Housing & Regeneration Scrutiny Sub Committee - Monday 20 July 2026, 6:30pm

Housing & Regeneration Scrutiny Sub Committee
Monday, 20th July 2026 at 6:30pm

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6 b) Lead Member Priorities for Housing and Regeneration Cabinet Member for Homebuilding and Lead Member Priorities for Housing and Regeneration Cabinet Member for Homebuilding and Enhanced Council Homes and Neighbourhoods and Corporate Director for Housing and Regeneration

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Disclaimer: This transcript was automatically generated, so it may contain errors. Please view the webcast to confirm whether the content is accurate.

Good evening and welcome to the first housing and regeneration subcommittee meeting for

this municipal year.

I'm Councillor Mohammed Hassan Mahmood and I will be chairing this meeting.

As a chair, I look forward to working with you all and engaging members, peers across

the party colours, our corporate directors, council officers and stakeholder partners

and showing that our work makes a difference for our residents.

Can I start off with some housekeeping rules?

The meeting is being reported and broadcasted

for the Council website for public viewing.

Is there any technical issues?

I will decide if and how the meeting should continue

and after taking advice from officers.

Can I remind members should only speak on my direction and ensure to speak clearly into

the microphones, please. As a courtesy, please have your mobile on silent and people join

online. Can your microphone on mute accept when speaking? Those of you online who wish

to speak, please use the raised hand function. Before we proceed with the formal business

of the evening, I would like to take a moment to extend our appreciation and thanks to my

FITA Cesar, Councillor Ahmadur Khan for his stewardship in chairing this committee.

Tonight our order of business includes nominations for Housing and Regeneration Scrutiny Subcommittee

Vice Chair. We will then consider and agree our Housing and Regeneration Scrutiny Subcommittee's

Arms of Reference report for this municipal year.

Following this, we have a short report on the Council's response to the local government

and social care ombudsman investigations, Section 21, homelessness cases.

We'll then hear from the member and officers setting out the priorities for housing and

regeneration and take some questions.

I will then close the meeting for the press and public.

We will move on to the business and hear from officers with a quick overview of scrutiny

introduction and opportunities to ask questions.

I want to start to think about topics that you would like me to put forward at ONC for

the 28 July 2026 scrutiny work programme development session.

So I will ask members here to make suggestions.

When suggesting, I want you also qualify this and set out the reason for your suggestions.

Officers here will note the points.

We'll then conclude and close the second part of the meeting.

Does anyone have any questions on what I have stated before we continue?

Great, let's move on.

So, with this, Naseema, have any apologies been received?

Apologies have been received from David Edgar, who has been substituted by Councillor Abdulla,

Thank you.

Can I go on and ask committee members to introduce yourself and declare if you have any DPI's

and if any please indicate.

it.

Martin Parker, I do not have anything to declare.

Good evening, Councillor Abdul Wahid and I don't have anything to declare.

5 rushing minutes.

Thank you.

evening.

Bodolu.

Furthermore, you don't say it away, there is an Laos actually.

There is a local council, you heard it—

thankfully he was Frames Analytica.

Okay.

I will propose for Abdul -Wahid.

If there are more than one nomination, then we will go to vote.

Any other nominations?

No?

OK.

Just one more.

Thank you.

The meeting from the last meeting, March 2026, has been circulated.

As there have been changes in membership, I will confirm that the former chair has agreed

the minutes of the last meeting as a true record so this can just be noted.

We have received outstanding responses as set out in the action logs for 2025 -2026.

Moving forward we'll commence a fresh one 2026 -2027 and continue to monitor responses.

Steve, do you want to comment on that, please?

Do you want to comment on the action logs?

Apologies, which ones are we talking about?

The outstanding ones that we just asked.

My apologies.

So there was two sections that I'm due to provide a full update in writing to the committee.

Apologies for not having put it in writing up to this date.

The first one is around leasehold consultation and the major works programme.

And it was clarity required on how early engagement will prevent delays,

how leaseholder concerns like affordability, opt -out questions and

scopes will be handled and the modelling of illegal risk and challenge

mitigation. If I answer this one first, we will be doing early engagement with all

residents as part of the major works programme. So we've already started it with

the South East Consortium work which I'll come to in the second point. But

it's about resident consultation here, not specifically about leasehold consultation.

So we'll be consulting residents as early as we can around the proposed works that we're designing and planning to deliver to their block.

Because the crucial thing here is that it's the scope, we need to get the correct work, the appropriate scope for the building.

So early resident engagement, by the time we then lead them to more formal

leasehold consultation, section 20 etc, then we would have already consulted

residents, which include leaseholders obviously, of the proposals. So that's how

early engagement with residents will help by the time we get to the section

20, prevent challenges and a lack of understanding at that stage, because it

it will be well known by that stage.

So that's the process we've already put into place.

Leaseholder concerns, the consultation will be open

and transparent and then by the time we get

to the leasehold specific consultation,

we'll be able to look at the specifics of their concerns

around the cost, around the payment options

and any challenges that they may have.

But again, it's important that we're capturing leasehold service charge costs,

because we could be recovering up to 50 % of the investment that we're putting into a block.

And we've got a 500 million pound programme, 609 million in total.

So we'll want to be recovering potentially up to half of that from leaseholders.

So we've got to make sure that we're going through the right process,

the works are reasonable, the costs are reasonable,

and the works are delivered correctly as well, which is crucial.

So that will help those concerns.

Modelling of legal risk and challenge mitigation,

I haven't got anything really specific on that,

but I think it's all part of understanding what the lease says,

what is our right and obligation to deliver,

and what the leaseholder's rights and obligations are

in order to challenge and to contribute to those costs.

So that was the first point.

The second point, value for money assurance

through the South East Consortium Framework.

Can I explain how the South East Consortium Framework

mini -competitions demonstrate value for money

and how contractor performance will be monitored

over the four, three, three year cycle.

So those are two separate ways of delivering work.

The Southeast Consortium is an established framework

which has already appointed contractors onto lots

specific to the type of work they will carry out.

So they've been put onto those lots based on their suitability,

the size of the company and a pricing matrix that puts them onto the lot.

So let's say there's six contractors in a lot.

We would then put a scheme out to that lot.

I'll say Pauline House because it's at the front of my mind.

Those contractors will then price competitively the costs to deliver work to that block.

So they're already on there based on price, but then they've got the opportunity to competitively

tender for that work.

That's how value for money is demonstrated within the South East Consortium.

Contractor performance.

We've got approval to go onto a 10 -year term contract.

They'll be broken down into four years, three years and three years.

There'll be a suite of KPIs which will assess performance of those contractors.

and that will denote how and if we extend into the second period of three years

and the third period of three years. Those KPIs are to be defined but

one of the things we're building into the contracts is flexibility. So if we

have a contractor that isn't performing in one area then a contractor in another

area will be able to deliver the work. That's hopefully useful for you and I'll put it into

a briefing note more formally.

We will now move on to review the terms of reference including membership and dates of

meeting.

Can Naseema briefly introduce the report and then can ask members if they have any comments?

Committee are asked to note the terms of reference, quarrel room, membership and dates of future

meetings and times of the subcommittee meeting times for this municipal year set out in the

report.

Chair, I would like to point out that 3 May is actually a bank holiday.

We'll have that noted and we'll look at possible other dates.

Thank you.

Do members have any comments?

If not, can we agree the terms of relevance are settled in the report?

Great.

Can you note the committee has agreed to the terms of reference.

We will now move on to our next substantive item.

Our first substantive item this evening is on the Council's response to the local government

and social care ombudsman investigation, section 21 homelessness cases.

This is a short agenda item and I understand we have Jennifer Whitner, Director of Housing

Options and Homelessness who will introduce the item.

We have lead member here, Councillor Said Ahmed, Committee Member for Home Building

and Enhanced Council Homes and Neighbourhoods.

Lead member, I'm happy for you to say a few words unless you want Jennifer to start speaking

to the item.

You will have up to five minutes to summarise the item.

Thank you, Chair, and good evening Committee.

I think this report is very important and it's got some good news embedded within the

report.

It sets out that Council has responded to the Ombudsman's investigation into our handling of Section 21 homelessness cases,

covering the period from May 2024 to April 2025.

The Ombudsman did find some serious failings in the service, including delays in consistency advices and always not meeting the legal duties.

These issues had a real impact on residents and also there were cases leading to unavoidable evictions and loss of rights.

The main thing from this, I want to be clear, is that all the recommendations from the Ombudsman have been fully completed.

all actions were delivered within the required timescale and we are now in

compliance and full evidence has been provided to the Ombudsman to demonstrate

that all of their actions are now up to date. So what we have done, we took

significant steps to put this right and that means over 600 cases were reviewed,

a substantial backlog cleared which were pretty much historical, over 100 formal

decisions issued so residents' rights are properly in place.

We also strengthened our quality assurance, our staff training and management oversight,

making sure that if we got our strategies aligned, if we got our process in place, residents

will get the best outcome.

And where we found that people were affected, we've taken action, and including compensation

were appropriate and making sure that residents were satisfied with the service they received

from the council.

We are already seeing improvement from the action that we have taken.

We are seeing that we have faster and more consistent decision making.

We are seeing that earlier support for residents and we are seeing a reduced risk reaching

people as well.

By all means we are not complacent on where we have got ourselves to.

There is still more to do.

we know that there is high demand out there.

We know that we have staffing and systems

that we can improve.

There's always room for improvement,

but what we have done so far has given us

significant stride in going towards a better route.

But these risks are well understood and actively managed,

and the overall risk to residents has reduced,

which is the good news.

So in summary, we know that the issues were serious,

and the Council has taken, has acted on it fully and within the Dine Scale.

And obviously it's got a meaningful improvement now in place.

And our focus is on making sure that these improvements are sustained

and continue to overcome all the issues that we face.

We have budgetary issues and we have resources that we need.

I'll ask Jennifer to come in and give us some more details.

That's okay, thank you.

Good evening everyone. I'm Jennifer Winter, Director of Housing Options and Homelessness.

I won't repeat all that Councillor Said has said, but needless to say this is a positive

storey. The local government and social care ombudsman could quite rightly have made this

a public interest report, but chose not to on the basis of the council's strength of

response. The council and senior managers decided that rather than following the LGSCO's

minimum compliance route, that we would do more of a root and branch review, which is

why we chose to review more than 630 Section 21 cases to ensure that they were correctly

dealt with. We also contacted proactively 125 residents to progress their cases urgently

and to record decisions. We closed 250 historic places and made sure that 110 statutory decisions

were also issued. We made sure that those that hadn't been provided with interim accommodation

were therefore offered it where appropriate, as well as providing further, more practical

training for officers rather than purely theoretical training and making sure that that training

was really embedded in their everyday practise and aligned to MHCLG's Homelessness Code of

Guidance.

I'd really like to expressly publicly thank Fameda Chaudhry, the team manager for statutory

and housing advice within the council who led on this response and did a sterling job

and has really made sure that all the residents that were affected by this have received the

recompense they deserved and that we have embedded all the improvements we need to make

in the future.

We have done a six month evaluation of progress which was more than satisfactory.

We now continue to further embed the improvements we have started with the housing options and

homelessness transformation programme.

We did a short report to you on that last year and we will be happy to do a further

one for you this year.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jennifer and lead member Saeed.

Thank you for that.

Do members have any questions on what you have heard tonight on the item?

Good evening, everyone again.

I have one question.

Can you tell us current performance compared with the period examined by the Ombudsman

and which of indicators demonstrate the greatest improvement.

So, would you repeat the first part of your question?

Our current performance compares with the period examined by the Ombudsman

and which of indicators demonstrate the greatest improvement.

So it's a bit inter -dramatic then to indicators. The law is the law and the law is incredibly

detailed in the application of section 21 but also in the way in which the council and

officers take action. There's also the homelessness code of guidance which demonstrates further

the type of action that you need to take. So it's really black and white in this area.

We weren't following the law to the letter and now we are.

So those cases are checked, assured and they made sure that we're following the letter of the law.

There is always an appeal process built into every single decision that the council makes around homelessness applications.

But we don't expect residents to have to make an appeal for them to feel that their applications

are being processed to the high standard.

So we monitor what we do, we cheque assurance, we cheque cases, we spot cheque cases, we cheque

our staff's understanding of what they are doing and we performance manage them on a

supervision basis on a one -to -one basis every month.

So we're quite confident that the training that we've rolled out

and the management oversight is delivering exactly what it should.

With regards to Section 21s, those were abolished in law

on the 2nd of May. So there are no longer any Section

21s. They were abolished as part of the Renters' Rights Act

which came into being then. But they have been replaced with

section 8 and we have a similar level of scrutiny for those decisions as well.

Thank you.

Thank you, chair.

On page 28, details of the report background.

On 3 .3 it says around half of the cases reviewed during the investigation, 83 of 164 were non -compliant,

demonstrating a systemic weakness in processes, consistency and oversight.

What do we have in place now from this that is going to mitigate these weaknesses in processes and the oversight?

If you can elaborate on that please.

So if I draw your attention to 3 .9, which shows very much the shift in practise, so

it shows you the before areas with regards to inconsistent practise, delays, missing

decisions, failure to offer emergency interim accommodation, poor record keeping and weak

oversight. The table on the right column which shows you what we have put in place to deal

with those issues. So it shows you that we now have structured processes and a quality

assurance framework. We have increased and more timely decision making and that is monitored

closely. We have consistent identification and provision around people being offered

interim accommodation and not. We also have improved documentation and processes and auditability,

So we are checking more and ensuring that we are able to demonstrate that what we do is correct

And we also have strengthened supervision and governance as I spoke about earlier with regards to performance management and supervision

Call -overs so that that would mean that a manager will be sitting there with members of staff once a month

Going through all their decisions going through all their cases

and actually

Conducting reflective practise

So asking people to reflect on their own performance whilst looking at the data from those cases

to ensure that they're as accurate as can be.

But also if there have been errors, because we are all human, let's face it, that those

errors are corrected wherever possible and that learning is taken from them.

Can you, you mentioned the housing options transformation programme, can you explain how

that will, the changes that you made will make it easier to comply in future if that

and if that produces any KPIs.

So the Housing Options and Homelessness Transformation is a two year programme in its phase two.

We've already completed phase one which in major terms produced a cost saving of 9 .3

million.

It also made sure that we eradicated backlogs in our homelessness applications entirely,

as well as some other major changes, including creating learning and development pathways

for all our staff within housing options and homelessness as well.

Phase 2, there are five major, six major work streams.

One of those is on the resident experience and one of those is on the full service review.

The full service review is mainly appraised of a complete restructure of the housing options

and homelessness division.

And that will fall into three phases.

Phase one of which is very, is in the recruitment stage and the assessment stage.

Phase 2 will go live next month and Phase 3 is likely to be before the end of the financial

year or the calendar year. And that will mean that every role within the services is looked

at with regards to does it fulfil our statutory requirements or do we need to change it. So

that is in progress at the moment and our whole resident work stream is very much around

becoming more trauma informed, becoming more reflective on what we do and how we do it.

And also making sure that we are going that extra mile for residents as well as saving money.

So I'm quite happy as I said to bring back a report later on in the year

because it is something you really need to see visually because there are so many moving parts to it.

But it's a complete root and branch review, restructure, reorganisation of everything

across the division.

Whether that's performance reporting, the structure, the culture, everything.

Thank you very much for your report.

The first one, just a general question, just probably maybe from my understanding.

When did the embossment took place and by when you attempted to work on it to rectify

the problem, how soon was it, and how speedy it was, the first question.

And second one is, I don't know if you want to just note down,

second one is, rather than fixing things temporarily, on a temporary basis,

are you taking initiative to rectify the findings to have a permanent solution,

whatever the findings were, how deeply are you working on it?

So the Ombudsman complaint was publicised, I think published, let me cheque, August 2025.

They came in and they worked with the council from June 2025, so that was when we started

liaising with them and providing evidence.

They came into council offices to meet with us and to cheque our records and we'd already

done, as you can tell, a really robust job.

So we're really pleased with that.

When they came in to cheque their sample of cases, they were really pleased with the work

that we'd already done.

So they were pleased that we had started almost before they anticipated we would.

The period they looked at was they chose to go a year back, so they chose to go back to May 2024 from when they first came in in June 2025.

So as I said, we've given them the six month valuation update.

I wouldn't say these changes are temporary, these changes are permanent.

We don't stop supervision, we don't stop performance monitoring, we don't stop complying with the

law because we're a statutory service.

So these changes are not temporary, they're what we should have been doing all along and

they're what we're doing now.

The changes, the improvement that we will be making on top in the transformation programme

will be ensuring that all areas of the division are performing to the highest standards.

Thank you Chair. Although I'm just standing in for my colleague, but over the years, I think whether it be new councillors or old ones,

Our biggest thing that we get through the doors as a Councillor is people's

satisfaction, ability to help them live in a safe place.

Now this is not a criticism, although officers do a good job,

but some officers have either recently arrived or have inherited the almo,

as in, you know, the kind of historical issues and so forth.

My concern is just following on what you were just saying about raising expectations and trying to fix things.

The Councillor just mentioned about permanent fixture.

A lot of this is legacy work, so it's not about those who are sitting on the desk here.

It is turn over staff, how much of that impacts on progress?

and given anecdotally the evidence that both the housing departments,

the in -house housing, parking, estate parking problems,

the kind of repairs and stuff, people's satisfaction,

you can never satisfy, we know, we are politicians, everyone,

how do you feel confident given the turn of the staff

that the housing department has had overall,

that the kind of the ombudsman's findings

that you'll be able to meet to a satisfactory level in the short, medium term.

Okay. There are two ombudsman's. There's the housing ombudsman and my division does not fall under the housing ombudsman.

The housing ombudsman looks at the impact to council tenants and housing services.

So with regards to repairs and all those kind of issues, we come under the local government

a social care ombudsman for homelessness and housing options because we are primarily dealing

with people, not with property. So, all tenants, we deal with people. With regards to turnover,

we've had very, very little turnover. Obviously we weren't, housing options and homelessness

are never part of an ALMO. They always remain with the council because it's a statutory

function. So they haven't been anywhere, they've always been with the council and very, very

little turnover of staff. For us it's been about getting those staff up to the best standard

that they need to be at. Homelessness legislation is incredibly complex and technical, made

more so by the Homelessness Reduction Act of 2017. Very difficult to explain to residents

and with the Renters' Rights Act has become even more complex. So there's always an awful

lot of work around trying to help residents understand what the council can do, but more

importantly what the council can't do within its statutory remit. But I think our staff

The staff are there, their performance is much better, their ability to help residents understand is much better.

And their work throughput is much better and our decision making is much better.

Thank you. Any more questions?

I have one more question.

What independent or objective assurance exists to validate the council's conclusion that

these two residents have been materially reduced?

Independent did you say?

So the Ombudsman is the independent.

So the fact the Ombudsman is satisfied is the highest accolade you can have.

Other than that, it's internal audit. But also as part of our work around the housing

options and homelessness transformation programme, we commissioned Campbell Tickle, an external

consultancy firm to do a review of our service model but also of our performance.

And they were quite satisfied that we were delivering in the correct manner. And that

in the areas we weren't, such as this area, that we were fully appraised and fully cognisant

of what those failings were. So we also have to submit everything that we have to do in

every month statistics to MHCLG, a whole raft of statistics which justifies our funding

and every quarter they are published nationally and we benchmark those against our nearest

statistical neighbours, against our East London colleagues, against our England average and

our London average to understand where our performance sits and we also review

our own strategic performance dashboard and we have a call over with MHCLG at

our request so they can meet with staff and managers and we review our data

together. So we're fairly confident that we are flexing, shall we say, all the

contacts we need to and that we're striving in the right way. It's very much

my vision, we have a very clear vision and mission that within two years we will become

sector leading. And I don't doubt we will achieve that. There's no lack of aspiration.

We now have thanks to Councillor Said and the other members, we now have an injection

of cash to our base budget which will enable us to become the authority and the service

that our residents need.

Chair, can I also add something to what Jennifer just said.

So I think everything mentioned here is what we do within our weekly meetings as lead member

meetings.

I will catch up with Jennifer to make sure that we are on top of the good work that we've

done so far.

As an assurance for the committee, I will hold my offices to account.

We will work together.

would give the strategic view and the vision of how we want to achieve our goals and targets together

and ultimately align our priorities where we have our

Pledges from the manifesto to make sure that this is translated and we can achieve those goals and targets

Especially when it comes to homelessness. We know that it's a very key area and people come to us as one of the last results

So it's a very

touching area

we have

Staff away day tomorrow. We will address those issues to the staff to let them know that

The the way we want to approach our residents

Especially when they come to all the good work that we've embedded

We want to continue with that and we want our residents journey when they come to the town hall

For their needs to go smoothly as possible

Although you can't always satisfy every resident that comes through the door

because there are legislation and there are duty of care that applies to residents on different scales,

but it's about making that journey a satisfactory one for us overall.

So just the assurance to the residents and the committee that we are continuously working to improve wherever we can. Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor.

Thank you, Chair. Just two more points. I just want to understand

early impact. Two that I want to focus on is improved identification of household requiring support.

Can you explain how that looks like and what mechanism is in place to do that?

Also improved engagement with residents. Again, can you expand on that?

What does that look like and how,

and are the hubs that we have,

are these part of this engagement?

So part of the work we've been doing

is we have been looking at the processes

that we utilise in the residents hub

for seeing residents, our handovers

between the various teams within our service

to ensure that customer journey is seamless

and less clunky. Part of the issue around section 21s was that quite often residents

would come to us who had received a section 21, whether it was valid or not, we weren't

identifying that at the first point of contact. So we weren't able to tell how quickly those

people were able to sort amongst those residents which ones needed immediate assistance and

which ones didn't.

So we've done some work around that with our triage team and with our customer service

officers so that we are sorting people, is probably the word I'm going to use, so that

we are able to understand people's need very quickly and we can then give them the resource

that they need at the right time, bearing in mind that we have an increase in demand

still and we see no reason that that will drop with the current housing crisis at play.

So we're able to see people quicker, we're able to identify those that are in urgent

need as opposed to those who might not need our support for another six months time. We

also are able to work with landlords more readily because we can do that to make sure

that we're taking the biggest advantage of the amount of time that people come to see

us. So if people are coming to see us, what we don't want is people coming to see us on

the day they're becoming homeless. We want them to come to us as early as possible because

that gives us more time to work with them, work with their landlord, if at all possible

prevent them being made homeless whatsoever, and through various different ways around

working with their landlords, working with their friends and family who they might be

living with to see if we can delay that. But also being able to respond to those who have

fallen through the cracks and don't come to us until the very day of eviction. Making

sure that those evictions are legal and not illegal. If they are illegal, making sure

that we deal with that and we get people back into their homes and that we deal with those

landlords that are responsible for that. So the way in which we work has been under scrutiny,

particularly at the front end, particularly at the point we are meeting residents for

the first time. So we've put a lot of effort into that. We're still piloting different

ways of working the resident up. We are at midpoint for a pilot and we will also be speaking

with our staff and giving them early learning indications of that pilot tomorrow and then

looking at those results over a longer period of time.

So the way in which we work now is very much around test and learn.

We're always looking to incrementally make things better.

That's our culture now.

Thank you officers and lead members. Thank you again for your responses.

It is important that the issues such as these are brought to the attention of this committee.

Given the seriousness of the embossment findings and this report's acknowledgement, the improvements

are somewhat embedded.

As Chair, I would like to recommend or request a follow -up action for officers to provide

this committee a six -month update report as further assurance that includes information

of compliance audit result, homelessness decision and timeless data, interim accommodation performance,

any further complaints and ombudsman trends, workforce metrics, resident outcome measures

and evidence of sustained improvement against the RICs identified in paragraph 3 .15.

We now move on to our next item for this evening.

Our second substantive item is the Lead Member Priorities of Housing and Regeneration.

Can I now welcome back Councillor Siedemann and Jennifer and I understand we also have

Steve Part, Director of Housing, Property and Asset Management and Geoff Beers, Director

of Accelerated and Priority Projects.

Can I ask Elizabeth if you would kindly introduce yourself, please?

Hi, I'm Liz Williams, and I'm the Chief Operating Officer at Poplar Harco, but I attend this

meeting in my other role as chair of the Tower Hamlets Housing Forum, which is made up of

all the registered landlords that wanted to join.

Thank you.

You will have now up to 10 minutes to give us a strategic overview.

Please take the papers at red and perhaps highlight the most pertinent issues that this

committee needs to be aware of.

Then we will simply move to committee questions.

You may start now and I will let you know when you are nearing your last minute.

Thank you, Chair, and good evening to everyone again.

So I think this paper is very important to understand where we are in terms of housing

and regeneration and what our vision is.

So I think the manifesto is quite clear when it comes to what we want to do with housing.

we have a huge ambitious target of home buildings,

but at the same time, my portfolio title says it,

it's about enhancing council homes and neighbourhoods.

So it's about creating more opportunities,

building more homes and making sure that the social houses

that we have at the moment, those are in good conditions

and free from the issues that we are seeing

when it comes to us self -referencing to the regulators and getting ourselves out

of where we are at the moment. So in order for us to do this we need to first

understand the scale of where we are and the challenges that we are facing. I mean

we know that Tower Hamlets is a growing borough across the country and we know

that our population is expected to increase by another 20 % by 2032 and that

6 b) Lead Member Priorities for Housing and Regeneration Cabinet Member for Homebuilding and Lead Member Priorities for Housing and Regeneration Cabinet Member for Homebuilding and Enhanced Council Homes and Neighbourhoods and Corporate Director for Housing and Regeneration

That in itself is going to demand a lot of housing and infrastructure needs across the

borough.

At the same time, we know that we have over 31 ,000 people on the housing register.

We have thousands of families in temporary accommodation, as well as many people in an

acute overcrowded situation.

So I think these complex issues mixed with our own council owned stock of 21 ,000 homes,

it requires investment and we need to make sure that we can put money into our social houses,

put money into our council owned homes to make sure that that is brought up to standard.

That's why we have committed on investing £609 million over the next decade to improve our homes.

That is big stuff, it's huge.

One of the first engagements that I did with Steve after being appointed as the lead member for Housing and Enhancing Council Homes and Neighbourhoods

launched one of the 10 programmes for the significant portion of that £609 million, which is on

track and is going across, is doing its due course.

We want to make sure that there's no slippages there and we made that clear to our attendees

at the event where we have contractors of all different sizes that we want to make sure

that we can deliver so that people can remember that they lived in a good quality home where

children will grow in homes that they can be proud of and not be stuck with

damper mould and you know, draught through the windows and doors and whatnot.

So this is a very important piece of investment that we put in place.

Alongside that we need to also deliver the new homes at scale, building on the

position what we know that we have already delivered and also leading one

of London's boroughs when it comes to housing and delivery. So that's very

important that's where we're bringing Jeff and Hannah who come in with very

great vision on identifying sites and building homes for the next few years

and also regenerating where we have our own council estates and whatnot meeting

up the standards and needs to be regenerated is rebuilding and and also

at the same time redeveloping some some areas and and that those piece of it

works very very important you know some regeneration work is very important

because we know that people are embedded in the communities we want to make sure

that our boroughs and our states are up to that sort of standard. So you know all of

this stuff is going at the same time, so we are rooted to a clear vision when it comes

to housing and regeneration and our ultimate goal is to ensure that every resident has

access to safe secure home and to feel part of a thriving inclusive borough and also this

aligns directly with our broader housing strategy which is to have more homes, better homes

and safer homes. These are the main things that we work towards when it comes to housing

and regeneration. Also about modern housing is about the regeneration part. So when we

talk about regeneration we're talking about tackling inequality as a vision, that's the

main thing. It's about widening opportunity and at the same time it's about supporting

healthier and stronger communities. So these are our high level strategies that we work

towards it so all the investment that goes in is so that we can achieve better

quality life on those fronts and we will deliver this by using

our assets effectively so that's again all of our states and our homes and

our corporate assets as well and working in partnership with the market so we

know that the house building market is very difficult and it's about how we can

work in partnership where we have you know where we need to bring skills and

We bring expertise together and we build this vision together.

Our ambition is to build neighbourhoods where more people are proud to call home.

Overall, I think today the main reason that this is a factor is because we are delivering this vision

and it depends on a strong delivery partnership and long -term investment through this procurement programme that we're running.

And I think I will hand over to Stephen who will now introduce a little bit more about what we're doing in terms of regenerating and more about improving our council estates.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor.

So we've got a bit of a treble act going on.

I'm going to cover homes and neighbourhoods and myself and Gulen Hussain who's a director of neighbourhoods work very very closely

Together on the existing housing stock and the people who live there

then we've got Jeff here for the the new homes side of it and then Jennifer here on some of the

homelessness

initiatives so on that first slide the central green bit is really my bit as

counsellor

has already pointed out we've got significant

investment going into our housing stock.

There's much needed, and we didn't have any

mechanisms to invest in our stock a year ago.

So we've really turned that around, and we're

starting to invest both through the long -term

contracts that we launched on the 16th of June, but

and also the South East Consortium, which I mentioned earlier in my update.

We've got some initiatives around putting lifts into council buildings

which don't currently have lifts.

I think that's a real opportunity because we've got several three, four storey blocks,

we've got hundreds actually, that don't have lifts.

So we need to prioritise those in most need and put new lifts in.

Doing all of the building safety work and all of that is done in conjunction

with the residents. So we're improving our tenant voice, our resident engagement, looking

at how we can best use our customer access and make sure that residents actually are

feeling safe, secure and listened to in their home. So sometimes myself and Gulam, it's

hard to see the joins in our service because we are all working for the benefit of our

Hopefully that's sufficient.

Shall I pass over to Geoff?

Thank you.

So delivering new homes, I think we'll focus around that first of all.

So my role as the job title implies is responsible for our accelerated and priority projects.

We also have Hannah Dalgleish who's not here today as the Director of Regeneration and Development.

and Trippier, who's the Director of Planning,

all have really important roles to play

in new housing delivery.

Is it, you know, we are living in a challenging time

in terms of house building.

The housing market is in quite a depressed state,

and so it's really important that the council steps up

and plays a key role in delivering housing.

Developers generally are slowing down,

or in some cases announcing a withdrawal

from the London housing market.

Berkeley Homes most recently has said

it's not really open for new business.

Who knows what today's new prime minister's

kind of focus on building council housing might bring,

but at the moment we have a constrained supplier model.

So the council's kind of tackling that

both through its planning powers

and through its facilitating development, being open to new development, being very,

very keen to have good market intelligence and develop relationships with developers

that means that they see Tower Hamlets as a welcoming place to invest.

But I think also through interventions with its own land.

So we already have around a thousand homes in the current delivery pipeline.

These largely are in a position where they have planning consent.

I think tenders for instance for Albert Jacob House, the latest scheme, were launched today.

And contractors were appointed within the last month for a couple of the other direct delivery programmes.

So we've got our direct delivery programme.

We also have the state regeneration on site at the HAP, Harriet Ainslie M. Patterson, Kelechi Estate,

which is now progressing well with history partnerships.

Then we have our forward pipeline.

And in that we have the Mayor's

Accelerated Housing Programme.

And those of you that read the cabinet papers last week

will see the first batch of housing delivery sites

were agreed at cabinet last week to deliver 351 homes,

of which 251 homes will be for social rent on council land.

In total, 42 council and sites deliver around 3 ,400 homes.

And we're taking those through various stages

of the planning process now.

By the end of, within the next two weeks,

we'll have submitted the last six planning applications

in respect of the first batch of sites.

We'll be starting the procurement process

to find a partner to deliver the first batch.

in August and trying to find, sorry,

and then a second procurement process later in the autumn

to identify partners for the strategic sites.

Those are the sites that are more than 100 homes.

One minute left.

I think I probably didn't draw a line there.

State regeneration, the mayor's convened

a kind of working group which Hannah's reporting to.

We're looking at four estates at the moment

as initial feasibilities.

I don't know if there's anything you wanted to add.

With regards to homelessness and housing need within the borough, as well as the transformation

programme, which I said is a two year, very packed programme, we're also required to refresh

our homelessness strategy and action plan.

We need to have a new action plan published on the council's website by the autumn as

per MHCLG directive for all local authorities.

We also need to make sure that we are raising the profile of rough sleeping and eliminating

rough sleeping within the borough as well.

And you will have seen the Prime Minister's first announcement today was on the need to

eliminate rough sleeping at the earliest available opportunity.

And that is something that our new delivery plan will very much look to do.

Obviously we're looking at our temporary accommodation, not only the cost of it, but also the quality of it.

We'll be producing a long term temporary accommodation supply strategy and delivery plan later on this year.

Thank you for your overview, Councillor Ahmed, Jennifer, Steve and Geoff.

Do members have any questions or comments on what you have heard so far?

Thank you.

A general overview.

It is a very insight into what the Labour government is going to be offering.

I think the rough sleeper thing was a fantastic starting point of what we hope to see in Mr

Burnham's leadership.

Just an overview from Geoff.

It is good news about the 351 and the 250 social.

I know we've had a lengthy conversation and a nice walk around walking

Not everything will be given your way

There is a strong feeling both both residents and users of the John oval Sports Centre

That they don't see that site as a fit for purpose for the aspiration of the accelerated dream of this administration

Given so the accounts also position around 20 %

Any future developer wanted to come and this beautiful site in John oval?

I think this meeting is public

so I'm sure I'll share this to the residents of whopping any potential sites as much as the mayor might make new friends with the

green across the river and

Challenging the mayor of London a label mayor of London. I can't really see many developers running to tower handles to develop

Where they won't be challenged for more than 20 % How do you see that in terms of the stock improvement in this borough?

So, in terms of, there was a statement in there, I think, about John Orwell.

I'm not sure if you're asking a question in relation to John Orwell.

It's a statement and a question.

But I think, you know, across the house, so if I can deal with it in two parts.

With the accelerated housing programme, the numbers have changed across individual sites

as we've been through quite intensive resident engagement.

And as Councillor Riley points out,

there has been some opposition to some of the proposals

in their early forms.

I mean, we've been deliberately vague

about what we've said at those initial consultation events.

And that's because we wanted to gather people's views

before coming up with any concrete plans.

And I think what was first presented, in some cases,

including John Orwell, would have been quite dense levels of development and we will be

coming back to talk to the residents in Wapping, but we've revised proposals that hopefully

people will find addresses some of those concerns and that's been our approach across the programme.

Nevertheless we're on target to deliver up to 3 ,400 homes or in the region of that at

moment. You're right about, I think, developers and so first of all developer

engagement in the accelerated housing programme, ultimately we're not starting

from perspective of seeking a land value, we're seeking to deliver affordable

housing. So that's quite a benign environment for developers, we're not asking

for upfront capital payments for land, the payments are staged or will come out

the end of the process.

And we've also bid for social housing grant to the GLA,

so 470 million of the 770 million, I think it is.

I'll double cheque that.

But there's 770 million in total.

Over 400 million of that is for the Mayors Accelerated Housing

Programme sites, which will help with viability.

We're waiting for confirmation that grant's given,

but we've had a very positive dialogue with the GLA

around getting more public funding into the programme,

which will improve viability.

We're also making sure that we,

particularly for the smaller sites,

that we take a lot of the risk of planning

out of the process for developers.

So for the small sites, we'll be pursuing

full planning permission,

which means the developers aren't having to put

lots of early money up front,

and they can come in with the knowledge

that a site is ready to go and ready to proceed.

and they also another risk that developers are facing is quite a

Quite stagnant housing association market in bidding to buy affordable housing

but here they come with the guarantee that the council are standing behind the purchase of the affordable housing and

Also, we we de -risk that element by agreeing by stating the price that will pay for the affordable housing upfront

So it's very clear for developers the model they're working under.

So we think for the accelerated housing programme,

we can make it very attractive for developers.

In terms of developers, generally, I think they look at the overall model,

and the percentage of affordable housing that they provide will be driven

by the affordability of each individual local authority.

And yes, it might be more attractive in the short term for developers

to look in boroughs where values are similar to Tower Hamlets,

but they can get away with a lower level of affordable housing.

But I think the economic argument is that those kind of subsidies tend to initially go to landowners and inflate land values.

So I think it probably is something worthy of further discussion.

I'm not a planner, I'm not an economist, so I'm probably not the right person to answer the question most fully.

But I do think that what developers in Tower Hamlets find is that they can achieve higher densities on sites

than they might in other areas and more welcoming local authority to growth and development.

And if there's a price to pay by providing more affordable housing, you can often recruit that by getting a lot more

Sweaty knee if you like sweating the opportunity a lot more than you could in another location or another area

But it is a tricky kind of it is a it's a tricky balance in actual I think in the emerging London plan

It's just worth pointing out the time. This is but has been identified as one of those boroughs that will be able to deliver a minimum

35 %

In the new plan, whereas a lot of the outer London authorities have got much lower target

Chief oculus will come in if that's all right. I think I know what council are saying in terms of

What the market may look like going forward, but the same time

The mayor's accelerated housing programme is something chair that we need to really

Understand it to tackle. What is the significant issue in town Hamlet's is

31 ,000 people waiting in the housing register and that they need and a lot of that a high percentage is also

people in acute overcrowding. If we don't accelerate housing programme we don't

tackle the problem that everyone's going through. We need to acknowledge that

people don't have the luxury to buy new houses, they don't have the luxury

to go buy bigger houses or move out of the borough. Whilst talking at the borough

it's key that we challenge the Mayor of London with other local authorities

where we are being asked to reduce our affordable houses to 20 % and that

That basically means that Tower Hamlets is a key location.

It is, we know within Canary Wolf and the City of Fringe,

nobody has a location like Tower Hamlets.

It's got Tower of London in our borough and it's a very unique place.

The value of our land and the value of having a property in Tower Hamlets

is far greater than many other boroughs across London.

So I think that for when it comes to the market,

when it comes to developers, they would take that into consideration.

When we had when we had our open date for the tender packages

We saw the amount of developers that want to work with Tower Hamlets

it's about believing of what we have and bringing that forward and

showcasing it from the officers to

Counsellors to the mayor of what we believe our borough is if we don't believe in it

How do we get developers and their market to believe in Tower Hamlets and more importantly for the residents of whopping John?

All is not at risk

John all would and lose anything significant when it comes to the facilities that we're providing from the council for the leisure facilities

and where we have identified key areas for housing purposes, that's very important.

We could always say not in my backyard, but we need to look at it from the council's strategic point of view.

We may not like development in your area, but at the end of the day it's for us to live and let others live at the same time.

I'm not here to give advice to the current

As I said,

I know the current housing minister

has stepped down

and I'm sure the new one will come.

No doubt the local area plan

that I had a discussion about last time.

I'm sure I will be talking to the new one

about what to do and what not to do.

I'm not here to give advice to the current

administration.

What I am here to do is represent the best

and the best wishes of the people.

As I said, the lead member

might want to make a statement

about what

the residents want, but I think they have

spoken highly

by electing me and my colleague.

We know what is best for our local community.

What I will say for free

is that speaking in one sense

of a local area plan

and a government of the day,

but also the application

has gone into the GLA

for funding,

but at the same time

challenging the mayor of London

because you've made new friends with the Greens, it's not always going to be a

very good, you know, I want to see more development in tower handles, I want to see

people and the weight and it's been given, you know, the right size of family

homes and also smaller units for those who don't have a family, but I think we

just need to be mindful that we don't necessarily have got the boat or bite

the hand that's going to feed us, be it a Labour Mayor of London or Labour

government. Thank you.

Thank you.

Just a question to the lead member.

You mentioned the start of your speech.

You got 609 million set aside for the next 10 years.

How satisfied are you that that money is going to accommodate the needs of the...

and how far we can go with that and when it's likely to use that money?

Is it recent? I mean, is it the beginning or the end or the...

That's the first question.

And secondly, I'm just listening to Councillor Abdullai.

I would recommend like the session here we're in,

we're having a meeting,

it's not only for one particular ward

that we've been elected,

we are to look at a wider perspective,

just looking at the whole borough

rather than just looking at one,

this is to the chair,

just addressing one particular ward.

I understand that there's over 31 ,000 people on the waiting list.

I'm sure we are one of the highly densely populated boroughs in London.

The prime objectives are to build new houses.

It's a great demand.

So again, I'm going back to your budget.

Is it something that you're looking at?

Is it enough to go ahead with the budget or how far you can go with that?

Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor for your question.

I'll come in first and I'll bring in Steve to give more context.

I think this amount is a significant amount when it comes to sort of investment in existing stock

because what we're looking at is different areas. We've divided the areas divided the

borough into different areas and we have a stagnant approach when it comes to a main

contractor subcontract and how we want to deliver this. So that is a way of making sure that we have

a safe and secure approach. We don't want to put all our eggs in one basket. We want to approach

it in a systematic way. So we want to make sure that we can have a contractors when it comes to

kitchen, windows, fire safety, lifts and all different level of packages we will create.

And ultimately all of this is going to deliver in a long, we have a decade of plan to deliver

this.

But the main thing is to expedite it and get this going sooner than later.

That's that's my job with my offices for me to keep them

How to hold them account to make sure that it's delivered on time and not to leave everything

Right to the last minute is to bring things forward and make sure things are coming in a in a timely fashion

That's exactly what I want to thank Steve and the team for they've got it. They've gone out there. They've looked at the timescale

They have made things as tight as possible. The mayor's also reviewed it. He's also made it even more tighter

I mean the tighter we make it the less room for slippages and

At the same time is also making sure that we can actually deliver going forward if we leave it too open

We know that risk of the market can change things can fluctuate and things can get really delayed

This is a significant amount and you would you would accept you would agree is over half a billion pounds

A lot of local government want to do work like this. They want to invest into the stock

They want to create better life for the families, but the money isn't there.

What we have done is we've found the money, we want to make sure it's delivered in a timely

fashion to make sure that residents can feel the benefits sooner than later.

I'll hand it over to Steve to give more details if that's OK.

Thank you, Councillor.

It is a significant amount of money if you're talking around £60 million a year.

It's been over 10 years.

other capital programmes around London aren't quite there,

when they're up and running and really delivering,

they're at 40 -50 million.

So the money absolutely is a unique opportunity.

It also covers not just decent homes and building safety,

which are huge priorities, but also mechanical and electrical work,

which is often overlooked.

heating systems looking for the future, for carbon efficient heating solutions,

looking at electrical installations on our estates which are crucial, the unseen

wiring in estates that when it goes wrong it's catastrophic, so really

investing in that infrastructure and the lifts that we've

previously mentioned. The spending through the South East Consortium is

immediate and that is picking up schemes that fell out of the back of the

Better Neighbourhoods framework which ended a couple of years. So these are

schemes that are ready to go and can't wait and we don't want to wait for

the year for the term contracts to be in place and they include blocks like

Latham House which is we visited on our tour of the borough, it's one of our highest priority

blocks from a risk point of view. That said, we won't be spending that amount of money

initially, we're going to be ramping up, we're going to be gearing up and we're going to

be structuring my team to be able to keep up with that demand. So we'll be ramping up

over the first few years to really get up to speed

to be spending that money over that decade.

Again, coming back to the leasehold angle,

there will be several hundred million of that money

that we will be recouping into the housing revenue account.

So we'll be spending 609 million,

but we'll be recouping several hundred million of that

to go back into future investment,

either in planned works or in responsive works.

Thank you.

Councillor Wahid, do you have any question?

Thank you.

I just want to touch on affordability.

In terms of affordable housing as you know is a broad term and that can include social

rent, affordable rent, shared ownership and sometimes we have in terms of different developments

we have significant charges which make supposedly affordable rent unaffordable.

So if I can get a comment on that.

Also in terms of basically the House Building, Accelerating House Building programme

is I think as you, the lead members touched on it, is a huge, you know,

in terms of a step in tackling some of the housing issue we have.

In terms of not everyone's going to get a house, we know that.

We can't, you know, we don't have the land in terms of, but again,

touching on the home improvement programme that we have in place,

obviously we want our residents, those who obviously cannot get into a property,

we want them to actually live in a decent home, which they can, a cold home, they can live comfortably.

How basically, in terms of basically how are they supposed to,

because we have a lot of issues when it comes to repairs, etc.

When a base, I call it basic, but when a repair takes eight to nine months, in some cases a year to get resolved.

And we're telling people that basically we want them to live in a decent property etc.

How are we looking to improve on our repair work?

As you know, Stephen, I gave you a call today for my surgery.

I had a resident who come, eight, nearly nine months,

and I've got the document here,

it's about a 28 -page document that they produce.

Nearly nine months, repair hasn't been, you know, done.

They went through the complaint procedure, etc.

And the fact, one of the points that was addressed in that,

in terms of the complaint was the lack of engagement and the lack of being able to reach out to services here.

Straight away after that, that was breached in terms of appointments were not kept.

So if you can touch on that as well, how are we monitoring, how are we going to monitor

in terms of the repairs and the time that is taken for some of these repairs to be conducted and carried out.

Thank you, because there was a couple of earlier questions as well weren't there?

I'm not sure if colleagues want to talk about affordability.

Do you want to address those?

Do you want to?

Do you think it's a type of order?

Take it

I'm on the mic. Let me let me go for on the repairs point of view. So

There are two things to answer your question counsellor firstly

The lack of investment that we've had in the borough over the last few years which we're now addressing

As contributing to the number of repairs that are needed

So that is kind of an obvious connexion

The repair service has been under pressure in the last few years because of the lack of investment.

And again a lot of it is around leaks, around the infrastructure, around the bits that have probably been left

because they're not a new window or a shiny new kitchen over the years.

And that's not just here, that's in other boroughs as well.

So I'm keen to do the kind of non -shiny bits as well.

So therefore the contractor is under pressure.

We have a contract with Mears and in the manifesto

there's an undertaking to review that contract.

It's coming for a potential extension next summer, 27.

I'm bringing a paper to Councillor to look at those options

including insourcing or an element of insourcing.

So we want to improve the repair service, but we want to be able to

Have buildings that are themselves better

Performing so there's less pressure on the repair service another initiative just on one of the main

Challenges we have around leaks is we are bringing in looking at opportunities to bring in a dedicated

Resource that will deal with just concentrating on leaks

We believe it will be an investor save opportunity and we'll be saving money around the level of work we do on leaks.

But also around disrepair. So there are some real active things we're doing as well as investing millions of pounds in the actual infrastructure.

So just on the point of disrespect, I totally understand in terms of basically, you know, these disrepairs and have happened overnight.

It's happened because of a history of neglect, etc. And I totally understand that, and I know as a council we're trying to deal with that,

but the issue is that how are we holding those contractors?

I know we use a lot of contractors to deal with it,

with some of these repairs,

and how are we holding these contractors to account?

Because I know a lot of these issues are not directly

because our officers or our council staff,

and I really want to get that clear,

but a lot of it is down to contractors not fulfilling

or doing the job, simple job, taking five, six visits,

before it's actually even attempted to be rectified.

I haven't had the opportunity to look into the case that you raised today.

Often with long running cases there are some complexities to them

and I don't know what the complexities are with that one, so I will come back to you.

But I've been doing quite a lot of work with a group of TRAs

who have been looking in depth at the repair service,

where the failings are, where the opportunities are.

And they've met with my repairs team.

And it would be interesting what their feedback is,

but we are holding those repairs teams to account.

But we are also working within contracts

that may not always help us hold them to account.

We are levelling fines on contractors for non -performance where we've measured it.

But we are also dealing with a lot of repairs.

The volume is huge and we need to reduce that volume.

We need to look at the repairs policy.

We're doing far too many emergency repairs in this borough.

We should only be doing emergency repairs.

So the move's afoot to reduce that number of repairs,

which means the valid genuine repairs will get done more efficiently.

Can I answer the question about affordability?

So as you know the current local plan for Tower Hamlets has a target of 70 % of affordable housing.

in the affordable housing quota,

70 % should be rented product

and 30 % should be intermediate.

So rented products in the current local plan

comprise of both social rent

but also London affordable rent,

which is at a higher rent level

and kind of goes back to changes introduced

by government before last, I think,

around raising rents based on a percentage

of market rent. The new local plan is clearer and has a target overall 40 % affordable housing,

85 % of which should be social rent and 15 % intermediate housing. So social rent is typically

based on a target rent formula which is very similar to, so actually the same formula the

rents, so quite comparable rents with existing council housing.

And the Mayor's Accelerated Housing Programme,

I think the mayor's aspiration would be for it to be 100 %

socially rented housing in terms of the affordable housing

component.

But we have to, there's two things we've had to do.

First of all, the whole programme, 3 ,400 homes,

relies on some subsidy from selling homes

to fund the affordable housing.

So our target for the programme is 51 % affordable housing overall.

And it's sites like John Orwell, which

is a higher value part of the borough that

can generate more proceeds to fund more affordable housing

across the rest of the borough.

So it's important that we kind of deliver on some

of those higher value sites.

But the aspiration is that all of the affordable housing

will be social rent.

There's a small exception to that where the GLA were quite keen that we have some key worker rent as part of our offer.

So there is about a hundred key worker homes in our programme at the moment,

around 1400 social rented, 1500 social rented homes would be our target.

And across the rest of the council's house building programme, it's all social rented.

The council doesn't have a shared ownership

The council manages one thousand one hundred fifty five

assets with a book value of approximately 1 .3 billion.

So can you tell us what percentage of the state of currently generating below target

returns or requiring significant capital in this invitation?

Intervention, sorry.

Thank you.

I think we're talking about decency of stock are we?

across our 21 ,000s.

We are completing our stock condition survey by the end of the year,

which will give us a 100 % view of our stock less than 5 years old.

So we have to do a rolling programme of inspections

within five years.

So we're on around 18 % of non -decency at the moment.

That's with an incomplete survey.

So we're still doing surveys.

So that may fluctuate.

But that's the sort of levels of non -decency

that we're reporting, but our capital programmes

through the South East Consortium are already addressing

some of those highest priority blocks and properties

and then that will lead into the term contracts.

Does that answer your question?

Yeah, thank you.

Do you have any follow up question or anything,

Councillor Santic?

No.

Thank you, Chair.

I've got a couple of questions.

One is to do with the funding for the improvements to the Toa Hamlet's stock.

You say that you found the funding but you didn't actually say where the funding actually

came from.

And no, is this just from the housing revenue account?

because you also mentioned that there will be money coming back into the housing revenue

accounts from service charges. So that was one question. The other question is with the

Mayors Accelerated Housing Programme, what will be the impact on people in temporary

accommodation? Will that actually have a, will it reduce, is it expected to reduce the

People in temporary accommodation of which I understand there's something like three thousand

people in

In temporary accommodation and again, what would be the impact on the house from revenue accounts as well as

To answer your first question, yes, it's all within the ring fence housing revenue account. So it's with a 30 year

HRA business plans identified those monies and there is a calculation within there around

income from service charges over a period.

It tends to be reasonably conservative, so an increased income is only a benefit to the

business plan.

And it also takes into account that often there are payment plans that leaseholders

enter into over three, five, whatever periods that they enter into them.

So that money isn't coming straight back within the 10 years.

There'll be a lag on that income, but that is reflected in the business plan.

And so with the Managed Accelerated Housing Programme, very similar, so the Housing Revenue

account business plan is updated annually and we factor in at that stage our pipeline

of development as well as our forecast cost for existing stock, our forecast rental income,

a range of other assumptions around inflation and the like.

And that will allow an amount of headroom that can be used to borrow money.

Also in there there will be allowances for things like Section 106 payments from developers

for affordable housing provision, right to buy receipts, so we forecast those based on

applications that we have. And so funding, it's a real mix of funding for housing delivery,

new built housing delivery, so there's the GLA grant, income stream, there's funding

from HRA revenue reserves, there's funding from lending,

and there's also funding from right to buy receipts

that goes into that kind of pot.

In terms of what's been factored into the business plan,

we've got the 1 ,100 homes that are in the current

direct delivery programme, all factored into the current

version of the business plan.

There's also the first batch of affordable housing,

for the MAHP is factored in,

so that's the piece that we're going out to tender on now,

which originally was forecast to be 175 homes,

but within the cost envelope that we included

in the business plan, we think we can get,

well, we know we can get up to 241 social housing homes

within the same cost envelope,

so that brings an extra 600 ,000 of income in rents

over what was last year forecast,

So that will all improve the business plan

We've bid for slightly more grant than we last assumed in the business plan about 10 ,000 pounds per home more

So if that's approved

We will be in a better position and then the business plan will be reef recast

I think the finance colleagues tell me that the recasting is imminent

And we get involved in a very intensive period then the brief

But you know affording to purchase 1 ,500 affordable homes

for the council directly is going to be stretching for the business plan.

So we are also looking at how we might be able to bring pension funding and institutional

investment into that but also the ambition of the council is to do a lot more around

estate regeneration and being involved in other forms of housing delivery.

So there's a big piece of work going on around that at the moment.

There will be some headroom in the new business plan to fund more of the programme

Oh and the other missing ingredient is the subsidy that comes from private developers buying the land for the affordable housing

Which goes back into the pot to fund the affordable housing?

With regards to

Will the additional units assist with homelessness in the borough and those in temporary accommodation?

Any additional units will assist with that what we see?

for our residents who are housed in temporary accommodation is they're in temporary accommodation

for far too long. And actually all the vulnerabilities that we see across the whole populace in the

borough are more so exacerbated in that cohort temporary accommodation. So we see more residents

with disabilities, more residents who have had to deal with areas of violence, particularly

domestic abuse, we see a lot more substance misuse, a lot more mental health issues, physical

disabilities as well, so any units, any additional units will assist those households and those

families.

Thank you.

Last question to the lead member.

The presentation contains ambitious commitments on housing delivery, state regeneration, homelessness

reduction, assessment management and compliance, all against a backdrop of rising demand, viability,

pressure and increasing costs.

My question is, what is the single greatest risk to successful delivery across the directorate?

How confident are you that it is being managed effectively?

And what evidence supports that assurance?

Thank you, Chair.

I think it is a very good question.

I think the assurance that I can give to this committee is the drive and passion that we

come with is to make sure that as lead member I'm on top of my brief. I

understand what each of my directors are working on, have a close working

relationship with everyone and make sure that what we promise is what we deliver.

Number one cheque measure is to follow our KPIs. How are we tracking with our

with our key performance indicators and also being on top of what we sort of

discussed within our lead member meetings.

And one of the assurance I can give to the committee is just on the last cabinet, the

first paper that we opened within our cabinet meetings after the elections was a paper we

discussed about delivering 350 homes in council owned sites.

And that's exactly how we want to go about.

We want to continuously deliver on those sites.

and that paper was very important and which is available for the committee and residents to go and review.

It's where we speak about the procurement strategy, which that paper identifies the funding to get those deliveries going.

So the committee can be reassured that we, it may sound like we are very ambitious and we are,

but it may also sound like how do we deliver.

That paper is an evidence that we will continuously work to make sure that we deliver on our promises.

Like for Councillor Martin, there is a paper on the £609 million that went through the cabinet process,

it went through the governance process, how that funding was sourced and how it's going to deliver.

So it's all going through the right processes.

In terms of going forward, very imminently we will see papers in cabinet talking about regeneration,

how we will improve our existing estates.

And that's very important because we have buildings and areas where we know that it is not very nice, not very pleasant,

and the regeneration element is the most exciting element.

I mean, when the mayor was the previous mayor, the mayor regenerated Ocean Estate,

and we know how Ocean Estate used to look like in Stepney and how it is now,

is those kind of work that transform lives, it removes anti -social behaviour

and it gives fresh opportunity to those people living in our borough.

So these are an evidence of how we go about, it's tried and tested, it works

and it transforms the borough. So that piece of work is very important.

I would say keep an eye out, I'm happy to come in front of the committee more often,

discuss on our progress when it comes to our regeneration work,

when it comes to Jeff area looking at the 42 sites as we bring them forward.

I'm happy to come about and speak to the committee, give you the assurance that we are on top of our brief

and we are tackling each one of the promises front end. Thank you.

Thank you officers and the lead member.

I've got some closing comments.

So today's discussion has highlighted both the significant ambitions and the considerable

challenges facing the housing and regeneration directory.

So members welcome the commitment to delivering affordable homes, investing 609 million in

council housing, improving residents' experience, addressing homelessness pressure and making

better use of the council's assets.

However, the scrutiny has focused on whether these ambitions are supported by realistic

financial planning, robust risk management and sufficient capacity to deliver in an environment

of rising demand, increasing cost and growing regulatory requirements.

The committee will continue to monitor progress closely, particularly around housing delivery,

temporary accommodation pressures, compliance and safety standards and the

delivery of major capital programmes. We expect regular assurance on performance,

financial sustainability and the management of key risk with a clear

focus on the outcomes residents experience. Ultimately our role is to

ensure the ambition is matched by delivery and that the substantial

investment being made results in tangible improvements for residents and communities

across the borough.

Thank you.

Finally, is there any other business to discuss?

No.

Okay.

Our next housing and regeneration subcommittee meeting will take place on Monday 5 October

2026 at 6 .30pm with pre -meeting starting at 6 o 'clock in the evening.

Can I encourage you all to ensure you get here to the pre -meet, please, so that we have

time to discuss the agenda and any other business before the meeting starts.

Thank you, scheduled members, for your attendance and participation tonight.

So, with no other business to discuss, I call this meeting to a close.

Could members stay behind for the final item?

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Housing & Regeneration Scrutiny Sub CommitteeMonday, 20th July 2026 at 6:30pm

6 b) Lead Member Priorities for Housing and Regeneration Cabinet Member for Homebuilding and Lead Member Priorities for Housing and Regeneration Cabinet Member for Homebuilding and Enhanced Council Homes and Neighbourhoods and Corporate Director for Housing and Regeneration

Webcast Finished - 1:42:11

Housing & Regeneration Scrutiny Sub Committee
Monday, 20th July 2026 at 6:30pm