Agenda item

This presentation by Folake Olufeko, BHP interim Head of Finance, will provide an overview of Brent Housing Partnership’s (BHP) performance and provides an analysis of BHP compared with performance from last year.  BHP is regulated by the Homes and Communities Agency which sets framework outlining the standards required from all social housing operators. BHP has laid out key performance objectives to show how they are meeting these standards.

Peta Caine, the newly appointed Director of Operations at Brent Housing Partnership (BHP) was present for this item.  She stated that she was open to answering questions about the performance of Brent Housing Partnership and was interested to hear from members on how they might wish to be presented with performance information in the future. 

In answer to the comment that there appeared to be more areas where performance was down than there were where performance was up, Peta Caine explained that a lot of the downward performance was around correspondence and complaints handling.  She stated that changes implemented the previous Autumn and further changes made since had increased the focus placed on customer service and front line delivery.  It was commented that whilst it was good to have information on telephone handling, performance was poor.  Peta Caine explained that BHP had experienced the same difficulties with using the mobile telephone technology that the Council had and work was underway to deal with this.  Addressing the issue of the quality of the response, she stated that the complaints team needed better support from the wider organisation.  A proposed new structure was out for consultation with an implementation date of July/August 2014.  Regarding a comment made about providing more comprehensive information to leaseholders, she explained that the planned maintenance programme would soon be out for consultation and this would include leaseholders as well as ensuring there was a greater level of engagement with them.  She confirmed that leaseholders received the BHP newsletter.  In addressing the problems of performance with the call centre, Peta Caine stated that improved information was needed on the telephone numbers residents should use so that calls could be handled more efficiently.  Consideration was being given to the level of resources available and the systems in place that would allow a service to be provided whereby people did not have the need to telephone.  However, the Chair pointed out that BHP was not a new organisation and was surprised that it did not seem to have in place mechanisms to meet exceptional demand.  Peta Caine explained that in the past extra staff had been recruited to cover the winter peak periods and this had masked the underlying issues.  The decision had been taken not to do this during the current year but this had coincided with the exceptionally wet weather.  An exercise was being undertaken to map periods of higher demand and to match this with appropriate staff resources.

The comment was made that future reports could contain a covering report drawing out the main issues.

Addressing the issue of the removal of rubbish, Peta Caine explained that BHP had a contract with Wettons for internal cleaning and bought into the Council’s contract with Veolia for rubbish removal.  Work was underway to better integrate these services.  A recent talkback session called ‘Love where you live’ had taken place concentrating on what happened outside a person’s front door and involving all the agencies responsible for delivering the services.  More regular inspections took place in higher rise blocks than in lower rise blocks essentially because of health and safety considerations.  The Committee identified the fall in performance of internal cleaning and asked why this had happened.  Peta Caine explained that it had been found that the sample size used was too unrepresentative to draw meaningful comparisons and so BHP was undertaking a thorough review of this in order to get a more robust method of sampling.  The performance of the contractor and the contract monitoring arrangements were also under review.

The Chair asked what benchmarking information might be usefully used and Peta Caine acknowledged that information from HouseMark could be used in reports to future meetings.  In the meantime she undertook to provide the comparison with 2013 data which had already been considered by the BHP board. She was also asked to provide more detail on re-letting rates and timescales.

Peta Caine was thanked for her attendance.