Agenda item

To provide the Community and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee with an update on the housing management performance of the Council’s two wholly-owned housing companies, i4B Holdings Ltd (i4B) and First Wave Housing (FWH), delivered by the Council’s Housing Service via Service Level Agreements (SLAS).

The Chair welcomed Andrew Hudson, Chair of i4B and FWH Housing Companies, to the meeting and invited him to introduce the report.

In introducing the report, Andrew Hudson drew the Committee’s attention to the 3 key areas he felt the Companies had made progress and the 3 key areas he felt the Companies needed to improve. The Companies were pleased with the progress of acquisitions within i4B, where the Company had surpassed the target of 25 for the year with 30 acquisitions completed and a further 10 properties in the pipeline. Emergency repairs were also being completed 100% within the target time and there had been progress in relation to compliance, particularly the monitoring of health and safety compliance through True Compliance and the delivery of gas and legionella inspections. He assured the Committee that acknowledging the good performance did not indicate complacency regarding the importance of robust compliance, and it was recognised that there was a need to improve the completion rate of EICRs. In terms of areas for improvement, he highlighted tenant satisfaction where i4B and FWH had low satisfaction rates. The Companies would be looking into the reasons driving that satisfaction level. Voids were highlighted as another area for improvement in terms of the turnaround times to complete a void and let the property. The Companies had done a deep dive into the reasons for the long turnaround times and set out some actions to address that. The final area of focus for improvement was rent collection. One particular pattern emerging was issues with the interaction between Universal Credit and changes in rent levels, and since that was an issue that would happen every year the Companies were looking to build better relationships with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to address.

Councillor Butt (As Leader and Cabinet Member for Housing, Regeneration, Planning and Growth) added that the role of the Companies was to support the Council in securing accommodation to provide homes to the residents of Brent, and they had done a good job in procuring those properties but there were many factors which impacted the Companies ability to do that and therefore he thanked the Committee for inviting officers to speak about those challenges.

The Chair thanked presenters for their introduction and invited comments and questions from the Committee, with the following issues raised:

In noting that an area the Companies wished to improve was voids performance, members highlighted that there had been poor performance in void turnaround times for some time, and asked why measures that had been put in place to date had not seen an overall improvement in performance. Andrew Hudson agreed that voids had been a challenge for a while and the deep dive had aimed to take a comprehensive view to put in place an action plan to mitigate those difficulties. During the voids deep dive, officers and Board members had reviewed the voids process from start to finish, from the moment an existing property was declared void, through to the tenant moving out, the new tenant/s moving in, and the series of actions that needed to take place between that involving many different stakeholders such as Brent Housing Management (BHM), surveyors, contractors and sub-contractors. It was highlighted that some void properties may only require a deep clean, but others may require more complex works such as a roof repair, and in any one of the void stages there could be delays. Officers were now looking to address all the different stages, including the alerting of the contractor that a specification was needed, the handing over of keys, the checking of gas/ water/ electric meters, and the nomination of tenants, and, as far as possible, do those actions in parallel rather than in series, with much fewer gaps between each stage, so that the process became quicker and smoother. A lot of that work depended on the interaction between different parts of the Council and external contractors and that was also an area that would be improved going forward. As a result of the deep dive, he was optimistic that the main factors needing to be addressed had been tackled and that the right people would take the right actions forward, but he was conscious that the officers who were required to do this work were very busy and the Companies were not in a position to put further resource in.

Noting the positive performance on acquisitions, the Committee asked how good the Companies were in embedding themselves into conversations with developers, post planning approval, to maximise the number of units at discounted rates that could be acquired. Andrew Hudson confirmed that the Companies stood ready to use their distinctive structures to take on particular opportunities and projects and apply for grants where the Council could not. Those interactions were managed by Council officers. Hal Chavasse (Strategy and Delivery Manager, Brent Council) highlighted that the involvement in those conversations had improved over the last 6 months following an internal restructure that allowed officers to attend the Affordable Housing Supply Board on behalf of the Companies. This was a monthly meeting that discussed new developments, regeneration schemes and internal developments which i4B and FWH were now included in. For example, a Section 106 acquisition which might not work for the Council could work for i4B who could charge different rent levels, and FWH could benefit from grants as a registered provider, so there were some specific opportunities available to the Companies that the Council itself might not necessarily be able to progress. Where units with larger blocks became available to the Companies, this required the Company to draw down loan funding from the Council. Where those opportunities presented, they would be checked against set parameters to ensure they did not put the Companies in financial jeopardy, and then the Company would have a conversation with the Council about drawing down loan funding to buy those units. There were 2 schemes that the Companies were in conversations regarding currently. In response to what type of housing i4B acquired, the Committee were advised that i4B did not develop housing but only acquired it. The Company had mostly bought single units with a mix of on-street properties and within blocks, meaning many of them were leasehold. Generally, the Company did not buy in large developer units but had recently acquired a 9 unit block from a private developer and had Lexington, the key worker block with 153 units. In total there were approximately 600 units in i4B.

In response to whether i4B would look to increase its acquisition target for the following year as a result of the good performance, Peter Gadsdon (Corporate Director Partnerships, Housing and Residents Services, Brent Council) advised that the majority of acquisitions were houses and flats on the open market which the Council’s Property Team found and acquired on behalf of the Companies. The Companies would need to draw down loan funding from the Council to purchase more properties, and as such would need to evaluate doing that against parameters to ensure the Company remained financially viable. He was able to offer assurance that the Companies were being ambitious within the resources they had.

The Committee noted that the report had identified challenges where the Company owned a property but a third-party freeholder owned the building and asked how the Companies were engaging proactively with the owners of buildings to ensure complaints and concerns were being addressed. Andrew Hudson highlighted that, going forward, the Companies were looking to avoid units where the freeholder was not another local authority or Housing Association. Hal Chavasse highlighted that it was much easier to engage with freeholders when they were another Council or Housing Association to get issues the freeholder was responsible for resolved relatively quickly. There were challenges if the unit was in a building owned by a private freeholder where the Company may only have an address with no phone number or email address on record. Letters were sent by the Companies to those freeholders proactively to help understand any major works they may be planning and obtain Fire Risk Assessments but the response rates were usually very low. Where there were issues at properties in those buildings, such as a roof leak, then the Company would follow the legal process which would result in the Companies effectively being able to go in and complete the works.

The Chair then invited representatives from Brent Youth Parliament (BYP) to contribute to the discussion. BYP highlighted that, whilst i4B had acquired 30 properties over the year, there were many more families presenting as homeless at the Civic Centre every week, and asked what the Companies were doing to alleviate homelessness so that children and young people could continue to go to school in their local area. Councillor Butt acknowledged the challenge and highlighted the difficulties in finding available properties and landlords who were willing to give the Council or Companies their properties. A lot of people attending the Civic Centre were also on benefits which were capped, meaning the opportunity for them to compete with market rents was even harder, and where the rents were higher than the Local Housing Allowance (LHA) rate then the Council and Companies were required to work with families to ensure they understood the implications that they would have to make up that difference in rent, also taking into account their utility bills, Council tax, food, fuel and clothing. He reassured BYP and the Committee that the Housing Needs Team, led by Laurence Coaker (Director of Housing Needs and Support), worked very hard to support residents in Brent to get into accommodation, and the Companies and Council were working with everyone they could in order to secure and procure as many properties as possible within the challenging market environment.

The Committee noted that performance appeared to be similar to the previous year, and asked the Chair what had changed since the previous year in his view and what the Committee could look forward to seeing in the future. In response, Andrew Hudson advised that there was a Council-wide exercise to improve communications with tenants which the Companies would be taking part in to understand what was driving the low levels of satisfaction seen in the most recent Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs), resulting in an action plan to address that. The Companies were looking to speed up voids and would review progress in early 2025. Finally, the Companies wanted to improve rent collection and were looking to establish closer links with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) by Spring 2025 to ensure officers and tenants were prepared for amending Universal Credit claims when rents increased. To improve performance, a third Tenancy Services Manager was being recruited so that the Companies had more people working directly with tenants and one of their responsibilities would be to improve rent collection.

In terms of housing management performance, the Committee asked Councillor Butt, as the Interim Cabinet Member for Housing, whether he was satisfied with the progress and management of performance and that the measures being taken would improve the performance long-term. Councillor Butt responded that when there were delays or complaints and customers were not getting the service they needed and deserved then he viewed that as a failure and he would not be satisfied in those circumstances. After reviewing the performance data and complaints, he was now ensuring that officers knew where the issues lay, and this could be discussed more in-depth in the next agenda item related solely to housing management performance in terms of what was being put in place to tackle those performance issues. He added that he took that view that when tenants raised their concerns it should be viewed as a positive because it highlighted issues that could then be addressed to improve the delivery of services.

The Committee highlighted that levels of satisfaction from the TSMs were relatively low, particularly regarding safety and complaints handling. They asked what strategy would be used to improve those figures and how the tenants were engaged. Peter Gadsdon explained that tenants had been engaged through a mixture of face-to-face questionnaires and postal surveys, following the guidance from the regulator. Spencer Randolph (Head of Housing Services, Brent Council) explained that FWH and i4B would mirror what the Council did to address tenant satisfaction. He highlighted that, traditionally, the Council had been using transactional surveys to understand resident satisfaction, and for transactional surveys on repairs there was more than 80% satisfaction. The Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs) were more perception based and looked at how the Council and Companies were performing overall with regard to the management of properties and tenancies, and the satisfaction levels from those surveys were low. It was thought this was due to a lack of engagement and communication with residents, and there was a comprehensive improvement plan that had been developed over the past 5 months to address the issues, including a Council-wide project addressing complaints handling. This was the first year TSMs had been run and the questions were prescribed by the Regulator for Social Housing. As such, officers were not able to make comparisons on perception from previous years, but going forward there would be benchmarking information across all prescribed questions.

Noting the low TSM results regarding Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB), Brent Youth Parliament asked what methods were being utilised to ensure ASB was dealt with in the most effective way to ensure young people were kept safe in their homes, and whether the views of young people had been obtained in the TSM surveys. Kate Daine (Head of Housing and Neighbourhoods, Brent Council) confirmed that young people had not been surveyed as part of TSMs but it was recognised that they would form part of the families responding. The Companies had surveyed the tenants prescribed by government. In relation to ASB, she highlighted it was very difficult to deal appropriately with ASB across the borough, and across London, but it had been recognised that the perception of tenants was that the Council and Companies were not dealing with ASB well enough. Part of the reason behind that result would be because ASB meant different things to different people, but she assured BYP that officers did as much as possible to address ASB. 

The Committee asked how the Companies addressed the wellbeing of tenant. Peter Gadsdon highlighted tenant satisfaction was primarily used to understand the feelings and wellbeing of tenants, and work was being done to further understand those satisfaction levels. Another way the Companies and Council understood the wellbeing of tenants was if they were in arrears. The Companies deployed Tenancy Sustainment Officers to visit those tenants to talk about their issues and provide holistic support to help the tenants maintain their tenancy. There was also a contract with a provider called BEAM who provided holistic employment support for a number of tenants in arrears.

The Committee asked whether the Companies were looking at any other forms of income or bidding for additional income, such as through the GLA. Andrew Hudson responded that the biggest opportunity for funding for local authorities and Housing Associations would lie in how the government addressed future funding for housing and social housing in the budget going forward. He confirmed that the Companies were ready to play their part in whatever opportunities lay in that.

The Chair thanked those present for their contributions and drew the item to a close. He invited members to make recommendations with the following RESOLVED:

i)              At a future meeting, to receive the voids action plan, including reassurance that properties were being looked after in a systematic way before the point they became void, with staff checking property conditions while tenants were in situ. The plan should incorporate value for money.

ii)             At a future meeting, to receive an engagement and communications plan that helps to improve TSMs.  The plan should incorporate value for money.

iii)           For future reports, where it was noted that performance targets were not being met, it should be stated what would be done to mitigate that.

iv)           To endorse the approach of avoiding purchasing properties in buildings that were owned by private third-party freeholders that were not local authorities or housing associations.