Agenda and minutes
Venue: Committee Room 4, Brent Town Hall, Forty Lane, Wembley, HA9 9HD. View directions
Contact: Toby Howes, Senior Democratic Services Officer 020 8937 1307 Email: toby.howes@brent.gov.uk
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Declarations of personal and prejudicial interests Members are invited to declare at this stage of the meeting, any relevant financial or other interest in the items on the agenda. Minutes: Councillor Hirani declared an interest regarding item 5, Registered Social Landlord Performance, as he was a board member of Fortunegate Housing. |
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Deputations Minutes: There were no deputations. |
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Minutes of the previous meeting held on Tuesday 5 April 2011 PDF 116 KB The minutes are attached. Minutes: The minutes of the previous meeting held on Tuesday 5 April 2011 were approved as a correct record. |
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Matters arising Minutes: Referring to the item on the employment and skills agenda in Brent, Councillor Hirani queried if there was any update regarding the working programme. Cathy Tyson advised that Brent had a positive working relationship with the contractors and at present work providers had the opportunity to bid for additional funds via the EFS.
Councillor HB Patel noted that with regard to the item on the Cultural Strategy for Brent, it had been highlighted at the previous meeting that the Culture, Sport and Learning Forum, which had drawn up the strategy, had not included any faith, community or voluntary sector groups. He subsequently queried if any progress had been made in consulting any of these groups. Joanna McCormick advised that the strategy had been put to the voluntary sector working party and the Brent Forum. In terms of its delivery it had also been put before the Brent Strategic Forum. The Chair of the Culture, Sport and Learning Forum was presently developing the website to promote Brent. |
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Registered Social Landlord Performance PDF 512 KB The second report on the performance of Joint Commissioning Registered Social Landlords was presented to Overview and Scrutiny on 9th February 2010. This report provides an update on their average performances during 2010/2011. Minutes: Councillor Hirani declared an interest as he was on the board of Fortunegate housing.
Tony Hirsch (Head of Policy and Performance) presented a report updating the committee on the average performance of the Joint Commissioning Registered Social Landlords (RSL) during 2010/2011. The report outlined performance information for a number of areas including antisocial behaviour, repairs, lettings, complaints and member enquiries, governance, tenant satisfaction, decent homes and grounds maintenance. Tony Hirsch advised that the report arose out of work with Brent’s West London Local Authority partners and Joint Commissioning partners, to address concerns regarding performance. He added that this did not include all of the council’s housing partners. In addition, as the performance data was collated from a range of organisations all of which had different policies, practices and means of measuring performance, it was not always possible to obtain all areas of information from all organisations.
Following his introduction of the report, Tony Hirsch drew members’ attention to paragraph 5 which listed a number of housing reforms proposed within the Localism Bill, and the implications of these for the local authority. These proposals included the introduction of the Affordable Rent tenancy for Registered Providers, which allowed RSL’s to charge rents of up to 80% of market levels; A new “flexible tenancy” for local authorities, providing greater leeway regarding the term of future tenancies; A duty on councils to publish a strategic tenancy policy; Greater flexibility for local authorities to manage waiting lists and other measures to facilitate moves within the social housing sector, and; the ability for local authorities to discharge a homelessness duty into the private rented sector without the applicant’s agreement. Tony Hirsch advised that as the strategic housing authority, the council would have an interest in how these proposals were implemented both by providers and internally within the council. Consequently, the council might wish to review its approach to monitoring the comparative performance of providers and the committee was asked to consider if there were other areas for which it wished to see performance data. The committee further heard that officers were currently working to develop a Tenancy Strategy and a report was due to go to the Policy Coordination Group shortly.
Parallel to this process, partner organisations would also be considering their responses. Draft guidance to the Regulator also envisaged a greater role for tenants to empower them to be involved in the scrutiny of their landlord’s performance. This was supported by guidance stipulating that registered providers should welcome scrutiny via a tenant panel, should be required to provide timely, useful performance information to tenants in order to support effective scrutiny and to submit an annual report of performance to tenants.
The Chair welcomed Dave Woods (Development Director – Octavia Housing) and Eusebio Barata (Chief Executive - Stadium Housing) and invited them to comment on the challenges posed to RSLs by the proposed housing reforms. Dave Woods advised that significant changes to the funding climate had/would result in great challenges for RSLs in developing further housing ... view the full minutes text for item 5. |
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Ward Working May 2010 - May 2011 PDF 220 KB The report reviews the actions taken over the last year by Ward Working including some of the challenges the team have dealt with as well as positive achievements. It also identifies issues to be addressed over the coming year. Minutes: The Chair welcomed Councillor Jones, Lead Member for Customers and Citizens, to the meeting. Christine Collins, Neighbourhood Working Manager, presented a report to the committee detailing the work of the Ward Working Team for May 2010 to May 2011. The Ward Working Team operated across all 21 wards to support elected members in their contact with ward residents, helping to identify and respond to local concerns and secure long term improvements in the way services were delivered at neighbourhood level. The team worked with colleagues across the council as well as external partners to develop projects to tackle residents’ concerns and to develop strategic responses to issues of greater complexity. This was reflected in the Ward Working Steering group which comprised representatives from all Council departments. The team also reported direct to the Ward Working Member Reference Group (MRG) of which Councillor Jones was Chair and Councillors Colwill and Sneddon members. The report outlined expenditure, results of consultations, partnership activity, challenges faced by the team, positive achievements and issues to be addressed in the forthcoming year.
Christine Collins explained that the Ward Working Team had been affected by reductions in other council departments. These reductions could limit the options for the projects that the team might wish to develop. Despite this, the team had participated in 43 outreach events including ward walkabouts and attended tenant and resident groups meetings, police Safer Neighbourhood Team meetings and developed ‘ward breakouts’ at Area Consultative Forums. With regard to communications, the team had continued to produce the Neighbourhood bulletin, although had slightly changed the format to encourage greater levels of feedback, and had started using Twitter in a pilot scheme for Kilburn residents. There had been some significant interest in this pilot scheme but there required further work to encourage council departments to include more information.
Christine Collins further advised that a wide range of partnerships had been established and developed by the Ward Working Team and 17 of these were currently on-going, alongside more informal partnership working. Resident consultations had produced 597 responses, received via festivals and tear-off slips from the neighbourhood bulletin. These responses had been collated and analysed at Appendix 1 to the report. The information gathered was used to assist ward members to identify priorities for their ward and to aid decisions regarding project ideas. Of the £420,000 budget for all wards, there remained a small underspend of £7,530. At paragraph 9.2 of the report, a table was provided detailing the various categories of projects funded via the ward budgets. The greatest proportion of funds was directed towards projects aimed at engaging young people and in total £223,250 was spent on projects in the voluntary and community sector. A timetable had been implemented for the current financial year indicating when decisions regarding funding allocations should be made, in order to spread expenditure throughout the year and avoid difficulties caused by last minute allocations. It was highlighted to members that there had been many achievements and issues tackled for certain areas ... view the full minutes text for item 6. |
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Partnership Working in Brent (presentation) A range of partnership approaches are being employed by the council to deliver Corporate Strategy objectives. This presentation will outline the policy drivers, responses to them and highlight recent projects to show what partnership working can deliver in practice. Minutes: Joanna McCormick (Partnerships Co-Ordinator) delivered a presentation to the committee on Partnership Working in Brent and what it could deliver in practice, outlining the key policy drivers, responses to these and recent partnership projects. Copies of an accompanying hand-out were distributed to members.
Joanna McCormick advised that at a local level, policy drivers to Partnership Working were drawn from the corporate strategy, ‘Brent Our Future 2010-2014’ and were underpinned by in-depth analysis of a range of data and by feedback obtained via scrutiny of the council and its partners. In a national context, the Localism Bill, the Open Public Services White Paper and the Health and Social Care Bill set the scene for a significant shift in the nature of the relationship with the state. The Localism Bill for example, envisaged an expanded role for the voluntary sector, granted a general power of competence to local authorities allowing a greater flexibility, and proposed a community assets scheme. In response to these policy drivers, partnership working in Brent had focussed on assessing what could be achieved collectively. Examples of successful partnership working included the employer partnership supply chain scheme, which helped local businesses to access opportunities presented by projects such as the development of the new civic centre, and the creation and implementation of the cultural strategy for Brent, which aimed to raise Brent’s profile. Joanna McCormick noted that the Cultural Strategy had now been endorsed by the Partners for Brent Strategic Forum.
Turning to the subject of current challenges for Partnership Working, Joanna McCormick advised that an issue of particular significance was the changing nature of the local authority’s relationship with the voluntary sector. Whilst a heightened role was envisaged for the voluntary sector in the delivery of public services, it was noted that many voluntary organisations would have been adversely affected by the cuts to public spending. It was highlighted to the committee that it would be important to ensure that any tensions caused by these circumstances were mitigated and that the council acted to align its approach by providing one point of contact for voluntary sector organisations. The council was currently acting to support the development of a new council for voluntary service (CVS Brent) following the closure of BRAVA. CVS Brent would aid effective communication between the voluntary sector and the council and, where the voluntary sector assumed this role, would help to align service delivery. A further challenge to Partnership Working was the extent of organisational change both within the council and partner organisations. It was acknowledged that with changing contacts, the relationship between the council and its partners could be adversely affected and work was currently being conducted to mitigate this.
Joanna McCormick briefly outlined a number of partnership projects which had been established to meet joint objectives for the borough including tackling fuel poverty, worklessness, housing issues and child poverty. Examples of these projects included the development of a strategy deal with the impact of fuel poverty on the borough; a partnership between the ... view the full minutes text for item 7. |
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The Partnership & Place Overview & Scrutiny Committee Work Programme PDF 72 KB This report sets out sets options for the Partnership & Place Overview & Scrutiny Committee work programme. These include issues raised by members at the Joint Overview & Scrutiny Committee on 2nd June 2011 and issues requested by the committee during 2010/11.
Additional documents: Minutes: The Chair advised the committee that if they had any suggestions regarding the committee work programme that these be raised at the meeting or forwarded to Jacqueline Casson.
Jacqueline Casson advised that it had been scheduled on the programme for the work programme providers to attend a meeting of the committee. Cathy Tyson advised that she had spoken with them regarding this and they were happy to attend a meeting of the committee.
Councillor Harrison requested that an update be provided on the voluntary sector. Jacqueline Casson advised that a report around this issue would be brought to the committee. |
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Date of next meeting The next meeting of the Partnership and Place Overview and Scrutiny Committee meeting is scheduled to take place on 12 October 2011. Minutes: It was noted that the next meeting would be held on 12 October 2011. |
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Any other urgent business Notice of items raised under this heading must be given in writing to the Democratic Services Manager or his representative before the meeting in accordance with Standing Order 64. Minutes: None declared. |