Agenda item

Councillor Una O’Halloran, Executive Member of Homes and Communities and Maxine Holdsworth, Corporate Director of Homes and Neighbourhood was present and outlined the report

The following points were highlighted:

The Executive Member acknowledged the number of new council homes being built was behind schedule, noting that this has been due to external commercial pressures including the rise in steel prices resulting from the war in Ukraine

With regards to rent arrears as a proportion of the rent roll of properties managed by Partners, which is off target, meeting was advised that it is monitored closely as many of these properties have just been brought back in-house in April 2022.  In comparison, the Executive Member welcomed the efforts of Islington’s Income Recovery Team, that despite the impacts of the pandemic and the roll out of the universal credit, rent arrears as a proportion of the rent roll are at its lowest. Meeting was advised that the council has provided support for its tenants in alleviating their cost of living  in areas such as council tax

Meeting was informed that some new councillors went on a site visit with Councillor Ward to view the new build homes and commented positively about the high quality council homes.

The Corporate Director welcomed the high fixed time repairs rate, acknowledging that it was lower in comparison to the repairs carried out during the covid period which were primarily emergency repairs and urgent.

In response to the question of number of households in nightly booked temporary accommodation which is behind target and whether Council tracks those who do not have recourse to public funds, the Executive Member assured the meeting that the Council documents all cases and can share information and data with the committee if required.  The Executive Member wanted the Council to recognise the efforts of the team at 222 upper street who do a remarkable job, noting that despite covid and its impact, the Council was still able to target those who could not access public funds

With regards to the developers decision to withdraw from the development of the site building at Wellington news, the Corporate Director acknowledged that property is owned by the Ministry of Justice, that the council’s planning department is clear via its polices and criteria on social housing, which is clear to developers in the borough.

On the suggestion of including other KPI’s to the quarterly reports, for example the number of repairs, the response times, and emergency responses, meeting was reminded that some of the issues were presented to committee at the last meeting when members scrutinised the Triage System.

With other KPI requests, ie data about private renters and the number of people intentionally homeless and net zero targets, the meeting was advised that some of this can be presented to committee as briefings after which members can decide whether more information is required.

The Corporate Director advised that in light of the forthcoming inspection by the Social Housing Regulator, officers would want to propose with the permission of the Chair a new indicator around resident satisfaction with capital works on estates.

In response to the Chair’s suggestion about officers amending the  terminology used in the quarterly reports, such as ‘better or worse’, the Corporate Director stated that options will be presented to the Chair on how data is to reported so that it is easy for members to understand and also to note the present position and the trend.