Agenda item

To provide a progress update on the Ad Hoc Scrutiny Panel Residential Stock Health and Safety Compliance report and recommendations.   

Contact: Naz Parkar, Service Director, Homes and Neighbourhoods and Martin Cooke, Interim Head of Assets and Building Safety

Cllr Moses Crook, Portfolio Holder for Housing and Highways, introduced the item, advising that the report provides an update on progress to date against the recommendations of the Ad Hoc Scrutiny Panel’s health and safety compliance report and recommendations to Cabinet from December 2022.  The report has been brought to both the Homes and Neighbourhoods Improvement Board and to Cabinet in September and October 2023, with both agreeing to the officer recommendations going forward.  Of the 17 recommendations made by the ad hoc panel:

-          two are completed

-          six are identified as continuous ongoing issues and are now included as part of best practice

-          nine are assessed to be at 50% progress to completion or better

Cllr Crook informed the Panel that the improved recommendation is that, less frequent but regular reporting to the Building Safety Assurance Board is now needed in order to provide ongoing assurance since the change and good practice is now embedded.  It is positive to have the alignment between the cross party Homes and Neighbourhoods Improvement Board, officers and Cabinet especially in light of the regulators recent finding.  The response needed requires working together constructively across the whole Council to drive improvement and to demonstrate and ensure safety of tenants is and remains collectively the highest priority.

Naz Parkar, Service Director for Homes and Neighbourhoods informed the Panel of some of the key achievements since the Ad Hoc Scrutiny Panel, took its recommendations to Cabinet in December 2022.  For the last 12 months there has been focus ensuring that there is a system of safety, and a fire safety system matrix has been put in place, the recommendation from the ad hoc panel has now been completed.  As part of that work, focus has been on the management plans for fire safety, asbestos, and lifts, with a review of where things were with gas safety  and electricity checks as that is a well-managed risk within the Council.

In March 2024, Cabinet approved the Fire Safety Management Plan, and work is being undertaken to ensure that the process the policy relates to, is robust, particularly in the current context as part of the regulators notice to improve the way fire safety is managed.

There has been good progress ensuring that the processes and the data that falls out of those processes is currently being finalised before being embedded in the teams, ensuring there is training, communication and a good operation of that new management plan.  The Asbestos Plan is ready, as is the lift plan which will need to go to Cabinet for approval.

With regard to the asset system implementation, work is currently being undertaken on implementing the housing management system which has been slightly delayed, and Cabinet approved the revised strategy for the delivery of that.  That will be the master system for all the homes and neighbourhoods activity and holds unique reference points for all asset data.  This needs to be implemented first before scoping out the requirements for the asset management system and that will follow straight after the implementation of the CX, which is the housing management and contact system.

In terms of data validation, the scrutiny panel did identify this as a key area of focus for the service, to ensure there would be integrity and accuracy in the reports put forward.  In terms of the recommendations of the panel, the panel was keen to see a separation between the service doing their business reports and there being a second line of defence to check and scrutinise that the sources of data, methodology were appropriate and accurate so that the assurance mechanisms within the Council could have confidence in the reporting.

A great deal of work was undertaken on data validation post scrutiny, working with colleagues in IT and in Data and Intelligence to ensure that the current system that manages assets which is Asprey was collecting the data.

An external validation of the data was commissioned particularly on inspections and re-inspections because this was one of the weaknesses identified when transferring assets back into the Council.  Savills came in and undertook a robust audit of how data is managed across each of the big six compliance areas and issued a clean bill of health with some anomalies which have now been remedied.  There is now confidence in the data around inspections and re-inspections.

Work has commenced with the corporate Data and Insight Team to ensure that there is a robust data governance and management policy, to ensure that everyone is clear about how data is managed within Homes and Neighbourhoods.

The Panel was informed that one of the key issues in progressing some of the actions is capacity and in some pockets of the team capability. The structure and skills gaps have been reviewed and identified where those gaps are, the structure has been agreed and it has gone through the business case and challenge process and recruitment is being undertaken      to that part of the structure. 

It is important to stress that recruitment has been tried prior to this, however, the market is challenging for Building Safety type resources as everybody in the social housing sector is looking for that type of skill set. That has been intensified by the advent of the Building Safety Regulator and the Housing Ombudsman being much more emboldened now and the regulator of social housing having new powers, particularly over council housing stocks.

That structure is now being recruited to and also not relying on just permanent recruitment because there is a possibility of not been successful, as there has already been several attempts made to the market. Given the scale of work and the regulatory notice and the urgency and immediacy of some of the work, particularly around fire, recruiting interims has started which will give the chance to get the right capability and the right skill set in place.

A great deal of work has been undertaken around resident engagement, particularly around the most vulnerable residents and doing person centred fire risk assessments.  There are 17 fire safety champions across the district who report into the Tenant Voice Panel and regular meetings are held to engage on issues.

Engagement broadly has been good, there is a dedicated team around fire safety to engage particularly around the high rise blocks and the 66 Storey blocks.  There has been quite a lot of communication going out to councillors not as general communications, but where work is being undertaken in council wards, for example, the high rise or the six Storey blocks to enable them to understand what works will be done and they are then able to support residents in their role as councillors.

In response to the information presented, the Panel made comments and asked questions including some of the following:

-      It has been a couple of years since the Ad Hoc Scrutiny Panel looked into this and it is concerning that a number of the recommendations from the panel are still in progress or at amber and that there are only a few of the recommendations that are marked as complete.

-      The information presented suggests that the Building Assurance Board will not be looking at this as often, who then will be assuring, and where is the impetus to ensure that the recommendations reach a conclusion as many of the recommendations do fall into what is required for the Council to be compliant.

-      Some of the items which have been reported as not complete, could easily be confirmed as complete as marking them as ongoing offers no start or end date and more information is needed.  Officers should take this away and think about how the information is being presented because it is presenting a less positive picture than probably the reality is in some instances.

RESOLVED:

That Naz Parkar and Cllr Moses Crook be thanked for providing an update on recommedations from the Ad Hoc Scrutiny Panel, Health and Safety Compliance in Residental Housing Stock.