Agenda item

The Director of Housing submits a report to update Members of the Housing Scrutiny Commission on the Housing Division’s Covid response.

The Director of Housing submitted a report to update Members of the Housing Scrutiny Commission on the Housing Division’s Covid-19 response.

During presentation of the report, the following was noted;

·         All staff were thanked for the hard work, dedication and commitment for the services that were continually provided during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The report set out the challenges and key issues faced since the pandemic started some of which included;

·         Rent arrears increased to £2.1m, an increase of £600k. A response to this challenge was set out in 4.1 to 4.1.7 of the report.

·         The primary aim was to continue to work for those that required help, support those to maximize benefit entitlements and make arrangements for the payment of any arrears, agreeing affordable amounts where necessary. Officers detailed internal and external support services which were available.

·         Only in a small number of cases would legal action be proceeded to, those who had refused to co-operate after several attempts at communication.

·         In terms of the challenge of assisting those people to not live on the streets and now looking into housing solutions, to achieve the most positive solution work was taking place with colleagues in the homelessness sector. A draft rough sleepers Next Steps strategy had been developed in resolving this issue and involved bringing online 170 additional units of accommodation to meet the needs.

·         The 3^rd challenge was the amount of non-priority repairs built up during lockdown, and potentially more repairs which were unreported during lockdown.

·         The fourth challenge was the delivery of existing capital budgets and programme works, which meant it could be likely that all the work in housing stock previously anticipated may not be fulfilled this year.

The Director of Housing responded to the points made by Members:

·         A more detailed report was being bought to the Housing Scrutiny Commission this evening to provide an update on Rent Arrears.

·         In order to clear the routine repairs, the service’s staff would be used for potential overtime and discussions were taking place with local contractors.

·         Phase 1 of the new house build was anticipated to be completed in Autumn 2020.

·         All responses in government funding had been in conjunction with the general fund. Reportedly, some discussions were taking place between the Director of Finance and government ministers regarding the potential funding of the HRA but no confirmation currently.

·         The Home Choice Service became live last week for existing applicants to make any necessary amendments to applications with anticipations for new applicants to have access this week and the full choice-based lettings system due to go live on 27 July 2020. 

·         Regarding the allocation of housing stock to homeless people, 170 units had been identified; it was intended that 60 units would come from existing void stock and to achieve the other 110 units it was intended that they would be facilitated through private arrangements.

·         It was noted that a next steps strategy was being developed in draft, this would be taken to the executive team and a formal process would take place and then shared publicly.

AGREED:

1.    That the Commission thank all the staff for their work and continued service provided.