The Housing, Community Safety and Community Engagement Scrutiny Commission met on 22 April 2025, to discuss cabinet responses to a review of housing allocations, homelessness, heating and hot water outages, fire safety and policing in Southwark, to agree on an interim report on tenant structures, and to consider the commission's work programme for the 2024-2025 year. The commission agreed to send the Interim Report on Tenant Structures to the cabinet.

Here are the key topics discussed:

Interim Report on Tenant Structures

The commission agreed to send the Interim Report on Tenant Structures to the cabinet. The report contains recommendations made at the 25 November 2024 meeting, following discussions with residents and tenant organisations.

The commission discussed whether to expand the recommendations to include Tenant Management Organisations (TMOs). It was decided that a more complete understanding of TMOs and resident experiences was needed, and this topic was added to the work programme for the next municipal year.

Cabinet Responses to Review of Housing, Homelessness, and Other Services

The commission reviewed the cabinet's responses to its report on housing allocations, homelessness, heating and hot water outages, fire safety, and policing. Councillor Emily Tester, Vice-Chair of the Housing, Community Safety and Community Engagement Scrutiny Commission, noted that this was the final stage of the recommendation process.

Several points were raised regarding specific recommendations:

• Recommendation 7 (Heating and hot water performance): The commission felt there may have been a misunderstanding in the cabinet's response. The commission's original recommendation had advised probing discrepancies between residents' self-reported experiences of heating and hot water, and the performance indicated by centrally held data. The commission clarified that it was proposing targeted work to understand why this gap exists, rather than a resource-intensive consultative exercise.
• Recommendation 9 (Heating and Hot Water outages – compensation scheme payments): The commission welcomed the work to digitise and clean the data, but emphasised the importance of confirming the validity of the data.
• Recommendation 10 (Reviewing heating and hot water compensation payment scheme): The commission acknowledged the legal and logistical challenges of including private tenants of council leasehold properties in the compensation scheme. It suggested that the council communicate to private renters that they could consider asking their landlords for refunds if they have experienced heating outages and pay for hot water and heating in their rent.

Work Programme 2024-2025

As this was the last meeting of the municipal year, the commission discussed potential topics for the next year, including:

• Checking the completion of activities outlined in the cabinet's response to recommendations 5 to 10 of the commission’s review.
• Scoping the state of knowledge about TMOs and their performance, exploring their structures, financing, and accountability, reviewing council support for TMOs, and hearing from residents about their experiences.
• Revisiting repairs and hearing progress on the Repairs Improvement Plan.
• Getting an update on the status of work related to heating and hot water outages.
• Leaseholder charging.
• Anti-social behaviour and rough sleeping.
• Homelessness and void properties.
• Reviewing the new allocations policy later in the year.