Agenda item

The report provides information on the delivery of Disabled Facility Grants (DFG) and Small Work Grants (SWG) as well as to provide information on the performance of the service, the challenges it faces and associated risks .

Spencer Randolph (Head of Private Housing Services, Brent Council) introduced the report which provided members with information on the delivery of Disabled Facility Grants (DFG) and Small Work Grants (SWG), performance of the service and any challenges.

Cllr Southwood (Lead Member for Housing and Welfare Reform) drew the Committee’s attention to the approach of the scheme, explaining that majority of issues were based on determining whether an adaptation was major or minor rather than what type of grant was needed. The revised grant allocation approach had built in flexibility and sought to address residents’ concerns over means testing by removing it as a requirement in the process, thus leading to a more positive experience. An article on the new approach to adaptation would be included in the summer issue of the Brent magazine to further illustrate the point.

Disabled facilities grants were prescribed by legislation. Aim of the Housing Team was to update model in order to process requests more efficiently and simplify a traditionally very complex and lengthy process.

Grants funding was considered a perplexing process. The funds were allocated by central government to the NHS, before being proportionally ring-fenced to the Council via the Better Care Fund. In an effort to simply the process, the Council was seeking to make a case to the NHS to demonstrate saving opportunities by making small adaptations.

In terms of private housing services adaptations, Mr Randolph that while historically most referrals came from Adult Social Care, adaptations would be carried out by Private Housing Services irrespective of the type of tenancy they relate to.

A total of 4284 people in Brent were benefitting from small grants. On average the Council was spending approximate £360,000 on small grants, with an average spent of circa £1,500 per grant, and a variable maximum of up to £7,000 for small works over  a 3-year  period  depending  on  the  type of  adaptation  required. Mr Randolph advised that despite the £30,000 mandatory limit, there was no fixed threshold for major adaptations, with additional funding possible for anything above the mandatory limit which was deemed practical and reasonable. In terms of cancellation trends, officers advised that this was often due to incomplete means testing or refusal to do so. In such cases a self-fund scheme would be offered would prevent the number of cancellations.

Discussions moved on with members enquiring about the type of adaptations and what happened to them once a property became vacant. In response, it was stated that the common practice was not to keep properties void just because they had major adaptations done. Locata, the system used for bidding on council properties, would be updated to reflect when such property became available and the matter was also picked up by surveyors. However, as most adaptations were specific to the user needs, when a property became void, these had to be removed. To reduce costs and waste, the Council was looking into the overall adaptations programme and considering building “lifetime homes” to ensure that fewer adaptations were needed.

It was noted that provision of adaptations was a “tenure blind” service, irrespective of the type of accommodation and solely focused on the needs of the resident. Small adaptations were also possible for private sector properties, although further work was need to ensure the scheme was adequately promoted within the private rented sector. However, some resistance was possible from landlords in the private sector who had the right to refuse an adaption. This was mainly due to a need of a balance between cost of adaptation vs benefit for the tenant but more  cases needed to be looked at before specific actions/decision could be made. In conclusion of this point, the Committee also noted the results of the Private Housing Services customer satisfaction survey for grants completed between 1st January and 20th February 2018 as set out in Appendix 1 of the report. The results showed that although only 10% of the all grants were completed over that period of time, results revealed a consistent level of satisfaction across both DWG and SWGs indicators.

Finally, spotlighting on performance indicators, the Committee queried the targets times as set out in paragraph 6.5 of the report, particularly in terms of the overall processing times for agency SWGs from receiving an enquiry to an inspection, which Members felt needed revising. Whilst officers agreed to review these, they noted that their priority was to involve the client in the process of adaptations, which often took longer than the actual time required for the work to be completed.

RESOLVED:

      i.        That  the  contents  of  the  Disabled  Facilities  and  Small  Works  Grant Distribution report be noted.