Agenda item

To provide the Community and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee with an update on Brent Housing Management Services’ performance over the last year, including the 2023-24 Tenant Satisfaction Measure (TSM) results.

Spencer Randolph (Head of Housing Services, Brent Council) introduced the report, which reviewed the performance of Brent Housing Management (BHM) over the past year. Particular attention was brought to the Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs) which formed part of a new regulation that came into force in April 2024 which were standards that all Councils and registered providers were now being held to nationally. The TSMs had been introduced with the aim to hold registered providers to account and make them more professional in the way properties were managed. He highlighted that Brent Council was not performing where it wanted to be in relation to TSMs and that services in general needed improvement. He added that the housing service had been putting in steps to ensure readiness for when the call for inspection arrived and that services were improved and residents were engaged going forward.

In relation to TSMs, Ryan Collymore (Head of Service – Housing Management Property, Brent Council) added that the intention was to get some qualitative data behind some of the prescribed questions in the next iteration, so that where residents had informed the Council they were not satisfied then officers could understand the reasons behind that. This was thought to be useful because, with perception-based surveys, the question might be understood differently by the tenant compared to what it truly asked. For example, when asked ‘how satisfied are you with complaints handling’, to a resident they could be answering based on their experience of calling to report a repair rather than relating to a formal complaint they had made. I4B had very good compliance, but the TSM results relating to safety and quality were low, so there was a need to understand why residents had answered in that way. Alongside this would be a big push on communications so that residents knew the good work that had been done.

Councillor Butt (as Leader and Cabinet Member for Housing, Regeneration, Planning and Growth) highlighted that since he had taken on the portfolio for housing it had been a good learning experience, and he understood the need for scrutiny on the satisfaction and repairs figures. There were also concerns relating to staffing that were being addressed to help performance improve.

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

Noting the mismatch between performance and customer satisfaction, and the fact that officers had attributed the low satisfaction to lack of communication and engagement, the Committee asked what could be put down to services not being delivered compared to services and improvements not being communicated. Spencer Randolph highlighted that on a transactional basis, the level of satisfaction after every repair carried out was relatively high at around 80%, opposed to the perception of how the Council was dealing with repairs, complaints and Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB) which was low. There were other parts of London with similar disparities, for example Newham had the highest TSM satisfaction rate in London but had been rated the lowest performing borough by the Housing Regulator. The Council had been reviewing this anomaly and looking at how it assessed itself against standards, and had concluded that there had been very little engagement with tenants over the last few years due to staffing issues and resource allocations. As a result, the housing service had now restructured, bringing in 25 patch area tenancy managers (ATMs) who would engage with 350 of their own tenants, managing those tenancies and engaging on a regular basis. Increased communications channels would be created and a reinvigorated tenant newsletter in order to re-engage tenants. The service had also been doing walkabouts around estates with lead members, where tenants had fed back that they don’t see or know their Housing Officer (Area Tenancy Manager). The service was currently carrying out TSMs for the next year and did not think enough significant improvement had been made for this to come through in the results, and it would likely be the next set where the impact of the improvements was seen.

Considering paragraph 4.3 of the report, which detailed low customer satisfaction for repairs despite high completion rates for repairs, the Committee asked whether it was the quality of the repair that was causing the low satisfaction. Ryan Collymore advised members that it came down to the perception of the question. The housing service was interested in satisfaction with the repairs service and completion of the repair, but tenants might answer in relation to the phone call they made to the contact centre if they waited a long time to get through to raise the repair. As such, whilst the regulator had prescribed the survey questions that should be asked, in the next iteration of surveys would be include some supplementary questions to understand the background behind tenant’s answers.

The Committee noted that there were 88 empty Council houses currently in the void process and asked whether that was a cause for concern. They were advised that as a proportion of Council stock of just over 8,000 properties 88 void units was relatively low, as there was often regular turnover in Council stock due to people moving or passing away. There had been a significant reduction in the number of void properties compared to the same time the previous year, which had been at 148. There had been significant improvements in void turnaround times over the last year following the implementation of a voids ‘hit squad’ to streamline the process, but that had plateaued in the last 6 months due to problems pre and post-contractor that needed improvement. In relation to the information received on voids, the Committee highlighted it would be useful for those to be further broken down into types of void and geographical area to identify any particular patterns.

In relation to paragraph 14.3 of the report which stated that the housing service was carrying out an exercise to look at diversity data, the Committee asked what that would entail. Officers explained that the service used a hybrid IT system currently through a mix of MS Dynamics and Northgate/NEC and there was a large amount of data needing to be cleared on those systems. A review was underway to consider solely moving over to the Northgate/NEC product rather than Dynamics where there would be a need to undertake a data cleansing project. Then new Area Tenancy Managers would be conducting more tenancy audits to obtain more tenant data such as vulnerabilities that could be included in the database. In terms of what percentage of tenants the Council already had diversity data on, it was agreed this could be provided outside of the meeting. The service was now aiming to be more robust at the point of let to obtain that information and ensure its accuracy and effective use.

The Committee asked how the Council managed succession rights, for example, when a two person household became one-person. Kate Daine explained that this depended on the age of the person, and other factors which were legislative and covered by the Housing Allocations Policy. Housing tried as much as possible to work holistically with any family who had experienced a death, particularly if it was the lead tenant, to ensure the surviving members of the family had all of the information needed in order to make an application to remain in the property. The Council would support them if they did not have succession rights or could not remain in the property and would look to get them into alternative accommodation.

The Committee noted that there had been an increase in evictions due to rent arrears compared to the previous year, from 2 to 6, and asked if the Council was forecasting that to continue to increase and whether there was a strategy in place to tackle the potential of higher eviction numbers. Kate Daine explained that one reason the eviction numbers had increased was due to the reopening and speeding up of court, following extreme delays processing court applications post-covid. She highlighted that the Council did as much as possible to keep people in their homes and used eviction as a last option and never took evictions lightly. Before an eviction took place a report would be taken to a panel where an agreement was reached on whether to evict that tenant. Each eviction was done on a case-by-case basis and the panel would review all eventualities and ensure the tenant had received a relevant amount of contact and the Council had done as much as possible to engage them. Once it had been agreed that a tenant would be evicted, the housing service worked with Housing Needs to ensure they were aware of the eviction, as well as Adult Social Care and Children’s Social Care to ensure any vulnerabilities were taken care of. As much as possible through this process the Council aimed to prevent the revolving door of homelessness when someone was evicted from a Council tenancy, which was the most affordable type of tenure. If the Council continued to see a true increase in evictions which did not plateau then officers would look to put a specific strategy in place to address that. It was added that some evictions were not due to rent arrears. The Council had become more proactive in dealing with ASB and some high-profile cases recently had resulted in evictions due to tenant’s violent behaviour towards other tenants.

The Committee asked how much was done to help tenants to report issues correctly and how much tenants knew what to expect when they reported an issue, particularly those tenants whose first language was not English. Spencer Randolph felt that not enough had been done around that due to the lack of engagement the service had with tenants. Once the new Area Tenancy Managers were in post they would be going out to tenants within their patches, introducing themselves and asking about any issues they needed resolving, and it was hoped then an improvement would be seen. The Area Tenancy Managers would feed back those issues both to action them and to help identify any themes or patterns emerging.

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)              To provide information on the impact of the housing management services reorganisation at a future Committee meeting.

ii)             To include health and safety considerations in future reports, particularly relating to cladding and fire safety, as well as climate change targets.

An information request was made during the discussion, recorded as follows:

i)              To provide the number of tenants the Council had diversity data on.