Human Resources Committee - Monday 1 September 2025, 6:30pm - Tower Hamlets Council webcasts

Human Resources Committee
Monday, 1st September 2025 at 6:30pm 

Agenda

Slides

Transcript

Map

Resources

Forums

Speakers

Votes

 

Welcome to our Webcast Player.

The webcast should start automatically for you. 

Webcast cameras are not operated by camerapersons; they are automated and linked to speaker microphone units. The aim is to provide viewers with a reasonable visual and audio record of proceedings of meetings held in public.

Note: If your webcast link appears not to be working, please return to the Webcast Home Page and try again, or use the help email address to contact us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Share this agenda point
  1. Webcast Finished

Good afternoon everyone.
As -salamu alaykum and welcome to the Human Research Committee meeting.
My name is Councillor Haran Miah and I am the chair of this committee.
This meeting is being held in person.
Some members may be joining online.
I think Councillor Ali joining online and Karl's boss, yes.
Only the committee members present in the meeting room will be able to vote.
I would kindly remind members at the meeting to only speak on my direction and speak clearly into the microphones to ensure that the comments can be properly recorded.
And can everybody make sure that mobile phones are switched off or in silent mode?
Apologies for absence. Justina, do we have any apologies for absence?
Yes, Chair. Councillor Kabir Ahmed has sent his apologies.
Councillor Wahid is substituting in his place.
Item 1, declaration of disclosure of pecuniary interest.
Can I now ask members and guests to introduce themselves and then declare any interest they
have?
So, I'll start from our welcome.
We just started.
Yeah. Okay. Abdulbe, welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for coming. We've started it.
Yes, we've done that, yes.
Okay. Now can I ask members and guests to introduce themselves and then declare any interest.
Staff on the right.
And council had to Muhammad and no new dpi's by refer to my interest
Council after why he'd know interest
Councillor Sophia I've met no DPAs
Pauling Shakespeare interim head of corporate human resources
Chris Leslie, Corporate Head of Financial Management.
Good evening everyone, I'm David Joyce, I'm Corporate Director of Housing and Regeneration.
Good evening, hi I'm Abdurra Zakasim, Acting Corporate Director of Resources.
Good evening all, Councillor Abdulla, Tala Chaudhry, nothing to declare.
Good evening everyone, Councillor Abdulla, nothing to declare.
Aye, Councillor Meena, Ali, nothing to declare.
Carol Bowes, I'm the legal advisor.
Yeah. Justina Bridgman, Democratic Services Officer.
Now, Agenda Item 2, minutes unrestricted. The minutes from the last meeting held on
the 22nd of May, 2025, have been circulated. Can we confirm these are correct? Yeah. Thank
doll at theings however jazz
The superfs hope枑
Agenda number four, reports for consideration.
4 .1, corporate directors update.
I would like to welcome David Joyce, corporate director of housing and regeneration, to talk
about this department and his department and give any updates.
You have five minutes.
And after that, we will go to the questions.
Okay.
Thank you, chair.
Just in a bit my presentation is it getting put up on screen or do I just
talk to the papers? Yeah I think she's talking. Okay just talk to the papers.
Okay so I don't know whether people at home also have the papers in front of
them but the I'm gonna give you an overview of the kind of operating
context and the issues that we're facing in housing and regeneration some of the
dimensions around the council as landlord and then give you an overview
of each part of the directorate so that's that's my plan this evening. So in
terms of first the first slide I think you know Tower Hamlets within London
the London context stands out for a number of reasons around housing and
regeneration but and a lot of them are familiar to all of you which is that you
know we are the local authority that's seen the biggest and fastest growing
population increase in London and it's quite stark really 250 ,000 people lived
in this borough in 2011 and that's increased to 310 ,000 in 2021 census and
it's actually projected to grow to just short of 400 ,000 by the next census so
you know these are this borough is changing and it's changing rapidly and
And with that comes challenges and opportunities and really the work of Housing and Regeneration
is about responding to those.
We are seeing very significant upward pressure around house prices and private rents in particular.
And I think when you look at the figures around the way that our rents in the borough are
increasing, you can see that in the last year they increased by 8 .5 % in one year.
you know, well in advance even of inflation, which is high as we know in any event,
that puts a lot of pressure on people's pockets and the cost of living,
but it's also a direct cost to the council when you think about our homelessness function, for instance.
And we place a lot of people in the private rented sector,
and it's one of the reasons we've got significant budget pressures within the department,
but the council as a whole, and that's a national issue, but it's really playing out in Tower Hamlets.
And we've seen that pattern year on year as well.
We've got over 29 ,000 households registered on the Housing Register, which is really quite
a remarkable figure and certainly the highest of anywhere that I've worked.
And 44 % of households on the Housing Register are overcrowded.
And overcrowding I think impacts Towerham, that's more than any borough in London and
and is one of the reasons we're so focused as a department and as a council in terms of tackling that.
We're also clearly also a building of with a council I should say and a borough
with very many high -rise residential buildings and we see that within our own council stock as well
and we also have a very high percentage of people living in flats as opposed to houses
much higher really than practically every other borough in London. And I
will say as well that a lot of our focus is on council housing and social housing
and obviously we're a big landlord as a council and we've got all of the big
housing associations in Tower Hamlets from Riverside to East End Homes to
Ellen Q to Pop the Harca. The private rented sector plays a very significant
role in terror hamlets including in terms of lease in terms of leaseholder properties
within the social housing sector and it's important that we focus on that.
So if I move on and just say a little bit about the council as landlord which is the
second slide. You all know because I know it's been a topic that you've talked about
this committee that the council then sourced terror hamlets homes in November 2023 and
And at that point 600 staff transferred back into the council and it meant that once again
sort of roughly 22 ,000 homes came under the direct control of the council.
I think it was a very deliberate move to say that as in a post Grenfell landscape we needed
to be closer to our housing stock and actually take direct responsibility for managing it
and driving standards up.
And one thing that's different about Towerham that's compared to anywhere else I've been
is we've got a high number of leasehold properties within that council stock.
It's about 10 ,000 leasehold properties and interestingly when they,
we had something like 1400 applications for people to write to buy their
their council homes before the discount got taken away by the Deputy Prime Minister.
Not taken away sorry, reduced substantially, yeah reduced.
So we've got a very high number of applications, we don't expect all of them to convert
But if they do all convert, you can do the maths and you'll see that for the first time
we'll actually, may even be majority leaseholder within our stock, which is very substantial.
We also have a very wide variety of stock.
You know, I've been, I've done walkarounds with several members of this committee actually,
But if I can contrast the stock and Councillor O 'Lough's word with the stock in your word
But even within your words, you've got very differing types of stock. So and you know part of that is we've got
Stock which are listed buildings. We've got high -rise buildings. We've got
Low rise we've got houses. We've got flats. We've got everything really within our stock. We've got homes house is just around the corner from here
So it's a real variety of stock and that brings with it a number of challenges.
And we also have stock which, you know, some of which needs substantial investment.
And also around half of the leasehold homes we have are sublet to occupants.
And that creates a whole range of challenges,
particularly around how we regulate the private rented sector.
So if I just move on and then we'll get
into the kind of current sort of shape of the directorate.
So the recent achievements, I won't run through all of these.
There are many, but there are also a number of challenges.
I think the insourcing of Tower Hamlets Homes was done at pace
and was quite seamless.
And we've achieved a number of efficiencies
by bringing Tower Hamlets Homes back into the council.
But I think we also lifted the lid and did independent reviews
of the state of the service and really assessed what we needed to do to start
improving the position that the council inherited particularly around things
like compliance, building safety and investment in stock and what was
required around that. So I think that first year has been really about
steadying the ship, getting back on track and turning things around and that sort
ultimately culminated in the regulators inspection which happened at the start
of this year. We got a C3 rating which puts us in common with virtually every
other London Borough bar about free but that does mean we've got substantial
improvement to do. Moving beyond that we're investing obviously in building
new homes as a council but we're also acquiring homes and we've been using
funding from the GLA to the Greater London Authority to buy back ex -leasehold
council homes and we've done a big campaign around that. Abdo, Roszak and I
both every Friday evening, well that's when I do, sign off all the acquisitions
that we've agreed and it's great to see them coming back into use for social
housing or temporary accommodation which is badly needed and it's much better
quality actually than placing someone out of borough in B &B or some other type
temporary accommodation. I won't go through all of these but we're doing lots of work
for our sustainability team, our carbon fund, moving the council quite rapidly towards net zero,
investing in things like photovoltaics on council buildings, we are planting lots of trees, we are
investing in different energy solutions and retrofitting our council estate.
We've got a really ambitious local plan which is trying to drive up housing delivery in the borough and drive density where that's appropriate.
And as I said also we're building new council homes. We've got a programme of about 900 homes in it including a big estate regeneration scheme near here on the cliche estate.
but we're also looking to accelerate that with the Mayor's Accelerated Affordable Housing Programme
which will hopefully bring forward sites to deliver an additional 3 ,000 homes.
Beyond the kind of housing realm, we've got a large capital programme which is investing in schools, community facilities,
new community facilities like the Lebridge Community Centre, which is one of the Mayor's priority projects,
and all of that I think is really culminating in a large investment programme
in Tower Hamlets and our community infrastructure.
So I will probably then sort of start to move on to some of the challenges that we're facing.
In terms of current challenges, the obvious one, and it's at the top of the slide if you move on to the next page,
there is just not enough homes to meet current and rising demand.
And at the same time as that, we've seen a big slowdown in private sector delivery of housing in particular.
You'll all have seen the London -wide mollier data on new housing starts in London.
It's reached the lowest level in history.
There's a number of reasons behind that, including things like the Building Safety Act,
which is placing a lot of extra cost and creating viability issues for developers.
We are, I think in Towerham, slightly fortunate that we've got quite a buoyant development sector
compared to some parts of London where it's just not viable to build at all.
And we are building as a council ourselves, but we're not immune to some of these London and national pressures.
We've got a significant number of residents living in unsuitable housing, including overcrowded accommodation.
I mean we would have visited homes with a number of members of this committee and seen
families living in intolerable conditions where you know there's a family of eight living
in a two bed that we went to see.
So you know these challenges are real and it's very difficult to address them for everyone.
We're trying to address it through building new family sized housing for our acquisitions
programme through getting developers to build social housing as part of their schemes.
But it is difficult.
We have got a lot of new regulatory requirements coming on board that we have to address as
a landlord.
So our law, for instance, around damp and mould, decent homes, we've got lease hold reform,
reform and there's also the renters reform bill which I think has a lot of kind of correct
intentions and will strengthen our ability to regulate the private renter sector.
But it does also mean unfortunately that a lot of landlords are withdrawing their properties
from the market and selling them which is in some ways then pushing up costs around
placing homeless households.
We're seeing an increase in homelessness, about 10 % year on year in terms of demand
of people coming through our front door, but we're also seeing an increase in cost of properties
when we're then placing those homeless households.
And that's been challenging, although I will say we've made good progress around getting
people out of hotel accommodation, getting families out of B &B and our current focus
is how do we get out of expensive, nightly paid accommodation?
It may be self -contained, but it can be insecure
in terms of length of time that people are in those properties.
It's often not in borough and it is expensive.
So we've still got that challenge and that's kind of driven by the market.
So there are a number of challenges that we're facing.
So if I just move beyond that kind of operating context.
So we've got a slide that looks like that.
This is the directorate in numbers.
Across housing and regeneration, there are 1 ,000 staff, roughly.
And the vast majority of those are in landlord services,
where we have, you know, a number of frontline teams delivering services
like caretaking, our housing officers and so on.
But we obviously also have large numbers of staff in areas like planning,
where we've got one of the busiest planning departments in London, building
control. We've got significant numbers of staff and facilities management because
the facilities management team don't just oversee buildings like the Town
Hall, they're also overseeing all of our community infrastructure, buildings,
libraries and so on and so forth. So there's a significant number of staff
in that area and our property team also, which I haven't really talked about, also
overseas things like our commercial portfolio which drives substantial income for the council.
So the next slide really gives an overview of our priorities.
I won't go through all of these because I'm going to talk about each individual area and
I don't want to be too repetitive but if you do have any questions, feel free to take me
back to this slide if you'd like me to talk about each of the different
priorities for each area. There is a slide which gives you an overview of the
key strategies that the department's involved in preparing. I think the
top level ones really are our local plan which sets out our strategy for Tower
Hamlets and how and where we expect to see growth. If we are going to be a
borough in ten years which is home to 400 ,000, where are those homes,
opportunities, jobs and community infrastructure going to go to support
that, how are we going to create new open spaces and parks so that it's a borough
that people enjoy visiting, especially when there's gonna be a lot more people
in the borough. We've got our housing revenue account business plan which
sounds a bit dry but it's actually the plan that sets out how we will invest in
our existing homes and build new homes and also retrofit homes which is a
massive issue for our ageing stock and there's a whole series of other
strategies that you'll see on that page from our strategic asset management plan
through to our climate change and net zero strategy.
And again, I can come back to this if you're interested in it.
So the next slide shows the directorate structure overview.
When I arrived, I only had two permanent directors in place,
but I'm pleased to say that we've made quite a bit of progress in addressing that.
So you can see my structure here.
I have seven director reports that report to me.
Since when I arrived Karen Swift was in post as director of housing strategy and regulatory
assurance and Sri Sudhakar was in post as our director of planning and building control
but the other posts were all vacant but we have made good progress particularly on the
housing landlord services side. We appointed Ghulam Hussain who you will all know as our
Director of Neighbourhoods and Customer Services,
which sort of covers the housing management side of things,
our housing officers, our estate services,
our tenancy, our income teams.
Then also on the kind of property side,
we've appointed Stephen Platt,
who's arrived as our Director of Housing, Property
and Assets, he's come from Islington Council,
where he did a similar role,
also has experience in Camden and Hackney.
so very experienced. He'll be driving our long -term asset management programme, investing over 140 million
in our existing homes, also running our housing repair service. I know that's a large area of
kind of interest for you all. You all get quite a lot of case work and complaints around that area,
so Stephen's going to be overseeing that side of things as well. So really pleased by both of those
appointments. We also have appointed Jennifer Winter as our Director of Housing Options and
Homelessness replacing Mohusain who was an interim. So I'm really pleased by that appointment. She
comes from Hackney, has got significant experience including working with government on the
homelessness agenda. So I'm really pleased that we've made a permanent appointment there.
And then finally there are two posts where we have interims in place. So we have Sam Brown as
interim director of property and assets. He's acting up into that role.
His substantive role is head of facilities management.
And then we've got Geoff Pearce who's covering our interim director of regeneration and housing supply role.
And both of those roles are currently being recruited to.
Members have shortlisted for both of those permanent appointments
and we will be holding the interviews in September.
So I'm hoping that in two months time I'll have a complete set of seven directors either in place or appointed,
which I think is really, really substantial progress.
If I just move on and I'll just be very brief on each of the teams now,
but in terms of neighbourhoods and customer service to this Goulam's area,
you can see the teams that he oversees, I've already mentioned most of them.
One of the areas you may be interested in is he's got leasehold services
and he's also got our customer access, our call centre basically, so he oversees
those sides as well as the other ones that I mentioned. If we move forward to
housing property and assets you can see... David can I just request if you can do a
summary, because of the interest of time. Yeah okay absolutely. So yeah I'll just be very quick.
So housing property and assets you can see there are the only areas I didn't
I mentioned where the procurement and contract side
and also building safety.
Planning and building control,
I won't get into all of that,
but it's essentially development management,
planning policy, but also building control.
But one of the most dynamic planning departments in London
in terms of what we handle and what we see
with a very big development team.
Regeneration and housing supply,
it's really about delivering new homes,
delivering new community facilities.
and we have a substantial team there.
Homelessness and housing options,
that's about the allocation of homes,
it's about tackling the homelessness front door
and supporting people into permanent accommodation
where we can and into the private rented sector.
I can talk more about that,
but it's one of the biggest areas of challenge at the moment
and then we've got our regulatory assurance and policy side
and that's about our housing strategy,
or relationship with the housing regulator, but also within that team we've got our private sector housing team.
Happy to answer questions about that. And then the final slide is on cross -cutting
work and you can see there is that I've highlighted on that slide.
But as I say the big focus for us is how are we going to deliver those much needed larger and accessible homes for existing tenants
and homeless households and we have to work across all of the teams to deliver
that it's not just the job of one area so I'll stop there just in the interest
of time but I'm really happy to take questions obviously. Thank you David
for that extraordinary report. I'll ask members if they have any comments or
questions please. Okay I can see it councillor Abdi your question or comment
Please.
Yeah, just one comment and I suppose two very quick questions.
I can do one and come back.
I suppose under the challenges you talk about how I've explored, it would be really great
to hear more about what the councils do to get on the front foot of this.
This is a really important bit of legislation that's coming around hazards of damper mould
and it's really important we give the safety and the kind of communicate to our residents
what we're doing to get on the front foot.
It shouldn't take legislation for us to have to be on that side of it.
Just one comment, just one question around there's obviously still some
interviews and acting up and we are still on our journey from C3 to
get into a better place. What does the next 12 -24 months look like?
Once you have the team in place, what do you think that journey is going to take to get there?
Because C3, while other London brothers have it, it's still not great.
We still have got it and we've got to deal with it. So a bit more about that would be helpful.
David, yeah, your answer, please.
Thank you. Yeah, so on our web slot, it's a very good and sort of pertinent question.
We are doing a lot of training with staff at the moment for when this
law becomes effective on October the 27th.
So that's about putting extra capacity into a repairs team so that we can we can really respond quickly and within the
required time scales under that law for anyone that raises damper mould concerns with us.
we're doing increased communication with tenants about what they can and must
expect from the council as a landlord so that's very important. We're also working
in terms of housing on the housing officer side as well because it isn't
just about the repair service but as I say there's a whole series of training
programmes underway at the moment which Chris Hope who's our head of repairs is
overseeing in terms of preparing the service and updating all of our
procedures so that we're ready for when that law comes into place.
I think as well it's about culture change actually, because one of the big things from that case was about
did that particular landlord listen to tenants when they were complaining?
Did they assume that, you know, did they take responsibility for sorting the issue out
or did they try and pass the blame back onto tenants?
and that's a massive culture change for the whole sector.
So it's about making sure that we're ready with the right mindset
for dealing with this.
And we've already been doing a lot of work
and we're not just waiting for October the 27th, I should say.
On your question about C3 and the journey that looks ahead,
we have a plan, so cabinet agreed an improvement plan,
which is the headline title is Your Voice, Our Action.
But it sets out about a whole kind of series of workstreams
over 100 work streams about how we're going to move from where we are now,
hopefully into a better place.
I mean, I should say in terms of the regulator identified a number of specific issues
that led to that C3 rating.
They actually identified a number of strengths that we have as a landlord,
but they did identify some specific issues around things like decent homes levels,
some of our performance around compliance,
where they really highlighted that we need to improve.
and so we've got some very specific plans to speed up our stock condition surveys,
to invest in the current stock so that we improve that decency position and that is all part of that
plan that was agreed in cabinet and we meet monthly with the regulator to talk about progress
for that plan. But the final thing I'd say thinking about this as an HR committee is that
under Guillaume and Stephen they are recruiting permanent heads of service.
So Guillaume's made great progress. He's more or less got a complete
suite of heads of service having inherited virtually none.
And Stephen has already made a start in going out to advertise
heads ahead of capital delivery and ahead of repairs because I'm a sort of great believer
that you can't really make progress until you get people in place and they are doing that.
Thank you for that.
We have another.
Okay.
Councillor Arminali, are you ready for your question or comments?
Yeah.
Can you proceed?
Just a quick one.
I'm glad you mentioned about the appointment of a head of repairs.
Because I wanted to talk about the repairs in terms of the journey.
would we be looking at our contractors as well?
That we use to lead on our repairs in town homes.
So I just want a bit more on where they fit into that really or
you know because obviously that's something that's really important. People
do complain about the repairs and that's a big issue.
So I wondered in terms of the journey as well as
appointing a new head of repairs, what other things you think could be put
into place to alleviate that problem.
Thank you for the question.
Okay, Dave.
Thank you, Councillor Ali.
Well, the whole, I think it's fair to say
that the bulk of complaints that we get are about repairs.
So your question is the right one
because if we don't improve and substantially
sort of turn around the repair service,
then we wouldn't get to a position
where we're really improving our housing service.
So it's a really important question.
We do have, you know, some really good
and committed teams in place.
And we have a repairs end to end improvement plan
and we've been doing a lot.
One of the things that we've been looking at,
for instance, is around our winter preparedness.
So really making sure that we are ready
for the increase in demand that comes over winter.
Now, you mentioned contractors.
there's seven or eight principal contractors that we work with.
Although Meers get a lot of attention because they're the main contractor,
there's actually a whole series, you know, we've got K &T on heating and OCO and
communal boilers and all, so there's a number of different contractors.
A big part of what we need to do is strengthen the contract management and
increase our expectation when performance is not where it should be.
And one of the things that we've been doing with Meers is making sure that they
increased capacity and they are doing and they put an extra nine
operatives onto our contract as we head into winter compared with what we had
this time last year and we're seeing a real improvement in terms of things like
their response to complaints. We're in a much better position in terms of our
responsiveness to complaints partly because we're really driving contractors
harder through those contract management meetings but also obviously part of it
is as those contracts come up for expiry,
we will look at all options around what we do
to make sure that we then procure
or take the best delivery model forward for each of those.
And that is something that we've got built
into a work programme.
But I don't wanna wait for that opportunity to come around.
What I want to do is get the most out of our contractors
that we've got now by managing them quite tightly.
And I do believe that we've made some strides
in that respect.
Thank you for the answer.
Now we will go to Councillor Oidbai.
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, David, for that presentation.
A couple of things.
Firstly, as we all appreciate, home building, house building, homes is one of the biggest
issues that we are facing as a borough.
And it's good to see the recent Accelerating House programme launched.
I just want to understand is there any extra element of cost attached to that?
that programme and
If it is, you know, are we on top of in terms of the finance aspect of it?
secondly
Councillor and he just picked up on the repairs issue
Although we we are sort of in control of our our homes, you know, the townless homes
which is under our guidance now.
But in terms of the other housing associations,
there's big issues when it comes to accessing tenants,
leaseholders, et cetera.
And that's basically really putting a strain
on getting jobs done, et cetera.
And sometimes it's taking a job,
which is supposed to take a couple of weeks,
taking months.
and then I've actually dealt with an issue which took nearly eight months to deal with.
How are we in terms of those kind of communications with different landlords, etc.
And you've mentioned about, you came to my ward probably a month or so ago,
and you mentioned in your presentation we've got a huge array of different buildings, etc.
and within the borough.
But a lot of, in terms of basically some of these properties
have not had their rent reviews, etc.
Are we on top of that and how are we looking to...
Because that's income for us as a council.
How are we looking to recruit that
and how are we looking to get on top of that?
Thank you.
David, your answer, please.
Thank you, Chair and thank you, Councillor Heade.
So just to take those in turn, so yeah, I mean, in terms of the Accelerated Housing
Programme but also the existing programme, a big challenge is viability and cost.
There's no doubt about it.
We do talk regularly with the Greater London Authority as part funder of our schemes around
things like grant levels to kind of overcome those increased costs that the
kind of inflationary environment in which we work has has has driven us but
we are constantly looking at how we finance and keep the programme affordable
and people at Abdo -Razak are always giving us lots of proper scrutiny on
that as well but at each stage as we go through the gateway processes on schemes
we have to test that viability, perhaps revisit, redesign, maybe sometimes make
really difficult decisions about whether a scheme is viable at all in order to
sort of stay on track and make sure that the costs are contained. Because remember
if we let things escalate that's money that we can't spend on on other homes so
we're and we're constantly benchmarking costs and doing all of the things that
you would expect us to do. But it is nonetheless a challenge in this
environment because of things like building safety regulator have added
extra cost on particularly for high -rise buildings. So it's something we have to
constantly look at. In terms of repairs and you mentioned registered providers
so we are part of obviously Tower Hamlets Housing Forum and you'll know
from your role as chair of Housing and Regeneration Scrutiny we receive
regular reports on their performance and we also through the forum and through our officers
who attend that have regular discussions with those providers about issues that are raised
with us.
We do in terms of individual case work it's really important that we encourage residents
to take those complaints and cases to their own landlord to get to their least possible
resolution but obviously if there are examples where the landlord is not being
responsive we do have a small team of officers that works in Karen Swift's
area that can pick things up and you know chase the landlord and make
inquiries and that is something that we do do and but but the first thing is to
advise residents to pursue the the procedures of their own landlord
obviously. And you talked about sort of income collection. I mean we actually in
terms of rent collection in our own stock we're performing quite well. We're
exceeding sort of 98 .5 % collection rates and we're doing quite well over
arrears. We did have before your time as chair when you were a cabinet member we
did actually have a spotlight session at Scrutiny on this where we presented
some papers on how we're doing and I'd be happy to share them with this
committee if you're interested. I think we're doing reasonably well as a
landlord on this but we all would obviously need to keep our foot on the
pedal on that because it's collecting the income as you say that allows us to
invest in our homes and we constantly benchmark against other authorities to
to make sure that we're maximising that.
Have I answered all your questions?
Now can we ask our senior Abdel Elawe?
Good thing is that during last year all the questions have been asked.
But more about what I wanted to repeat, but I think it's a comment,
but also some, I mean it's a public meeting,
but accelerated house build means so far nothing's been built but it's an
aspiration to build in the future going following the procedures of housing
regulation plans procedure consultations we might not get to build anything in
the next five six years there's a hope however what we've got is important and
I think your opening remarks about the different types of properties and
housing without this sounding like a scrutiny meeting this is more of a HR I
I think the important thing is around workforce
that is motivated.
I know in any good governments, HR, 2P -ing over,
some people who are, let's just say,
been too long under the feet, comfortable, we don't get.
Because one of the biggest things I faced
when I was a counsellor in another part of the borough
or in my current ward is that repeated offenders
in a sense that people who've been on the job
but don't necessarily are motivated
due to all sorts of issues.
We're human beings.
I came late today because of traffic, you know people go to work different atmosphere different moods
One of the things that no matter how bad if the repair is done to a level of satisfactory people feel that this council
Cares you've been to I've been to eight people in a one -bedroom two -bedroom
But the damp and everything else with the new legislation come in it's been historic
You know, you know me that I sit there and I will text midnight because someone's you know
That's what people want.
How can we, knowing the staff that we have,
the staff that we've also lost, some good ones as well,
how can we, in HR process,
I know you've already praised couple offices are in place,
how can you accelerate and also motivate current
and also look at new people that can actually deliver
a good service for our residents?
You know, if it is true,
the leaseholders will become majority,
that's worrying because this is upstock.
how can we better manage what we've got with the staff that we have,
but equally motivating them to feel like this is a job that the people's lives matter.
That's my statement.
Thank you. David, do you want to share some lights on?
Thank you. I mean, I suppose obviously just to say we have built new homes.
There are several hundred that have been completed, and as I say,
We've got a programme of around 1000 in it that's in place.
And we've appointed people like countryside
to be our development partner on the cliche estate.
So we definitely are building and we have,
and the council has built homes over a number of years,
it should be said.
And the accelerated programme is about introducing
37 new sites into that so that we have the future pipeline,
because it's important that we continue that
and obviously scale it up,
given the, going back to the context.
I think your point about having a workforce that's motivated, especially in a kind of post -Tower Hamlets Homes landscape is an important one.
We did, I think the regulatory inspection was good. I spoke to a lot of staff who said actually we now haven't been through that together as a council.
We feel like we're part of the council again. Also having leaders like Guillaume and Stephen in place, I think people are feeling more settled than perhaps they were after a lot of change.
that can quite often happen when you bring an Almo in house.
But it's quite attritional, we have to really keep our foot on the pedal when it comes to
culture change.
So one of the things that I've introduced with Guilem and Stephen is a leadership forum
where we get every leader in the housing department together every month to talk about things
like learning from complaints, talk about what a resident focused culture looks like.
We had Yvonne Arrowsmith, who has been the interim chief executive of East End Homes, come and talk to that forum recently.
She also went into Rochdale actually after the whole case and had to pick up that organisation and get it back on its feet.
And one of the things she said to us is not everyone will be up for a resident focused culture.
So I think your point about, you know, where we have those staff who are not on board,
we need to have those tough conversations with them and say actually, and actually follow our HR processes,
follow our performance management and actually be prepared to take action.
And so that is something that we're very much on and we're trying to have those conversations,
but we can only do it if we get our leaders in place because it's not something that Greil,
I mean Stephen will do alone. So as I say, we're bringing together that group of management very regularly.
I think one of the other things I've noticed is that we had our all staff conference at the Excel conference centre recently
and every member of the housing department was there speaking to other teams, whether it was the fields or finance officers.
It's just important that they hear the messages from everyone and we get a kind of cohesive sense of morale.
So it is really, really important, but as I said, we have to be quite active in tackling those people that aren't on board.
Thank you for that. Now final question is coming back to Councillor Abdi.
Thank you very much, Chair. Helpfully, leading off from Councillor Oella's question around motivation, I just want to probe a bit more.
In terms of housing options and customer service, the most front -facing parts,
and you kind of alluded to housing options continue to be a bit of a challenge in your tenure here.
How do we get to a place where, so you come into Residence Harbour, you engage in some way
because all 46 counties are politicians and it's an issue across the country and across London
where we have staff who are incredibly passionate and who are doing the work that they need to do
but stopping them from being desensitised.
So the number of emails I get from residents with concerns around some of the responses they might get
or how they're being engaged or not being engaged by some of the officers.
And it's not about pacing, babe.
It's about sometimes these can be thankless tasks,
and you talk about this 20 -plus thousand people on our housing list,
and some people in band three will never be able to be supported.
And that's just a fact of what can we do, what can you do to tackle that?
I think it's just really gone for a bit more of what Catherine O 'Hood was talking about.
So the motivation point, because by the time they get to accessing their EAP
or support in terms of counselling or things that might have made them desensitise them,
made them get a job, we've kind of almost lost them, so how do we stop that burnout,
stop that, so actually make them want to come back to their job and be good at their job?
Thank you Abhije for that comment. Okay, same here.
Thank you. Yeah, I mean that's a really, really important question and actually I probably
haven't said enough about this area in the presentation or in answering the questions.
It's probably the area that I'd most worry about in terms of the morale of staff.
And I think it's not just in Tower Hamlets but across London and the wider country.
This area is under such pressure at the moment in terms of levels of demand.
And we can't do everything that we'd want to do to help people.
There's a lot of people with lived experience of homelessness within that staff group as
well.
And so it is a real challenge to keep the motivation going.
and we do have a transformation programme
and we have been doing a lot of workshopping with staff.
One of the things that we're introducing is reflective practise
where you get groups of housing options officers together
to talk about some of their most important cases
and discuss, you know, how we could approach them as a team
and, you know, give people the space to reflect on some of the challenges together.
social workers do it regularly as a matter of course but it's something we haven't done here
but it's something we're now introducing. We, there's a lot is happening in terms of regular
away days, in terms of team building events and so on and so forth to try and you know boost the
morale of those teams. They have been doing regular kind of snap surveys that show morale
is improving. It's not where I'd want it to be but it's on a trajectory and but I
think there's a lot more work to do in this area. I do think leadership is
really important though so Jennifer's arrival is great. She's very, for those of
you that have met her, she's very high energy. She's really getting a grip of it
but also you know she's working with the heads of service and the team managers
and will be very quick to point into those positions as and when she can.
But yeah, it's a very important area and there is work to be done here.
Thank you, David, for that.
Okay, moving on. Next item, 4 .2.
Update on senior recruitment.
I would now...
Okay.
I will now invite Shakespeare.
Thank you, thank you. You have ten minutes, please.
Okay, good evening, everyone. Okay, so this report is an update in terms of the current position on
on recruitment to senior management vacancies
and also any interim arrangements in place.
And it equally approved the extension of interim arrangements
that go beyond the six month period.
So without further ado, in terms of
since the last committee meeting,
we have made permanent appointments
in the director of housing and regeneration.
It's been the director of housing,
property and asset management.
That was Stephen Platt as mentioned by David and he commenced on the 16th of June
equally the director of homelessness and housing options
Which is Jennifer winter and she started with us on the 28th of July and in the chief execs office
The strategic director of change and improvement which is Jonathan Noyde and commenced on the third of on the third of July
We've currently got posts in
recruitment and
in the directorate of communities
It is the director of public protection and integrated enforcement. There are interim arrangements already in place
Housing and regeneration which is the director of regeneration and development again interim arrangements currently in place
equally that of the director of corporate property and estates and
In resources we have got the director of IT
Acting up arrangements are in place with regards to that role and the director of HR and OD
Interim arrangements are in place
All of those roles are currently going through recruitment at the present time with appointments likely to happen
If successful in September of in September of well this month September of this year
We've got posts that we are also in line in line with best practise
I need to point out that we do have we have invited representatives from the envoys to
Participate and observe our recruitment process for each of the posts that have been that I have talked about
we also have posts that are scheduled to go to
The advertised in the next preceding months and they are in children's services the director of commissioning and youth
and that is likely to commence in October of this year and that will be
known as the director of young Tower Hamlets. In health and adult social care
we've got the director of adult social care. We currently have interim
arrangements in place and that recruitment process is due to commence
before the end of the year. Equally so the director of commission commissioning
interim arrangements are in place there and in our in director of resources the
corporate director of resources we do have acting up arrangements in place and
recruitment is due to commence this month and the director of customer
services acting arrangements are in place however the post and structure are
currently being reviewed are currently being reviewed I also need to bring to
the bring to your attention the committee's attention that I require
Your approval is sought to extend the engagement of Mark Norman who is the interim director of governance
to the 31st of this year
And that is the overview overview as we currently stand with regards to senior recruitment any questions
Members have yes, I can see a counsellor of the
Question a comment, please
So my comment I suppose I mean
I am surprised the HR committee hasn't been cited earlier about the corporate director for resources.
We raised this last time at the last committee. It's one of the most senior officer roles in the council, 151 officer.
I think the fantastic acting up of agent as it is, and I do genuinely believe that, but I think this is not a pop shot,
but this is, there should have been a note or something come to the committee about this.
So it'd be helpful to understand when that appointment,
the outcome gap of agent was made,
and if by the time it gets to the first December,
whether that's gonna be extended or what that is.
And my actual question is 2 .3, it's a sentence.
In under four, it talks about other statutory implications,
and within one of the bullet points
is best value implications.
I don't see that as a best value implication.
There's a sentence that tells us
you wanna extend for six months,
but it doesn't tell us how much it is
or why there's a need to extend this role.
I think we need to get better at being able
to bring more information to the committee
so we can make an informed decision.
I don't think that it stands, a sentence cuts it,
and I think it's on the next page,
let's just look at best value.
And we have a best value inspection,
and we're trying to get better as a council.
That's not it.
And I think that's helpful to understand
what information there is, so how much does it cost,
and how long is it planned?
Thank you.
Okay, thank you, Council Abdi.
Shakespeare, do you want to give us a view
on that yeah I know the councillors comments with regards to 2 .3 and that
will be taken into account in terms of when we get when we do this in in the
future and so I do I do agree that further information is required there
and we will do that in and we will do that in the and we will do that in the
future.
Thank you.
Are there any more questions or comments?
I mean Ali?
Oh, no.
Okay.
Then we can move on.
So we need to approve that.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I just remember Shakespeare.
Can I ask you, obviously you're the head of HR.
In terms of committee chairs, do you have any role in that appointing chairs of a committee?
That's asked of it.
No, there is, you know, the independent chair, I mean.
So can you give us some light on that?
What's basically happening, we are in the process of finding independent chair for the
audit committee.
So do you have a role in that?
Okay, please.
Just for clarity.
Yes, I do.
Okay.
So, of course, there will be a panel,
which is an officer panel.
I am part of that panel with regards to further information as at today.
There isn't any... I can't tell you what the schedule is at this moment in time,
but I can tell you that I am part of that recruitment process.
Yeah, thank you for that.
Our next item.
Yeah, we need you for the whole night.
Thank you.
4 .3, employee relations casework and policy quarterly review.
Okay, can I ask Shakespeare, you have 10 minutes please, to give us your report.
Okay, thank you.
So you have before you the employee relations dash ball
for Q1 which covers the period of 1st of April
to the 30th of June 2025.
We currently have, in summary, we currently have
100 cases that have been opened and closed
akin to the caseload across the quarters
in the last year.
41 out of the hundred cases are grievances.
We had 61 cases were open at the end of the quarter
and 31 of these are grievances.
The next highest type of case is disciplinary
in which there are 15.
Communities again has the highest number of cases
which is 46 which is over double the next highest caseload
in any other directorate which is children's
which equates to 22.
Communities caseload includes 20 grievances
and 15 disciplinaries.
Cases I will accept are still taking too long to close,
although those cases that we have had open
over 180 days has fallen marginally.
A further heads up on our current caseload.
We currently have 85 open cases.
In addition, we have four appeals
56 of the current open cases are grievances
This does not include a number of cases that we received within the last week or so
Which have yet to be formally logged as we are still setting up the cases for all of those and all of these that we?
Have received in our our grievances in terms of employment law update
The report also flags forthcoming legislation which is still going through Parliament and
may change, so please note, but if implemented will involve significant changes to worker
employment rights.
This includes and is not limited to unfair dismissal rights from day one of employment,
which is currently two years.
Six months to lodge an ET claim, currently this is three months.
Trade union reforms on recognition and balloting, making this easier and simpler than it has
been previously.
A duty to take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment.
We need to be far more proactive in training and equipping managers to deal with this.
And I can say that the Council does have in place sexual harassment training and we are
doing a number of training initiatives around sexual harassment, which we will see forthcoming.
There is also protections for those on zero hours contracts, improved flexible working
access, restrictions on what is known as fire and rehire practises.
Under the amended bill, dismissals related to such contract variations will automatically
be noted as unfair unless the employer can demonstrate genuine financial difficulties
that make that change unavoidable.
It also means that employees can no longer easily dismiss employees to impose changes
like reduced pay, altered hours or indeed different working conditions. There will also
likely be enhanced paternity leave and dismissal protection for pregnant women and new mothers.
in summary. Thank you Shakespeare for that. Okay I think yeah we can move on to
questions or comments. Members does anyone wish to ask questions or make any
comments? Chancellor Teller you haven't said so far, you haven't made any comments so we'll
welcome your comments. I was just gonna say I think because we work quite closely
and being a lead member. There's a lot of stuff that's already been covered. I don't
really need to question. That's great.
Okay. It will be interesting to get, sorry, through
you chair, grievances in the communities. That's the front end. That's, Councillor.
Both of us. Is it?
Yeah. So is it because the lead members are not really
too hard or is it they're so work focused? No, it's just on a serious note. Is it the
frontline, you know, stuff that we've done, yeah, less than better. I think I got it.
Thank you, Chancellor. Yeah, please.
It's always been asking questions, but genuinely, I always ask probing questions, but I will give the compliment.
I think this is really helpful to see. I think it's come on leaps and bounds, the way it was, I think, over a year ago.
So that's really helpful. It would be helpful at a certain point to have a conversation about middle managers
and how we, in regards to kind of complaints, so there's obviously once you get to this point it's broken down
and there's, if there's like a junior member or staff for example who is going through a grievance or disciplinary
and what their, how they kind of engage with a third party within that director or, especially not for now
and more to give you a compliment but I genuinely do think at a certain point it would be helpful to understand
the ways in which this leads up to a disciplinary or grievance because sometimes I think having heard anecdotes
it can be junior members of staff that aren't always feeling that they can go to higher
ups or to a director or corporate director. So what's their options if they're not in
a trade union, for example. But this is the best place to put it at another date.
Okay. Yes, please.
I welcome that comment and that is something that I am looking at. So really appreciate
the comment, the good feedback. So I hope we've recorded that everybody. But no, that
is really heartening to hear because I remember when I first came to my first committee in
terms of where we are now.
So thanks to all of you in terms of the work that we've all done.
It's not just me.
We'll move on to the next item.
No, I think, no, no.
You can have.
No, we have 4 .4.
It's somebody else's.
Yeah.
4 .4 now is update on saving from ER and VR.
So welcome, Chris Leslie.
Yes.
Can you please proceed with your report?
You have ten minutes.
Thank you, Chair.
So this is a regular report that I believe would have come to the Committee in the past
as well.
It gives an update on the Council's
On the ER VR scheme, that's the retirement voluntary redundancy scheme, the Council first
introduced the scheme back in the financial year 22, 23, 24, sorry.
And that was a one -off scheme back then and the actual figures showed that in that one -off
scheme. The council saved 2 .8 million a year with costs of 3 .2 million to introduce that.
There's of course one -off costs but ongoing savings so there's a payback period of about
1 .15 years around that. Obviously that's quite a while ago and hopefully the committee
have seen that from previous reports but since then the scheme became a rolling scheme so
basically an ongoing scheme where members of staff could apply for ERVR at any point
throughout the year and it would be considered as part of the processes in place there.
And this report gives an update up to the end of Quarter 1 of this financial year on
the progress around that.
And that shows that since the rolling programme began in 2024 -25 after the one -off implementation,
there has been further 0 .6 million of cost incurred to generate 0 .9 million of ongoing savings around that.
So overall the scheme so far has generated savings of 3 .7 million a year.
ongoing and one -off costs of 3 .8 million so about a one -year repayment period
around that side of it so produced quite quite an a range of efficiencies through
this so I'll leave it there and invite any questions. Thank you, thank you Chris
for the report. Now I'll ask members if they wish to ask any question or make
any comments on this? Councillor Abdi. Can I just ask, is that on target for what we expected to make?
So you've kind of thrown a bunch of numbers at us, but it would be helpful based on what we've achieved
compared to what we wanted to achieve. So where does that lie? Yeah, so we are about on target now for what we set
originally around that and anything else ongoing will obviously be a bonus to us.
So we're about there around the target we set currently. We did have about a
five million initial target. You appreciate this is short of that five
million, appreciate that. But that's because the saving has been achieved in
in other ways as well around that because it's not just ERVR there's been
vacant posts within that as well, which won't show up here to help achieve the saving.
So about now, we're about on track of what we originally set at the time, but because
this is an ongoing scheme, hopefully we will surpass that and keep going as we go forward.
Thank you.
OK, Councillor Shafirbe, your question or comments, please.
I just wanted to make a comment and actually congratulate on achieving this target where
We started savings and the targets are on point.
It's all good in terms of the budget and the finance of the council.
So well done to the team and everybody.
Just a comment.
Thank you.
I want to appreciate the teamwork that's been done behind the scenes to make sure that we
work.
Thank you, chair.
Okay.
Okay.
So we are to our last agenda item 5.
Any other business?
Okay.
This item is on people survey.
So please note this report is being papered.
So committee members should not discuss any detail in this report.
If the committee wants to discuss the details outlined in the paper, I'll suggest that the
committee goes into closed session.
and for that I would need a proposer and a seconder.
Oh, that's great. That's very quick. Thank you.
Okay, so we have to give a few minutes to Justyna to...
Yeah. Okay.