely rolling out in a very positive manner.
- Definitely. And I think from a sort of a customer point of view as well, knowing that when someone's going to be coming, so you can plan your day ahead, you're not sitting in waiting all day for somebody not to turn up or something's happened. It's the two way communication, so that can only be a good thing. And I think it'd be quite probably not the only one that would be quite interested to see it when it's up and running, if we possibly pop down, and I'm sure you're quite accommodating when members want to go down to see how things are working. But I'd definitely be quite interested in that as well.
- I mean, I was recently dealing with a case where other tenants, unfortunately she was that sort of worried about making sure she was there, that she'd have to take a day's paid on leave. Well, once that rolls into the area that she's attending, then, you know, that's obviously going to mean that she can be more accommodating a reply, so there's all those benefits, you know.
- Okay, I don't think we've got any more speakers. There is one recommendation, and that's to note the pilot stages in the next phase of the DRS testing before the council moves into fully functional and a fully live DRS environment. Move that, Councillor Ted Palmer, seconder, please. Councillor Dave Evans, all in favour?
- Again, that's unanimous, thank you. Number seven is the Void Management Update, the Briefing Paper. Sure.
- Thank you, Chair. Yeah, just to go through the figures for February, some members will note we've had 25 new void properties in, and 35 were sent back. So again, we're still not achieving that 40, is what we're aiming for, but once we get to that 40, that backlog will obviously be able to be attacked a little bit more healthy. In terms of the number of allocations offers accepted, there's been 31 out of the 35, so no housing management are working hard to get these properties let, and members will note that 30 of those were let as well. Again, they fall a little bit behind the Void Team, so the keys may go back on the Friday, and the housing management team may not be able to let those properties to the following week. But again, we're now hitting those numbers where housing management aren't waiting for the void properties to be returned in, as before, where it was quite negative, they were waiting a long times. So those properties that we do prioritize for housing management, and also for the homeless service as well, those waiting times are starting to fall. We had Martin touched on a couple of scenarios, so for example, we've got the shared ownership properties, all the homeless properties are prioritized as well. Again, with urgent cases for housing management, there are increased specifications required and increased works for shared ownership properties, or it's something we're exploring at the moment. So yeah, positive in terms of the numbers that we've returned back in the number that housing have let. So just to the bottom of page one, we're down to 227. So it's heading the right direction, again, just not as quick as we or members I'm sure would want. Top reasons for February, in terms of those terminations, we had six that have been deceased, five have moved to residential care, and three to alternative accommodation. There are a number of other reasons, I think Council Evans mentioned last time. Quite a few of them have a number of ones against them, quite varied, so, again, quite happy to share those with members if needed. In terms of the DLL, they're working on 25 to 30 voids still. I think it's just above 30 this month currently. With the contract allocation, we've increased that to 90 voids. So again, overall, I think currently we've just got over 120 voids that are out being worked upon currently. As I've mentioned to members, we are having to do excessive amounts of work in these void properties than we've ever had to do before. At times, we were able to decorate the properties and do a safety check in terms of electrical and gas, especially if the tenant needs to move in quickly, or if it was an urgent decan for whatever reason what it was. But just under the new legislation, the law would just not allow to do it, unfortunately. So, and quite rightly, we have to get in these properties up to WHOQS 23 now, and also the rent at home standard as well. So again, I think happy to take members to a couple of properties that have been completed, just to see the amount of work that's involved in some of these properties. But again, 70 to 80% are still major clusters, major voids. So, over 120 out with contractors, we have had, I did report to members previously, we had a contractor issue. Unfortunately, that contract has been terminated. So we only have five contractors on the framework now. However, we did envisage that potentially that six would always drop to three or four at some point in the future. Again, either through contract management issues, or it could be that contractors, simply just quite happily, they've done as much as they can. They want to move on to other areas of work or other areas of business with Flincher. So we've currently got five at the moment. Four, performing very, very well. The fifth contract that we're just bringing up to the standards that we require. So, a few little delay issues with the fifth contractor, but we're quite confident we'll bring them up to where we need to. So, and that's noted in the number of properties that have been allocated to contractors currently. So, 90 properties are out with those five contractors. Low demand assets, again, they remain as is. So, we've got the properties within the heights, within Flint, and those difficult-to-let properties due to access and egress issues over through analysis and employment. We discussed this morning about the TACP bid. So, members will note we were successful in having over 500,000 allocated to us in this year that related to works that were completed last year. We are exploring the grant funding through Welsh month of this year's properties. We have been told that potentially, through the void allocation and also acquisitions, we could be expecting over 1.5 million, if not more. We also have a reserve list as well. So, I think there's a lot of work gone in into that bid across all the teams, across all the services within Vicky's portfolio. And we are trying to push for all the availability of that grant funding as possible. So, that's quite positive. If we can get that money in, that will obviously offset the cost that we're procuring and allocating to these properties. That's it for a new picture for me, if any questions.
- Hi, Councillor Dainty, please.
- Thank you, Chair. Just to be concerned, we've got 227 voids. How many of those are hard to let though? Because some of these hard to let could have been there for six months, 12 months, or two years. So, should they be classed as in voids? Or should they be classed as hard to let? 'Cause we seem, you know, it seems a bit skewed to me when we say we've got that money. It doesn't look good when we say we've got 227 voids with the number of people that are on house invests. Thank you.
- Thanks, Chair. Yeah, this has been mentioned before, Councillor. Perhaps at the next paper, what we could do is split that number down further. I know a number of other councils do that. They take them out of the void figures because they seem that they can't let these properties. They've been empty for a long time. For various reasons either, they don't meet the needs of those persons on the housing register, or there's some desirability issues or access issues with these voids. So, there are approximately 30 within the heights, and there are a number of within fluenality and fluen vinyl as well. Again, customers as difficult to let, or the ultimate analogy hard to let, there are some works that we can do to them, and that could be some, again, some decoration, some carpeting, et cetera, which is what we're going to have to do anyway, moving forward, just to try and get these assets let. We're quite happy to report on those separately and take them out of the figures so you can see what are the true voids that we are working on as a department, and those that unfortunately, we need to think about something else potentially.
- Okay, thank you, Sean.
- Thank you, Sean, on that one, I would assume that those would be the first to go through the matrix with the shouted house and review. So that, so I get what you say and it's, they're just sat there, aren't they? They're sat there and we can't let them. So, the shouted house and review, the matrix that we've seen previously at committee a couple of times, I would assume that they would come through quite quickly for re-designation or whatever comes out of the other end of the matrix, but it's, you know, it's pretty clear, we just, we can't sit here a month after month and just the hard to let, the hard to let when I think Martin's team could make a lot of use of them. He's nodding, so, so yes. But yeah, I see the point, it's just someone's got to make a decision, haven't they? What's going on with these properties? I'm quite soon.
- Thank you.
- I think one more.
- If I'm not to let, then maybe that we'll never be able to let those houses, so we should be looking at what we're going to do with them anyway, in the land or whatever, you know? But I, you know, we're sending so many to hotels and whatever, surely that some of these could actually be gone into there and drop the price, then the cost down that we're paying to go to hotels.
- Thank you, Chair, thank you, Councillor. Yeah, again, quite happy to report on that, separately at the next paper, and then we could have, maybe have a separate discussion about that. They will feed their way through the matrix that we've discussed. You're quite right, Councillor. There are a number of properties that we can change. We can improve. We can refurbish and change the layout and the access, and there's some that we just can't. We've got some that are built on the side of the hill. Doesn't matter what we do, we can't put ramps in, we can't put elevators in. So those assets will be formed, we'll be run through the matrix first, and it might be that there are some properties that unfortunately can't be refurbished to be compliant in the future, with WHO S23, with fire risk, for example. So those assets where we'll have a further options appraisal considered. Whilst that is ongoing, that journey, you're quite right, they could be utilised for the homeless team, potentially. But again, it's how those properties are going to be utilised and how, if they could be split up and forward. So quite happy to do that for the next paper, Chair, if that's what members require, yeah.
- Vicki, he's going to come in.
- Thank you, I mean, suppose it's just to reiterate what Sean just said is that the assets where we've got low demand are being prioritised for the shelter thousand review. So, and I think, so the June or July, we've got a paper to come back to this committee specific to that review and progress against it. So hopefully by then we'll revert to much more detail. But as Sean said, you know, we are always looking at ways that we can reduce the pressure that Martin service have on the use of hotels. And the shelter's out, and hence why it was prior to one in terms of the shelter thousand review options, the homeless mitigation options was to fast-track the shelter thousand review.
- Yeah.
- Dave, Councillor Evans.
- Thank you, Chair. It's just prompted another question though, that one. (laughing) And again, on the back of what you just said there. If they, I mean, are they hard to let, and are letable now, or do they need work? And if they are letable now, why wait till June or July to give us an update on the review, let's move more quickly and start allocating people to those properties. If they are letable now, or they need minor works, let's get them done. Get them off the list and get people in them. And it saves us money, gives people somewhere to live. So if we can have that answer, and then I'll come back to my other bit, thank you.
- Thank you. So in terms of the shelter as you're aware, the paper came through, in terms of the shelter's review, there are a number of, 'cause all of the properties there that we've listed as low demand are sheltered schemes. We have an edge profile shelter scheme, which is 55 and above. I think Marty says that nearly every meter we ever attend, that these cohort are generally 80%, are under the edge of 55. So we have to make a decision about what we're gonna do around the future of those schemes, and redesignation is an option, as is that we, if they genuinely never gonna get to WHO guest standards, and obviously we'd have to look at, you know, demolition in that respect, but we've got those four options to consider. They will go through the matrix. You know, I do agree with you, it's frustrating that there are empty properties, when we are so reliant on no hotels in influential, however, they are sheltered schemes, and they are an edge profile. And therefore, to redesignate, we would have to go through an approvals process, some of which will involve this committer.
- Okay, thank you for that. Okay, I'll come out to my original note. I printed off the earlier thing, so we could look at 12 months worth of data on the voids at the moment, and even considering the, there might be some part of that in there. Obviously 227 is the lowest it's been, but it's only 32 down on what it was 12 months ago. And at this current rate, maybe with the exception of those heart alert, it's seven years we'll be going to, it was five years last month, wasn't it? It's now seven years that it will take us to do that. I wasn't encouraged by the fact that we, these good contractors that we've got, that we've obviously not had a good one there. And obviously, we need to be taken urgent action to move this situation on, 'cause we can't be here again in 12 months time. So I'd like to ask, except in your plan and understanding what you've said about contractors, I need to know now what you're gonna do to move this on quicker. I don't want to be here every month or 12 months time going out with down another 30 properties on what we were 12 months ago, and it's still, which we might just then be under the 200 mark, or if we play around with the figures, depending on how hard to let, we might be around about 150 or something. It's still far too many. We need to get under that 100 mark, as you've said before now. And I don't see us doing that unless we take some different action, other than sit here every month, saying, well, it looks slightly going in the right direction. It's not enough, we need extra, and I want to hear what extra that we're gonna do to put in to actually drastically bring this figure down.
- Thank you, Chair. There we go, sorry. Yeah, thank you, Councilor. In terms of, I mentioned before, one of the contractors has had that agreement, that arrangement terminated. So we're down to five contractors with one of them, not really hitting the levels we've needed for a number of months. So it might be that we need to bring another contractor in from the framework, as you'll recall, there was 12 contractors in total. We moved forward with six. The other six are still waiting, if needs be, to be brought online. It's all about staff management as well. So obviously, we only have a number of people that can manage so many contractors and so many works, and inspect that work as well. So it might be that if this fifth contractor isn't hitting the levels we need too quickly, we need to explore the six contractors and bring additional resources in. Obviously, if you look at the number of properties that have come in as new voids, it's been quite high if you look at the month of November, we've had 46 there. We've got through this sort of winter period with, again, 46. December, there was only 20, but back up to 39 in January. So that has hurt us quite a bit, but if you look at what we've actually been delivering, they need just to be to that 40 to 50 mark. Once we get to that 40 to 50 mark, obviously the old projections of seven years will decrease. I am hoping by the summer, we would have made a big dent, will be under the 200 mark. I did mention to council Atrigy, he sort of asked when will we hit this magic figure. The idea is we get to 120 by the end of the summer. That will allow for some of the hard to let's within that scenario as well. We should have at any one time between 70 to 90 properties at any one time. So not 30 or 40, 70 to 90. If you think of the work that we're undertaken to these properties now, we're spending on average potentially 12 to 15,000 pounds per property, which is where it needs to be, 'cause that shows that as a council we're investing in our stock as well. We're making sure it's compliant before it's re-led, so it's meeting the WHOS 23 and also renting a homes act. Whereas before, the average was only 6,000. So the amount of work we're doing, we have got some legacy issues there because of the pandemic but also because we haven't invested in our stock over the last 10 years. We're now finding none of these properties that are returning as avoid need excessive work undertaken to plastering is probably the worst and the most time consuming. We've got to dry that plaster work out in obviously the winter weather. So that's quite challenging as well. And before we can decorate it, everyone knows that you should allow plaster to dry. And it says three to six months before you should decorate it and we're doing it in three days. So there's a lot of work we're doing these properties, but you're quite right. We could be sitting here again next month. What we're trying to do is build resiliency long-term, not just deal with the backlog today or tomorrow. It's about the future as well. This will be what we need to do long-term for the next 20, 30 years. These properties need to hit this standard and we need those contractors in place. It's just took so long to get to that point, which is frustrating for us all. I've mentioned this before. To lose a contractor when we've invested so much time and effort in that relationship, and that arrangement, again, it's difficult because we've got to start that journey again with another contractor. But that is something we will explore. And if needs be, we'll have to bring an additional contractor on as well. But it's about building resiliency and that's what we need to achieve. So that's the aim.
- Okay, thank you, thank you, Sean. You mentioned the November and January figures there for the number of properties coming back across the 12 months, the number of properties averaging back are mid-20s. November and January, I had to say the Christmas were slightly higher, but also the number of properties ready and given back were higher in those months compared to all the other months as well. So I see that as equal in itself out. So I don't see that as any sort of reason to say, well, our figures are not as good as they were because of the number of properties we got back. We addressed that matter in those particular months. So July last year was the one where we jumped up significantly from 20 to 39. And I'd like to see every month like that, really. So I hear what you say. I'm sorry, you say it most months and I'm just not convinced at this moment. I want to see contractors in and I want to see those properties moving more quickly. Thank you.
- Yeah, I think, sorry. (indistinct chatter)
- Okay, I suppose, I mean, there's a few points once a bit, really. One is that throughout this month of reporting, particularly early on, Sean was really clear that we needed to get the contract management right around this and the fact that we've now terminated the contracts of one of those contractors shows that we've got it right because it was robustly monitored and we've made the decision to terminate that contract. And as Sean says, we've got a further six contractors on the framework to consider. So, you know, when we think it's feasible to do so, we may well bring in additional contractors, but as Sean says, we're spending a lot of money at the minute on voids. It's also committed to getting 40 to 50 voids back a month. And the fact that we've now got 120 voids out with contractors. So that's half of our current voids are now out with contractors being worked on. So we are sure that those figures will increase. Now, we don't meet again till June. So I'm hoping that by June, you'll receive a significant increase in the number of voids. And we do want to get to that 70 to 90 range, which is what I've seen as the benchmark, really, in terms of the number of voids and organizations, so to hold.
- No, just come back.
- You can.
- The one thing I did pick up from Sean's comment is that the difficulty in managing the contractors. So if that requires recruitment or somebody brought in to help Sean's team to manage those contractors, because he can't take those contractors on because he can't manage them, then bring somebody else in to manage those contractors. It's a short-term thing, whether it's a temporary contractor or whatever, but brings somebody here, because it's the overall cost that we're missing out on here. One should offset the other. So bring somebody in to help manage those contractors. If that's what I picked up from Sean, the difficulty, you can't manage him because the numbers then to address this problem, bring somebody in on the 12-month contract or whatever and get them to manage that particular area.
- Thank you, Councillor Tadd Palmer.
- Thank you, Chair. I haven't finished yet, so sorry. So if you've got that many properties currently being worked on, then sort of common sense would tell me that we should then get a big turn back pretty close to each other rather than 20 year or 10 year and five there. If you've got 90 or 120 properties being worked on the moment, then if the timescale is a month to do it or six weeks or two months, then in two months time, we should be getting nearly 120 back in my mind. Thank you.
- Hopefully.
- Thank you.
- Thanks, Chair. Just to clarify, with the contract allocation, it was 60, we've increased it to 90, so you're quite right. There's more out with contractors now. We've also got 25 to 30 with our DLO, which equates to the 120. Slightly over 120 currently, when I just looked at the data yesterday, what the numbers don't mention here really, if you look at those 35 that we returned in February and 33 in January, it's the type of properties that we're working on. So what we're finding is a lot of those properties, because they've been empty for so long, potentially, during the pandemic, and we're also not being able to work on them, and now how is the management able to get them let quicker? We're doing the YouTube link video, so new income and perspective tenants can see what type of properties they're gonna be offered. It's the amount of time in those properties that are taking longer than ever before. So when we used to be able to get a void back within, I don't know, a couple of weeks, because it just needs some minor repairs or three to four weeks, because it was classed as a major, they're now taking a lot longer, so it's six, eight, 12 weeks, because we're finding a lot of asbestos we may need to remove because of the work, not in a dangerous condition, just because we're gonna disturb that material. There's fire compartmentation works we need to do, to some of the high-rise blocks as well, and some intrusive surveys we need to do. As part of the Capital Work Program, the DCAH program, where I'm to do retrofit assessment surveys now, so what do we need to do to achieve a high-sap rating? So what these figures don't tell you is every property is unique, it requires different work, it's taking longer, we're prioritizing different properties for the homeless team, so again, because we're prioritizing those properties, it means that we're putting additional resources onto that work, which means we're doing less. So at this present moment, we're trying to juggle and spin a lot of plates, the counter's quite right, if we can bring someone else in, we will do so, but also we're training our own staff, our own teams to manage these contractors we're supposed to lose well, and it all takes time, we're in a new world really, whereas before the Void team had one contractor, they've now got five contractors that they haven't to manage. We're doing monthly progress meetings, we've never done that before, we're minimizing those meetings, we're doing performance on those contractors, and that at times does mean that we have serious conversations with those contractors as well, to say if you don't improve, then we're gonna reduce your allocation, or potentially you'll find yourself off the framework. So those numbers, again, in terms of the returns, you look at 39, 33, 28, one month as disappointing, we need to achieve the high 40s, but it's taking so long to get there, because of everything that's going on in the background. So I think the numbers don't always explain what we've done during that month. We're working on one property at the moment, that's gonna cost us £80,000, we're able to claim that through TACP, we have to do the work, it's a join in a private property, it's not compliant in terms of any regulations, so we're having to update this and invest heavily in it, that's taking 15 to 16 weeks for one property. So it seems that we're working on all the worst ones at the moment, but hopefully, yeah, we'll get on to the easier ones of the quick wins. Thank you.
- Isn't this good? We're bringing more in-house teams to do these worse, because it was saying we're gonna be running with 70 voids on a regular basis. Surely, the question needs to us there, we need bigger in-house teams, we're not relying on contractors.
- Can I just check if everybody on line can hear, 'cause I know Councillor Thea is having a problem, yeah, everyone's nodding, okay, thank you.
- Thank you, Chair, thank you, Councillor.
- Yeah, as I've explained before, the way our operatives are, they allow teams to set up an undertake mind repair work, they can't undertake major repairs. We've got to comply with CDM, we'd have to provide welfare. What the teams are doing, they're effectively managing the mind of properties that come in, they do at times take the odd major property where it doesn't require too much work or too much duration, and teams are very flexible in terms of what they do, so what we're also looking at is what other work can they do for us, so rather than the capital work team tend to work out externally, what can we keep in-house? A good example of this is the repairs and maintenance teams and the care of a manager undertake some fencing work, so fencing renewal programs, smoke detector renewals as well, so we try and keep what we can in-house, but there are some elements of the construction, the refersion work that have to go externally, unfortunately, but we do have very best to keep obviously, keep that out of pound within the council where we can.
- Okay, thank you, I've got Councillor Sean, baby, and then the council is working, and then just as far as...
- Thank you, Councillor Sean, it was a bit good. We've got just over 120 properties, currently being... Just got currently in the region of 120 properties, being worked on, and I think, sure, and that's probably unprecedented with that scale, so I'm pretty confident that in quite a short period, we are going to be getting into those 40s and 50s in the months, and when that's happening, that's when we're going to start seeing the backlog really being eaten into.
- Councillor Rosetta Dolphin, please.
- Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to remind you, why are we not using... If we're struggling with contractors, why aren't we dealing more in-house than with the contractors? And I knew there was a reason, but I can't remember what it was.
- Yeah, Councillor, just as I explained to Councillor Hughes, there are some works that we can do in-house, but there are works that we can't. So, for example, if a void property requires a new kitchen and a bathroom, an extensive works, we've got to think about the duration in there, we have to comply with CDM regulations, we have to provide welfare facilities on site for our trade operatives. They're going to have a lot of materials delivered. Again, they don't have storage in their vehicles, we don't have stores that can manage that high level of volume of material, really. So, a lot of the work has to be procured externally. So, anything of a long duration, high value cost is usually externally procured. Where we can, we do get the internal DLO to work on some major properties. Again, it's variety for them, but it's the work content that sort of dictates that, unfortunately.
- Sorry, Councillor Jeff Colle, and that'll be the final person this morning. Thank you.
- I'll ask my own, haven't I? I appreciate everything you're doing, and I realize just how hard it is to do, but I'm just looking at the figures, and this is just in my mind. To me, we're getting an average of 30 additional units a month, and it's taken us four months average to do a property. Well, that's 120 properties a month to stand still. Then we should be working on to stand still.
- Sorry, you just went a little bit wrong. (laughing)
- Well, what I'm saying really is, are we fooling ourselves with the numbers that we should be doing? If we're gonna make a substantial cut into this, substantially quickly, are doing 120 a month? Is that enough? I don't think it is.
- Actually, thank you, thank you, Councillor.
- And if you look at this, do you have any thoughts on that?
- That we should be, perhaps, thinking about bringing a company in to manage a number of these as a separate entity to take them away from you, to do the job, to manage this, to get us over the problem, so that we get the thing back into control.
- I think to help, was that similar to what Councillor Evans was suggesting earlier? Yeah.
- Thanks, Chair. Yeah, in terms of, obviously, what we've tried to do is, out of all the contractors we've had, we've brought them online, last year, through the framework. It's been a learning exercise for each of those contractors to understand how to complete the work, where to put the keys up, how to put them in voice in, all those little things that mean that things run smoothly. Again, used to our specifications and standards of work, and obviously the teams will be managing those contractors. We've brought four of them up to a very high standard. We're working on the fifth contractor currently. As Councillor Evans mentioned, if we feel that those five contractors aren't hitting the numbers that we need in total to address the backlog, then that's where we'll explore the other contractors who are waiting out of the 12. As I've mentioned before, though, it's about building that resilience in. So what we don't want to do, is just go and get 12 of the contractors in, deal with the volume overnight, bankrupt the Council, 'cause we haven't got the funding there in a year anyway, and have void properties returned at a substandard level that just results in disrepair claims moving forward. So we're trying to control and spend a lot of plates at the moment. We've got to be very, very careful that we just don't say, well, we're going to get to 60 or 70, and then we're left with contractors who don't want to be because the volume of work isn't there. So it is a balancing act. I mean, the focus is to reduce the backlog and have as many properties let us possible, bringing that revenue in and prioritizing the homeless team and urgent housing cases where possible. If five contractors can't do that, then we will bring additional contractors in, and we'll get that balance right. There will come a point when this backlog is at an acceptable level that we'll have to have conversations with contractors because the work won't be there for them. That's a very sort of sensitive discussion to have because they would have procured resource locally, which is in the contract. So we say you must procure locally in terms of the materials you're using, the stores that you're using, but also the trade operatives. So what we don't want to do is we build companies up only to say, right, well, sorry, the contracts ended. There was no volume of work, and they're having to terminate employment of 50 to 60 operatives. So that's got to be in our minds as well. So we have to be very careful what we do here. And I explained that before to scrutiny members. Yes, we want to attack the backlog, but this is about a journey long term, how we got the right contractors in place, and how we put in those contractors at risk if we over-subscribe them, over-allocate them work. So again, we've got to be very careful what we do in terms of their allocation. But it's something we will consider. And if this fifth contractor doesn't meet the numbers that we need them to meet, we will consider bringing additional contractors back in. I'm just concerned that there's lots of shit going on. It sometimes feels like that, Councillor. But let's be honest. I think what we need to do is get that 227 down to an acceptable level by the end of the summer. Before the winter months start to hit hurters in terms of the work that we're able to complete. So that acceptable level ideally needs to be around but 120, 140. So we've got a lot of work to do by that point. I did say that you're going to be the last speaker, but Councillor Panbanks is going to ask a question, and then that will be it, thank you. Thank you, Chair. You're going on about them not being able to do kitchens and bathrooms because there was no storage or we couldn't store the kitchens anywhere. Well, basically, I mean, as you know, Glensability and surely you order them for when you are ready to put them in there so you wouldn't have a storage problem. Thank you. I'm like, thanks, Chair. No, thank Councillor. Yeah, again, sorry, that's just one of the reasons why the DLLO done undertake works of that. It's a repairs and maintenance service. So that's the way it's set up. There are a number of logistics that are just too challenging for us. Storage is just one of them. So, yeah, you're quite right. You can order a kitchen and get it delivered curbside. You know, the date, time, it's going to be delivered. It's the timing of that. The DLLO are already working on what we need them to work on, which is the mine of properties, that they are taking the odd major on. We did used to have a separate team that undertook kitchen and bathroom works for the capital work team 10 to 15 years ago. It was very, very successful. It was probably, we had the highest tenant satisfaction on that work. The tenants were happy with the work that was undertaken. The quality of work was high as well. But unfortunately, we're only able to complete 20 to 25 kitchens a year. And we can effectively use those operatives elsewhere because they're highly skilled, they're multi-skilled. And that's where the repairs and maintenance teams excel. Asking them to do major refurbishment work just logistically as a nightmare. And storage is just one of those issues. It's not something that we're saying we're never going to go into. We do wear possible tape work from the capital work team where we think, yes, we can manage it. We're keeping that budget in-house. We're up to skilling our internal workforce by default because we're providing them with a variety of work, a different type of work. But presently, our teams are doing what we need them to do. But it is definitely something we will always consider. Yeah, definitely. Thank you.
- Thank you. - Thanks.
- Okay, can I thank everyone for attending this morning, online, and in person. The meeting is now closed, thank you. [BLANK_AUDIO]
Summary
The council meeting focused on various community and housing issues, including updates on homelessness services, void management, and the implementation of a Dynamic Resource Scheduling System (DRS). The meeting saw active participation from council members, who discussed the progress and challenges associated with each agenda item.
Homelessness Service Audit Report: The council reviewed the Audit Wales Report on homelessness services, which was generally positive but highlighted areas for improvement such as financial sustainability and engagement with residents. The council moved to accept the recommendations, acknowledging the ongoing challenge of homelessness and the need for strategic improvements to sustain high-quality services.
Dynamic Resource Scheduling System (DRS): The update on the DRS, which aims to optimize the scheduling of repair and maintenance work, was discussed. The system is in the pilot phase and showing promising results in improving efficiency. However, some operational challenges were noted, such as the need for better integration with material procurement processes. The council noted the pilot stages and the plan for a full rollout, emphasizing the potential for improved service delivery and operational efficiency.
Void Management Update: The discussion on void management highlighted concerns about the high number of council properties remaining unoccupied due to various issues, including the condition of the properties and the time taken to make them habitable. The council expressed frustration over the slow progress in reducing the number of void properties and discussed the need for more aggressive action, possibly including hiring additional contractors or staff to manage the workload more effectively.
An interesting point in the meeting was the discussion about the use of properties that are hard to let, with suggestions to repurpose them for temporary accommodation to alleviate homelessness, reflecting the council's proactive approach to problem-solving in community housing.
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