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Housing Management (Cabinet) Sub-Committee
Wednesday, 30th September 2026 at 5:30pm

 

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  1. Webcast Finished

And good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a housing management
Sub -commit cabinet subcommittee meeting meeting. I believe there's no public questions
To answer any apologies from anyone
No apologies as far as I know

2 DECLARATIONS OF DISCLOSABLE PECUNIARY INTERESTS AND OTHER INTERESTS

Okay, Kevin this I hear we are correct. Okay any declarations of interest from any members at all?
No, none great

3 UNRESTRICTED MINUTES

Good. Okay. Then the minutes. Can we agree the minutes of the 30th of July?

4 HOUSING SCRUTINY

Are we okay in burning? No? Okay. Then I know we've got the chair from the housing subcommittee,
Councillor Mahmood, who's here. Do you want to say anything at all at this outset?
Stan, do you want to make a statement?
Good afternoon, I am Councillor Mohammed Hassan Mahmood, I am the Chair of the Housing and
Generation Exclusion Subcommittee and can I thank the Housing Cabinet for providing
me the opportunity to feedback on the HRSSC activity. At the inaugural meeting on this
In March 2026, HRCC undertook activities to establish the Committee on Governance arrangement
for 2026 -2027 and included the Vice Chair appointments and terms of reference.
Appointment of Councillor Abdul Wahid as Vice Chair, Review and Confirmation of Housing
Agilization, Scrutiny Subcommittee, terms of reference.
Council's response to local government and social embossment investigation, section 21,
homelessness cases.
Can I firstly take this opportunity to thank the Councillor Sy Damit, committed member,
home building and enhanced council homes and neighbourhoods and officers for their participation
and contribution to this item.
Our committee considered the Council's response to the local government and social care ombudsman investigation,
Section 21, Harmlessness Cases between May 2024 and April 2025.
The report sets the key ombudsman findings and the Council's response to rectify these.
A delay in homelessness assessments, failure to consistently meet statutory duties, missing
of delayed decisions, inconsistent practise, failures to provide interim accommodation
when required.
Our committee questioned current performance compared with the period examined by the Ombudsman
and which indicators show the greatest improvement.
Measures in place to address systematic weaknesses identified in 83 of the 164 cases reviewed.
Housing options transformation programme threatening future compliance and KPIs required.
If improvements are permanent or temporary, staff turnover and maintaining standards in short and medium term.
Clarity on independent assurance to demonstrate risks to residents are reduced.
Effective identifying of urgent household support.
Improvements made to resident engagement and customer access arrangement.
As a result of the discussion, our committee has requested a six month update report to get assurances on the following.
Compliance audit results, homelessness decision timeliness data, interim accommodation performance,
complaints and investment trends, workforce metrics, resident outcome measures, evidence of sustained improvement against identified risk.
Lead member priorities for housing and regeneration.
Our committee also considered the lead members priorities for the 2026 -27.
And once again we heard from Councillor Saeed Ahmed and also officers in Soko.
Our committee heard some of the strategic challenges faced by the council including
Population projected to rise by approximately 20 % by 2032.
More than 31 ,000 applicants on the housing register.
Significant levels of overcrowding.
Thousands of households in temporary accommodation need to improve existing council housing stock.
Scrutiny members considered the council's 609 million investment programme to improve council's homes
and noted that there was a focus on building safety, decent homes improvement, fire safety, heating systems,
electrical infrastructure, new lifts in blocks via feasible, state improvements.
On new housing delivery, the committee noted that around 1 ,000 homes already in the delivery pipeline.
Our committee also noted that Mayo's accelerated housing programme, including 251 homes for social rent and longer term programme,
to comprise of 42 council owned sites providing 3400 homes overall.
Our committee also heard on state generation, homelessness and temporary accommodation
and housing stock performance, particularly on non -decency level at 18 %
and investments intended to reduce non -decency and future repair demand.
On this item scrutiny members conceded, Tuckling concern raised by resident on proposal around
the John Orwell Sports Centre, if the £609 million invested in sufficient to meet housing
improvement needs, including spending and delivery timeframe.
Safeguards in place to ensure affordable housing remains genuinely affordable given service charges and affordability pressures.
Tackling long standing repair problems and holding contractors to account for poor repair performance.
Type of impacts from Mayor's Accelerated Housing Programme on households in temporary accommodation,
impact on the housing revenue account, single greatest risk to successful delivery of the housing and regeneration directorate's ambitions and how these risks will be managed.
Our committee broadly supported the council's housing ambitions but placed significant emphasis
on delivery assurance, value for money, risk management, repair performance, homelessness,
homelessness outcome and demonstrable improvements for residents.
RP Repairs Spotlight and Housing Quality.
So our next meeting will be on Monday 5th of October, 2026, and we will be holding a
security spotlight theme on housing provider repairs.
and based on the datasets we have invited Clarion and Peabody to give evidence on the item.
We will also be holding a scrutiny spotlight on improving council housing quality
and consider progress on improving the quality of its housing stock including repairs performance,
compliance with housing safety standards, resident satisfaction,
state conditions and delivery of investment programme.
This concludes our main activities for housing and regeneration
school to new South Committee. Thank you.
Thank you, Councillor. Thank you for the work that your South Committee does
and ONS does in general in holding us to account and also the Officer -at -core of this Council
and representing the residents of this borough.
So, I thank you for your comments.
Welcome.
Great, good.
Can we now move on to, any comments from anyone?
Any comments from members?
Go on.
I'll just make one quick comment.
Yeah, may I echo your comments as well?
I value the work that subcommittees are doing
and scrutiny members.
I've also invited our chair, Councillor Mahmoud,
to join me when I meet the RSLs with Karen.
So, we wanna see you join.
We can work collaboratively
and give you a timely response on whatever you request.

5 a) Complaints Annual Report and Self-Assessment

Thank you Mr Mayor.
So I think this report provides an overview on our annual performance for housing management
complaints during the past year and a self -assessment of our compliance with the Housing
reporting requirements outlined within the Code.
A complaint performance during 2025 -26 demonstrates continued improvement, particularly in relation
to Stage 2 response times, which remained at 100 % during the year.
The Council has also seen a slight reduction in the number of complaints received at Stage
1.
The self -assessment confirms that the Council is substantially compliant with the Housing
The first standing action is the adoption of the Council's unreasonable behaviour policy,
which is expected to be approved ahead of September 2026 submission deadline.
The Council has maintained a positive and constructive relationship with the Housing Ombudsman Service
and has achieved 100 % compliance with the Ombudsman Orders.
The report is very much due to the Mr Mayor and I am happy to take questions.
I will hand over to Karen in a minute, but just to say that we do take oversight and
performance around complaints very seriously and we receive monthly reports at our housing
performance improvement committee and then that feeds into this meeting and where we
see a drop in performance, for instance on stage 1 response rates, we have put extra
resources in to then lead to an improving picture that we see today.
So it's something that we take seriously.
I'm pleased that we haven't had any complaint handling failure orders from the Ombudsman
and that we've also dealt with all of the recommendations from the Ombudsman in a timely
way.
We try and treat complaints as a learning opportunity and set a culture for officers
that we need to make service improvements off the back of complaints to prevent them
from reoccurring and that's the kind of culture we're trying to establish.
We always have more work to do of course and we obviously want to minimise complaints but
where we have them we want to learn from them.
Over to Karen.
Karen, keep it short, nice and short.
Just to say this is one of two annual reports that are here today.
with annual reports you get an awful lot of data, but as David said it provides you with an awful lot of insight because you can see
how you've been performing across the year.
I mean, there's a slide deck at the back that helps to sort of make it more accessible,
but what I would just draw out a couple of insights is that we upheld
64 % of our complaints last year, so we were getting some things wrong because we upheld 64 % of those. Our
24 percent. That's upon last year, so we weren't getting it right for everybody at stage one.
And we upheld 71 percent of complaints at stage two, which tells me that we need to
get it better and get it right at stage one. So there's some really important things for
us to take away from here to focus on. The biggest complaint is repairs, and it's about
delays. So that fits into Stephen's piece of work around getting the planning and logistics
under our control, so the delays and failure to deliver are the thing that drive
complaints less so than the quality of the repair itself. So there's lots of
things in here I think that will help us to sort of move forward and the final
thing I'd say is that on the Ombudsman there were 50 cases, in 34 cases the
Ombudsman upheld those, but what we saw for the first time was a decrease in the
Ombudsman upholding complaints about our complaint handling.
So they normally say, you got the service delivery bit wrong,
you didn't fix the repair,
but you handled the complaint badly.
That is decreasing, and I think that's sort of a testimony
to the growth bid that we put in
and the extra support you put into that team.
So our complaint handling is no longer being seen
as a sort of main source of criticism from the Ombudsman.
So I think that reflects the work that we're putting in
to better handle the complaints.
Thank you.
Thank you, Karen.
Colleagues, I'll bring the Deputy Mayor in first
and I'll bring the former lead member, Kabir, of housing.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr Mayor.
My question was around page 16,
the housing ombudsman, which is positive.
But in terms of, it's a bit different question
regarding RSLs, because a lot of the tenants
and a lot of the residents are complaining and they go into the housing ombudsman.
A lot of the cases you are aware of as well, we've dealt with it, we've met,
but they've not received any response from the housing ombudsman.
Also, I wrote to many of the cases, Avi Mo them as well.
It's a standard response from them, but there's no follow -up, so what can be done?
I know it's not covered within the report.
And also my second point is around page 20, where it says
Stage two has been escalated
It's increased
Compared to last year is increased by 18 percent. So my question was around what we're doing to kind of
Make sure they stay with before it goes to the stage next stage and also final one is mr.
May you guys in regarding right to buy
Many residents, they approach us, they contact us.
During the application process, it's very slow.
And also, when it goes to the next stage,
legal are not contacting or responding.
And also it reflects within the report.
So what can be done from our side,
so the process is, we can fasten the process.
I think it's quite frustrating for the residents.
They wait for so long and the mortgage offer expires and then they contact us and we have to contact the council
So and influence see if we can extend the offer and final one was around
the
Regarding I know you've mentioned about the improvement on section for
Service improvement, but it was more around comms what we're doing a lot of the complaints a lot of the frustration is around
communication. So I can't see any communication improvements or anything like that. How we
can improve our communication with residents. Thank you.
Yeah. So on the Ombudsman, they have got a backlog of complaints. You'll see that in
this report, most of the decisions are on cases from 23 to 24. So there's a historic
backlog and we're still only getting decisions for cases referred in those years now. So
So I don't think there's anything you can do about that or we can do about that.
I just checked with Gullum.
He didn't think that there was an escalation rate way in which you can escalate
to the Ombudsman to ask somebody to be fast, their application to be fast track.
But we'll take that away and we'll ask about it.
But just we just generally know that there's an historic backlog with the Ombudsman.
Just in terms of the 18 percent, you're right.
the escalation rate went up to 24 %
and it was an 18 % increase.
I think it goes back to the point that I made about
we have to make sure, I mean some people just might not,
might disagree with the outcome,
so might disagree with the amount of compensation
that maybe we've given them,
but our compensation is in line with the Ombudsman code.
So some people may decide that, you know,
we didn't think we compensated enough at stage one,
Also they put in a complaint at a stage two level.
I mean, I think the fact that we upheld 71 % of stage twos
means that we need to get better at getting it right
at stage one because, you know,
obviously we don't want to see stage ones escalating.
I don't know if Gullan wants to come in.
Just picking up on the point around right to buy,
Deputy Mayor, so as you will be aware,
when the government changed the discount levels
for the right to buy process.
We received applications in that one year
that we would ordinarily receive
in a five to six year period.
We had around 1 ,500 applications,
of which at least a further two to 300 actually
were for other RSLs, which we had to sift through
and pass through.
Part of the reason for the delays are,
it's the level of cheques that they have to go through.
So there's lots of additional requirements
around anti -money laundering.
There's obviously been some updates in legislation
around fraud checking as well.
The service area, which has been audited,
has substantial assurance around this area, so obviously it goes through a process.
We are working to onboard an additional resource that will help us move a bit more faster.
I am very aware that there are other issues around other elements of the Council, whether
it's legal or fraud teams, which haven't necessarily increased capacity, and they are also equally
struggling to keep up, but it's something that we are raising with them to try and see
how we can make that process go faster.
What we do tell residents though is that we ask them not to take out mortgage offers before we let them know that it's the right time to do so.
What we're seeing is residents are prematurely going out to get mortgage offers before we've even agreed valuations and other details.
And that's why a lot of it is expiring before we're even ready in a position to agree the terms of any sort of sale.
I think there is some incorrect information, Gulam.
Just tell me, how long does it take?
I did convey anything, both residential and commercial.
I want to know how long it takes from beginning application in,
generally, most of the cases, to completion of a contract,
the conveyance thing.
I want to know how long, what period it takes.
I don't have the figure off the top of my head, but there are properties being sold now that have entered the system over a year and a half ago.
And it's been because of various conveyancing delays.
I want to note from you, and John, Jonathan can you hear me too please here?
I want to note both legal and the service.
I want to know on average of those 400 applications we've got,
I want to know on average how long it takes from an application, all the applications
came in before 21st of October 2024.
And now we're in another October, tomorrow 2026, two years now.
Within those two years I want to know how many applications we saw off, what was the
average time to see of those applications successfully, how many applications that remains
to be seen of and what stage we are in. That's one. Two is incorrect. We have put in extra capacity in legal.
We put money in about three years ago. Saeed, you were the lead member. We put money in three years ago.
More lawyers we put in and we put in a sizeable capacity in. You've got sizeable capacity in legal.
I don't know about the 14, that's for you to tell us you need more capacity.
I know you have to do due diligence, but you've got capacity in housing.
So I want to know how long it takes for housing to do due diligence and hand it over to the lawyers,
and how long the lawyers take. I've done residential convincing.
It's run of the mill. It soon takes more than three months, complete residential convincing.
three to four months. And I want to say on record, I'm sorry, but our convincing, or that residential or conventional is terribly slow.
So you can pass that message on to Shupriya and Mark Norman. We need to speed up things.
Because it's absolutely right, people have a loan, people have a mortgage.
I have come across a case where people have renewed their mortgage two or three times
and the mortgage has been terminated or on the verge of being terminated.
People each time they have to go and ask for an extension, it costs them more money.
But more importantly the frustration and the difficulties people have to go through when
they want to buy a house or doing the business and when they've got a loan and they lose
that loan, they go back, the interest rate increases etc. It's quite difficult for households.
So we want to know what the timeline you have for residential convincing and commercial
convincing. I know commercial convincing case is awfully long time it's taken. It's not
on. When we put in more capacity into commercial convincing and convincing generally and I
I want to know what it takes for you to do your due diligence and hand it over to legal police.
We want to note on that to the appropriate forum police. David, yeah? Thank you.
Please, Kobi.
Thank you. Just on that note, I also wanted to say the lack of communication as well and responsiveness,
particularly from the legal team where residents are right with them because naturally they're not only frustrated
but they're worried that they're going to lose their mortgages.
And as a council, our responsiveness is very, very limited.
So that's another key area and that leads me on to...
But we can't say it flippantly. That's extremely important.
It is. It is one of the key areas.
We have seen people that come to my surgery,
written to us three or four times, even then they've not had a response.
that until we members get involved, then they get a courtesy response and some indication of holding response.
It's not right. You know, we get paid to do a job and our customer care has to substantially improve.
We can't be dealing with our residency flippantly. We've got to respond to people. It's not right.
So I wanted to pick up on page 24 repairs. In 2025 -26 repair service generated the highest volume of complaints in comparison to all other service areas and the recorded reasons.
Delays in completing normal, priority, routine repairs within the 20 working days time scale.
Missed appointments, repair jobs being incorrectly marked as completed, leaving issues, so on and so forth it goes on.
Now how long will the department take to get to a place where we will have satisfactory levels of repairs?
I want to leave it generalised rather than go into the detail, because year after year,
prior to this I was the lead member, we have got this issue consistently coming up again
and again and again.
We can point in all directions, but the fact is I want to understand what good looks like,
what infrastructure changes we need to make for that good to look like and when we will
and get the output so that residents don't face this ongoing consistent problems with repairs.
And the same reasons coming up year after year.
Council, I'm happy to answer that.
We've got some immediate plans that we're putting into place that we think will,
over the next few months, leading into the next financial year,
resolve some of the main issues around communication,
around planning, around appointments,
around a 360 view of the repairs process.
And that is often the nub of the issue.
It's that lack of comms, the appointment,
the control of the appointment, the control of the repair.
And we've got some plans to change that
over the next months, you know, four to six months.
And we're putting those into place.
We had some clear direction from the Mayor and the Chief Exec around that a few weeks ago.
And then just following on from that, even the reporting phone number, calling up, the cutting off, the non -responsiveness.
Again, we need to track and monitor and if there are particular areas or sort of routes that are causing difficulties,
we need to be responsive towards that.
I think directors need to take direct action in relation to those failings in those areas.
I know we have invested quite a lot in terms of telephoning technology and so on and so forth.
So we have the monitoring tools there.
I just want to pick up on the area around neighbourhood services and delays in succession decisions,
particularly for discretionary cases.
Now, my understanding is that this doesn't fall in housing management, but more towards
the housing options team.
So if we can get an understanding, because this is coming this report, have we got anyone
from housing options to explain why there are delays, because that's what the Ombudsman
is saying.
I would say that it comes to the housing ombudsman as opposed to the local government ombudsman
where lettings would go because this relates to a council tenant who was seeking a succession
from the housing management panel. So they would have gone to the housing ombudsman as
opposed to the local government ombudsman where most of Jennifer's complaints would
go to.
But my point is why are we getting those complaints?
It's identifying that delays are taking place.
So why do we have delays in succession according to the governing bodies?
I think it's a case of the panels are certainly happening regularly.
But I think there is a bit of a recognised issue with the administration of the panel
in terms of how quickly they communicate a decision.
It's something that has been fed back.
so often there is quite a significant time lag between when the decision is made and that is then conveyed to the individual.
And obviously that sits slightly outside of our remit, but equally I think sometimes when there is the decision doesn't come positively,
the details as to why and the information around how that is appealed, that can be improved and that's been in the area that has been flagged up by the Ombudsman before
and there have been some improvements but I think that that process could do with some improvement.
Sorry, so then I'll have to redirect that to David.
Sorry, David. So, no, it's on the same point, because this doesn't fall under housing management,
it falls under housing options and that decision -making process.
And if it's come up last year as well, what are we doing about it and why is it reoccurring
in terms of it coming up as one of our failings again?
and what else do we need to do in order to get those decision and communication expediated
because there seems to be a real gap with that, including members' inquiries and so on.
Yeah, I was just going to come back in to say obviously this is part of the homelessness
and housing options transformation programme. We're strengthening management capacity and
oversight of all of that so that we have better performance management information.
I know it is a big priority for Jennifer and the strategic lead that she will be appointing
into that service.
But we will look at how we bring performance management information on how the panel is
performing around that communication issue and how we monitor that.
Councillor Shafir, then I will bring Deborah to Mayor and then I will bring Foisal in.
Thank you, Mr Mayor.
I just wanted to...
Do you want to come in?
Okay, okay.
Now come in now, then I'll bring Councillor Shabian afterwards.
Yeah, yeah, go on, please do. Put your mic on. Thank you.
Yeah, just to come back to the deputy mayor's point about service improvement on complaints.
So, a few things to mention.
The triage function for complaints currently sits within the Housing Service Centre.
That's been transferred over to the complaints team.
That will mean we'll have better oversight of how complaints are monitored and allocated.
One of the things we want to make sure is to elevate to the right team, to the right person on the first occasion, that's number one.
The second is we've done some recruitment over the past few weeks.
We've got two additional officers within the repairs coordination team, another officer to be recruited imminently.
We also recruited to a senior service complaints officer in the complaints team and the complaints officer come in due course as well.
Additionally, we have learning huddles every month in the complaints team.
So we get together, we look at complaints over the past month and look at where we could have done better,
learn from our mistakes and we also look at the HR determinations that come through on a regular basis to learn from those as well.
So we are doing things to improve the complaint service and you will see in the next item under the compliance section
that stage one complaints have been improving since April to now.
I will let you come back on the other point in a minute.
Let us take Councillor Shabir.
Thank you, obviously.
Thank you, Mr Mayor.
I just wanted to welcome what David mentioned about learning from the complaints.
It's important.
It's not just the number of complaints that we're receiving.
We need to kind of have the synopsis of what is going wrong, where we're going wrong, and
it's important that as an organisation and as a council, we're building trust with our
and it's important to have that kind of work displayed and have that in the week.
I see that on a weekly basis you've introduced weekly performance reporting, which is something that is welcome,
but we just want to know how you're managing that weekly reporting.
And obviously, Councillor Kobiur mentioned about the repairs, I just want to go into that,
but with the summer we've had, it's been quite nice in terms of the winter coming up.
I was really prepared to make sure that the repairs are on par with the current situation coming up in the winter.
Those are the two things. Thank you.
Okay. Do you want to, Steve, or anyone?
Just to pick up on that last point, we are doing our winter preparedness work as we speak.
We're looking at how we're working with the repairs call centre and how we're going to get those repairs out and completed.
We've done a lot of work on water as we know and actually last year it was a water issue more than heating.
But we're not taking our eye off the ball on heating as well.
We're preparing for AWABs law phase 2 which is at the end of November.
So there's a lot happening, but behind the scenes, we are strengthening and we are preparing for it.
It's often the other side of the New Year where we have the temperature issues.
So we're in time for that.
Thank you, thanks Steve.
Yeah, please.
Just to say that isn't just on repairs, we're looking across the piece.
Gulam is in the process of employing some additional seasonal workers over the winter period in the coal centre.
when we get higher volumes of calls and we also work with holding our contractors to count on this as well
and trying to get clear assurances from them about their capacity over what can be a visitor period
so that winter preparedness work is across the piece and also housing officers in terms of extra vulnerability cheques
and those kind of things.
Thank you and just keep extra supply of water somewhere, it's important, when you've got burst pipes
places on a lot of stress. I know you've been very good during the summer in particular when we went and helped RSLs with the water supply.
I'm very grateful.
Karen, do you want to come in at this stage?
Just to pick up Councillor Ahmed's point about learning from complaints, you're right.
It isn't just about the numbers, although the numbers give you a sense of the types of complaints,
but also the volumes and whether they're actually escalating or increasing or decreasing.
At the back of the slide pack, there is a couple of slides that try to make some of the learning from the complaints more accessible.
And some of the learning from the complaints requires us to do things that don't cost anything.
And often that's just improved training.
Improved training in terms of the timely, the way in which you apply a compensation.
people often are not necessarily applying the code, so it's just a training issue.
And then also having some targeted training in terms of record keeping.
Sometimes complaints get upheld because our record keeping isn't where it needs to be.
So some of the learning from complaints in order to better manage residence inquiries
will be around training, which really is about a culture shift and sort of,
That sort of stuff doesn't cost as much.
Thank you.
Fozal.
I can see the total number of complaints obviously on a downward trajectory,
which we all welcome since 2023.
However, what's concerning is the stage two complaints
are on an upwards trajectory.
Also, the number of cases being referred to the housing ombudsman, there was an increase
of nearly 40 per cent and also cases involving maladministration was up 89 per cent.
My question really is why is that the case when cases are – level of number of cases
are dropping, why are more cases being referred to stage 2 and the housing ombudsman?
Is it, you know, because more residents are unhappy with our kind of responses at stage
one at the initial stages or are they more aware of the legal kind of recourse they have
options? What more can we do to kind of find a resolution with our customers, with our
residents early on?
Thank you. Can I just quickly just come on to that, Karen, before you come in please.
So the statistics say 34 received a finding of maladministration compared to 18 last year.
gone up so clearly we couldn't deal with it at stage one or stage two and it went
to the Ombudsman. I know you're saying Ombudsman didn't make a
finding of it, we didn't handle it in time, I understand, but however it is a
malnourishment application and has increased and in return correspondently
the findings have increased, that's not a good thing for us, and also the conversation has increased.
I know that everybody is going to come on to that. So if you can just explain that to us, please.
I think in part you've answered your own question because you said that is it because of increased awareness
that people can have this legal rest to the Ombudsman, so we always promote people can go to the Ombudsman,
it's always there as an option, and also you said that people just might not be happy with our response,
so they choose to do that.
So the escalation might be because of those things,
but I think it's also because if we think about the amount
of stage two that we upheld, we upheld nearly 75 %
of all stage twos.
It might have been that we should have upheld more
because we didn't actually respond in the way
that the tenant was expecting or in line with the code.
So I think for me, it's about an Abdul manages the team,
Abdul manages the team.
is for making sure that we're getting it right first time,
applying the compensation code.
If we failed, we say that at the very beginning.
We get more, we are upheld more at stage one
to avoid the escalation at stage two.
So I think it's about tackling at that front end.
I think that's really important.
I'd also say that if you look at the Ombudsman's complaints,
again, the historic ones from 23 to 24,
there's a plain a lot of catch up
and a lot of the improvements that we've put in place
since THH came back in house,
are probably not coming through in the Ombudsman's casework,
because we would hope to see some of the improvements that we've done
are actually leading to less cases getting to administration judgement.
But if you look at the complaints that get that administration, it's predominantly leaks,
and that's why we're doing all of that work around the leaks squad.
It's invariably the way we manage, or we poorly manage, leaks in some cases.
So that's why the leaks team is a really important response to those maladministration cases.
Thank you. Thank you, Kevin. Deputy Mayor.
Thank you, Mr Mayor. My final point was around page 30 compensation.
I mean, if we look at the figures, if we compare it with last year, it's 11 % increase again.
And it's just, I mean, this is quite concerning.
If we look at... I just wanted to understand...
Delay over 35 ,000 compensation and then we're saying other reasons,
nearly over 15 ,000. What is that? What are other reasons?
I get the poor complaint and to be honest, the improvement plan
on compensation, I'm not fully convinced.
I think it needs to be more robust, just training and looking at the Ombudsman policy.
I don't think it's good enough.
And also, I want to understand, in terms of repairs and goodwill payments and so on,
I'm sure it's because of repairs and so on,
Is contractors paying the compensation?
What's the...
Recharge them.
Recharge them.
So maybe that needs to reflect the report as well in future.
And sorry, two things on that.
Do we recharge them 100 %?
So do we have to recover the 118 ,000 in its entirety?
That's what I want to know.
I would say we haven't because some of the failings are also down to us.
So it would be a combination.
But on the compensation our leaks squad which is this squad we're developing which will
concentrate on complex leaks will reduce the amount of compensation we pay, will reduce
the amount we pay through disrepair because we're going to be fixing leaks quicker and
it will increase satisfaction.
And again, this is quite a long game what we're doing today
Will have the benefit into next year and the ombudsman's, you know, as I say with the backlog. It's gonna take some time
Can you please can I request so can request in the paper in the future can just break down?
The compensation payments would have to name people. I'm not not in block, but how many people
How many households is it we're paying compensation to?
And per household, what is it?
Can't be hundreds of people, thousands of people.
I mean, I just want to understand what the maximum would pay out, what the minimum would pay out.
I just want to get an idea.
What we don't know, overall it's 118 ,000.
I just want to understand. Is that okay, the gravity of it?
Yeah, and we'll break it down and show how much we've recharged to contractors as well.
and what is we recharged the contractors.
Just coming back to Deputy Mayor's point about the compensation code
and the improvements not being strong enough.
We're reviewing the compensation payment process and the code.
So we're more than happy to sort of come back to you again
and say, tell you how we think we can be strengthening beyond training
so people are actually given the right amount out.
Because there is an Ombudsman code for compensation
And if you find failure, the conversation has to follow.
It's not that we're just making it up, we're following the code.
So the training is important for that because it stops somebody escalating it.
But we'll come back to you on that.
And in that, we want to know also in the presentation, if we resolve something satisfactorily,
or settled before going to Ombudsman, by way of conversation, we want to know that too, please.
Can you report that back through this process too? It's important.
Do you remember? You got that, yeah? You understood, yeah? It's important.
We want to know for the other route, resolution route, arbitration route, what we settled and how much money we incurred.
And don't forget officers time too.
You're done? I just want to ask one thing, please, yeah? Thank you. I think you've covered what I was going to ask.
It's on page 30, paragraph 1, we're saying...
When we say, with 31 % of stage 1 responses being concluded and sent out of time...
When we say out of late, late responses, we still understand what's the average, how late are we?
Do we know? How many days, how many weeks, how many months?
I think it would be a matter of days, I don't think it would be a matter of weeks.
We've got some that give performance before and place on the next session.
Right, okay. But you're talking about days, yeah?
That's fine, that's fine.
One of the things we know is that 10 days anyway.
That's fine, that's fine.
That's fine. And just quickly, maybe in pedantic here, page 24 there's a graph.
Stage 1, I'm not good at math, Said, Said is in thalaris, it just doesn't add up to 100%.
Stage 2 adds up to 99 point something. Stage 1 is about 38%. Should that be 100 % or shouldn't be 100 %?
So you see the graph at the top, stage one.
It's 25, 25, 10.
That's it.
It's my eyesight failing me.
I think my reading of it is that the lines at the bottom are the ones where we have failed or there has been a delivery to the service.
So it shouldn't add up to 100 because those are the categories where we failed to provide the service rather than 100 % of the claims.
Maybe it's the way I understood the figures.
I've understood that stage one, the room, where it says 25, 28 and 1, does not come up.
Yeah, you're right.
I don't think it should.
So David's saying it doesn't need to.
Just want to make sure we've got the presentation right.
Based on the complaints, 25 % of it, I don't think it's all laid out 100%.
I think each one is his individual metric.
Right.
Okay.
Are you with me?
I'm sure I misunderstood.
I get it wrong when it comes to maths.
We will go back and amend that and correct it.
Okay, please, in terms of public consumption, I don't want people to think.
So I've got nothing else.
Thank you, keep up the good work.
Go on.
So one final point on this section, Mr Mayor and colleagues.
The two documents mentioned by Councillor Armant at the beginning, so the annual performance
report for complaints and the self -assessment, both are requirements of the Housing and investment
code.
We are also required to publish them on our website.
But they need to be accompanied by a statement by the lead member.
We are happy to draught something for the lead member.
And if you wish to agree that, that's fine, or you can make changes.
But it needs to be accompanied by a statement by the lead member before we put it on the web page.
Go on.
COVID?
I was just going to say, could you identify which council are?
We've got one, two, three.
No, it's lead member.
Lead member, he said it.
Lead member.
COVID, yeah.
Lead member.
Just for the record may I repeat the previous years or it might be?
Yeah, no it's you. Just do a video for Councillor Said. He'll be happy with that.
I get the box.
With the graphs, do a video with the graphs.
Okay, now it's okay. Thank you. It's okay David.
Thank you very much. Thanks for your candidness. Thank you.
Okay, shall we move on to 5 .2, Said?
This is for our housing management performance and compliance report as of June 2026.
Obviously things have changed from what we're reporting at June, so there have been improvements
from that point onwards over the last two months.
So I'll just quickly say the performance improved across most indicators in June 2026, with
12 out of the 17 measures showing a positive trend.
The call answer rates reached the highest level this financial year, although it's not the best yet, but it is improving.
While dampened mould works, orders and residence letters reached 99 .5 % compliance with ALBS low timescales.
Although stage 1 complaints performance remained below target due to staffing, vacancies, recruitment and the process improvements are expected to drive the improvement going forward.
Fire safety performance remains stable with additional staffing and targeted work streams in place to reduce overdue fire risk assessment actions.
That's just a quick overview of our June performance, Mr. May.
David, please.

5 b) Housing Management Performance and Compliance Report June 2026

I just made a point that Cancer RMS made that on a number of measures we've made substantial improvements since this dataset was produced.
so particularly in areas like closing down fire risk assessment actions and that will show through in future committees.
The other thing to say is that in a number of the compliance areas we hold ourselves to a very high standard in housing
and we talked a lot with the housing regulator at the point of inspection.
So for instance for gas safety we only would mark it as green if we reached 100 %
But because we often can't achieve access, because people deny us access, it's virtually impossible to get to 100 % also because it's a backlog in the course.
So even where we are at 98 .84%, for instance, we will mark that as amber because it's important to say that we will never relax about gas safety until we're at 100%.
But we're absolutely doing everything we can to secure access, including following the legal process.
So I think though cancer, I'm at skipping the overall picture, which is that you know a good number of measures
We're seeing a positive trend
Okay, thank you Councillor Kobe
So
We discussed it earlier on and the data is there but just wanted to pick up on page 59 and the other statutory implications
I think one thing that was left out of the report is the external auditor's assessment,
who in turn issued statutory recommendations.
And that in turn also has an impact on the Council's materialality threshold.
So that's not really in there in terms of risks and other sort of statutory implications
on the council as a whole.
Do you expect anyone to comment on that?
No.
It's your comment, yep, that's fine.
Okay, that's good.
That's good. Anyone else?
Karen wants to respond.
Go on, Karen.
Yeah, I mean, I could come back on that point to say that we're reporting to colleagues
who are responding to that statutory notice about all the work we're doing.
We've just had an internal audit on the governance of the whole housing management since the council in source has a management
So what is the scrutiny and oversight of performance? So we've got that audit back. I think that's about to be reported to
To the Audit Committee soon
I think it's a it's the it's a it's a good assurance that we've got from that internal audit and I think that will play
into the statutory notice
Anyone else
Once again, the trajectory for backlog of the complaints are quite good because the
resources in July and August were put there to make sure that the backlog is carried forward.
What I'd like to comment on is the members' inquiry, the response time.
Obviously we don't know how many days by, but it's 46%.
I know we've got new staffing and there's new resources going through.
So how can, as members, we have a duty to our constituents and people who elected us.
And it's important that when the inquiry is made, and I know, I mean I can thank Steve Platt for some of the work that you've done in terms of responding to me in my constituent as we had issues with the water and so on and so forth.
So I think that was really commendable from your side in reacting really quickly as well as Gulam and the whole team.
But overall I think just members inquiry becoming better because at the end of the day we have a perception outside of the Councillor, we gave the book to the Councillor, he hasn't come back with it.
So we want to break that perception and how we can improve that, that is something that I'm looking forward to going forward.
Don't ask me yet, I want to come on the back of that, but let David come in first then you can come on. I'm going to talk.
I think, I mean, first of all, this level of performance is not acceptable and we're really clear about that.
We actually didn't previously report this to this committee but we made the decision to bring it to this committee
and we will report it to every committee because we want to hold ourselves transparently and be open to account on this.
We could have waited, the figures are already looking much better and we could have waited until we'd done that to bring this through
but we didn't want to do that because we want to be really clear with everybody that we
will not accept or tolerate this level of performance in terms of members inquiries
for all the reasons you've set out.
So we are seeing an improving trend and we're being demanding about that and we're now getting
this reported to the Housing Performance Improvement Committee on a monthly basis in relation to
the housing management complaint members inquiries that we get and I would expect to see a turnaround
as you have put a lot of investment into this corporate labour which we've benefited from in housing
so I'm expecting to see this performance continue to improve from what has been a very bad position
but this is why we've decided to make it a measure that we report here.
Thank you the team for doing that, at least it saves our back a bit.
people get to see it's not us not responding to them,
the service is not responding to our inquiries.
Can I ask you David, you said there's been a slight improvement
and thank you we acknowledge that we brought resources here.
What is the improvement?
This is June 26th. Go on Karen, tell us.
So in August the response rate is 64 % whereas in your PAC it's 45%.
So it is improving.
I mean it is an area just generally of poor performance.
I would say that the staff who are answering the complaints are also the staff who are answering the members' inquiries.
So you know there's something there about the capacity, it all goes to the same people.
So as we're getting on top of the complaints a bit more, I think this leaves us a huge opportunity to improve on the members' inquiries.
Most of the members' inquiries come to Stephen's area.
So it's about us working with his team closely in terms of how to respond to a member's inquiry.
There are some member's inquiries where people write chapter and verse about the whole history of somebody's repair history.
It's about answering the question and being really sort of concise about that.
I mean, in terms of member's inquiry, they're called member's inquiries, but for me they're resident inquiries.
And I say that to staff. This is an inquiry from a resident who wants to know something.
It might be coming through a member, but it's a resident enquiry and we need to answer the
resident's question and do it to the best of our ability.
So performance is going up, we're reporting here for the first time and we'll continue
reporting it and hopefully that capacity in the team where we're getting on top of complaints
will assist in terms of assisting with MEs.
I welcome the increase in response from 45 % to 64 % as at August.
Just explain to us who, when the Members Incorporate comes in through a member, whether Mayor or
Councillor or MP, who deals with it, which team deals with it?
If it's housing, if it's something else, which team responds to it?
What's the process? Just want to understand.
It depends. It's a triage process Mr. Mayor, but also depends.
It's a triage process, so depending on what the inquiry is about.
It could be about one thing, it could be about a number of different things.
So each portion of that complaint or that inquiry goes to the relevant team or section to respond to.
And they're given a set deadline to respond so that we can get the response out within the agreed time frame.
So it depends on the inquiry itself.
Additional resources we put in for members inquiries, where does that sit?
So that was the additional resources that you gave to Leah's team, wasn't it?
So Leah's team is dealing with the local government ombudsman sort of complaints and inquiries and MEs.
We didn't necessarily get much of that resource because generally speaking our numbers are reasonably small.
If you think the biggest area for members' inquiries is housing options, where you're into the 600s and 700s, ours are 128.
So we've been managing with our own resources and haven't necessarily been taking advantage of the additional resources.
The additional resources I was referring to was the resources that you gave us to improve our performance around complaints,
because that team is also now helping with the MEs.
I'm talking about when David, you and Jennifer came to us, you were the lead member before the election
and you asked for additional resources we put in to improve the members inquiries and the response times
where is that team sitting? That's what I want to know. We put that money in because we were assured
that our response time for members inquiries and members inquiries will improve substantially. Where's that?
Can I just say that team is sitting with Leah, but that's specifically supporting Jennifer's
backlog which is the largest in the council.
So, and that doesn't obviously relate to these figures before you tonight because these figures
relate to the members inquiries we get in relating to our landlord function.
So all of the housing, the homelessness cases are dealt with separately.
Just to say.
But Gillian wants to come in.
Thank you, mate.
So just to explain the set up in housing management, we don't have a bespoke team that deals with
members' enquiries.
So they're often allocated through member support service and they're allocated to the
individual service areas.
The relevant officers who will typically do the complaint response, and they're not bespoke
complaint handlers so using my service area as an example it will be my
neighbourhood managers who are also doing day -to -day tenants in management they'll
be the ones who draught the response in these whole services it will be this
area similar I think it's only Steve's area who's got repairs officers who
focus and specialise a bit more on these sorts of queries but most other parts of
housing management don't have bespoke resources this is absorbed within the
overall function okay I'm sorry I'm going on a bit about so important
because we members have been treated shortly over the last four or five years.
I'm the mayor of this council, my response time for members inquiries is six, seven months.
If mine is that long, I wonder what it is for councillors.
I'll come on to Steve.
I'm not saying it's your department, by the way, I'm saying generally.
that is unacceptable. Where a resident has come to the mayor and it's six, seven months,
sometimes more than that, I've had one or two cases, been over a year, they've not received
a response and sadly it's to do with housing options at David, not had a response. What
if it is, that is absolutely unacceptable. For members to be treated in that way, just
and they're not, they're residents effectively,
they're not members of the residents,
we are the advocates for our residents.
If a resident comes to us directly,
just, I'll just worry how they're treated.
So, if I could bring you in, David,
what I do want to note, what I want, David,
I know it's not your responsibility to be fair,
it's the chief executives, but,
this bit is to do with housing management, yeah?
It's not housing options, it's not other services.
So you've given us a report back on that, thank you,
and it's upward trajectory. It's not good enough, but at least it's upward trajectory.
We need to bring the other elements together, David, and we need to bring it to the Vice -Chairboard.
How's an option we want to know, and the other ones. So if a team is in less team, we want to know,
we want to bring the whole members in quarry together, and how you deliver it to our tree -edge,
whatever you call it, that's a matter to me.
But in terms of the council responding to membership
worries, we want a paper on that,
whether it's housing repairs, whether it's neighbourhood,
whether it's housing option, whether it's general other
stuff.
We want to bring it together.
And we can't control ourselves.
We can't request and try, go to the housing regulator.
But we're going to bring a holistic paper
to understand the performance in each of the areas.
It's so important to us. I'm grateful for you putting this as a measure.
Very grateful to you. That is very important because still we're getting responses not been done on time.
Forget the ten days, twenty days. We're talking about months there.
Months there. And that's not on because people come to our residence and rightfully so, they have a go at us.
And they're going through a lot of stress. Matter's not been acted upon in the meantime and people are not getting response.
Please take it.
Yeah, I mean, I suppose just in terms of the landlord function and our housing stock, relatively
speaking compared to the
house, we don't actually get huge numbers of members inquiries, which is why we should
never have got into the position that we're in. And it's why we are now turning it around
and we're going to monitor it far more closely so that we don't get back into that position.
and I'm confident that we do have the resources and capability to get on top of it in terms of
our work as a landlord. In terms of the homelessness side,
I do know that there's been a huge reduction in the backlog of members inquiries
which had reached an eye -wateringly high number. The work that Jennifer's doing to completely
restructure and transform her service and put additional management capacity in, I think will lead to
much tighter performance management moving forward.
But what I do know in terms of that backlog is that there's been a substantial reduction
as a result of the extra investment.
You will see that data because Leah is now compiling it on a monthly basis and she's
sending it to all directors, the chief executive, corporate directors and heads of service on
a monthly basis so we can all see her statistics and that is going to be brought to Merrill
Advisory Board.
So I think you are going to see what you've requested, Mayor.
I think you will see a big improvement in terms of the homelessness and housing options
area and I'm confident with the new structure that Jennifer is putting in place that there's
going to be better performance management of this moving forward.
We're already on that trajectory for the landlord area and you will see this at every one of
these meetings moving forward.
Thank you, and I think David you can convey this to Steve, please.
I think what you've done here is fantastic for each of the performance areas when you go report back.
You know the quarterly report, we get back performance.
There should be a section of members inquiries.
That's the only way we can, a KPI on that, if you can kindly make a note of that.
It's only fair if you're doing it, I think everyone else should be held to the same standard.
Why should you stand out, whether you do good or bad?
Someone else, others should also be held to account.
It's only fair.
Okay, David, please, yeah?
Yeah, I'll convey that to the executive.
Thank you.
Okay, now Talas not heard, but when it comes to the quarterly performance, KPIs, we should
have that factored in.
Okay, please, as a KPI, we have no choice.
Thank you.
Karen, soy steak gone.
Just wanted to make the point that if a member writes to any of us as directors, we also
reply to them, which isn't actually a formal recorded members' inquiry, but it's an
inquiry from a member on behalf of residents, so there's a lot of work that happens there.
But then just to let you know, in the last few weeks, I've been getting lots and lots
of members' inquiries to sign off.
I've noticed the difference.
So that is coming through to us to come out and I recognise the backlog but we are working
through them.
Thank you, thank you for that and I just want to compliment you and everyone else, you do
go out of your way, if there's an issue you do go out of your way to make sure on the
ground to deal with it as quickly as possible if the contractors aren't doing it, to make
sure they're doing it.
So we are grateful for that, we just want to make sure generally we're doing well.
Karen.
I mean just to say that it is the first time we're reporting this so we can
actually enhance the reporting information that we're putting here so I
was just saying to Apple you know can we report in here the longest ME that's
outstanding so you know how long has things been outstanding and what's the
average response time that we're dealing with so we can make sure that we you
know we're providing more information when we respond to this and just on the
KPI we had a session with corporate colleagues recently where we were
looking at what the suite of KPIs be and under the banner the council is listening.
We all said in our DLT, well you need members' enquiries and complaints in there.
So hopefully that will translate into the dashboard.
And we're working on a principle agreed to this council to expand the corporate management
team, a corporate branch for customer services.
We want someone to pick up on this rather than fragmentally in a solo way reporting
In fact, it needs to be done in a holistic way and a council -wide way.
Thank you. Can I just quickly comment on two other matters?
Complaints responded on time, so I know you dealt with it in previous papers.
That's 61 % target on 90%. Has that increased now?
That was June 20... So that's good.
So that's good for the record. Now it's 77%.
Calls answered, that generally is good, I believe it's 80 %
Has that increased now? It's 80 %
80 .4 %
That has had a small dip Mayor because unfortunately we had some unexpected technical issues with NEC
because of the allocations upgrade
OK, keep up the upward trajectory please, yeah
We dealt with members inquiries, emergency repair sector on time
I think that's good, very good
96 .4 % target of 100 % in life is difficult to get 100 % but it's good as far as duration.
Non -emergency targets on target I think 88 .8 % target of 95 % called David.
Just to say on Carl's answer one of the things we do look at very carefully is how do we compare with the same month last year?
Because we do get some seasonal changes depending on demand.
What I'm really pleased about is if you look at this year's results we are doing better than the same month last year every single month.
But we do, especially when we come to that January, February period we do typically see it.
Nonna mentions repairs, is that increased or is it the same holding was there dip in that?
89 for a month.
Okay, so we've increased. Fantastic. Good, good.
Repair satisfaction, it's good, we're getting there.
I think it's very good.
That's quite up to 80.
Is it? Good, very good.
What I would say is obviously we've got a couple of big ticket items that are going to come in,
which can only improve this as well, so not resting on our laurels.
No, it's very good. On the whole, and home circling fibres, I understand that point you made, the other one.
On the whole, this is upward trajectory, thank you, keep up the good work.
And occasionally we give you a hard time, it's for our residents, it's accountable to them.
Thank you.
There's just one more thing to mention, just on the emergency repairs attended to on target.
And bearing in mind an emergency repair is a two hour response time.
So it's 96 .4 in your pack and it's 97 .1, so that also is going up.
and when you think about it, 31 % of all of our jobs are emergencies.
So that's a lot of jobs being responded to in two hours.
I did just want to particularly commend the work of our income team, who have got really
good results in terms of income collection, but also leasehold collections.
So we collected 100 % of leasehold charges and it actually declined because previously
we were above 100 % because of collecting some arrears.
But I do think our income collection has been consistently very strong.
That team sits under good arms.
So I just wanted to highlight that.
Okay.
So okay, quick one, then we'll move on.
Just really quickly, the percentage of calls answered, do we have a breakdown of people
calling for repairs, are people calling for a complaint?
So departmental breakdown, yeah, if we can get that.
Please, yeah.
Thank you. Great. Thank you. Sorry. Okay. So can we note the paper report? Thank you.

5 c) Tenant Satisfaction Measures 2025/26 Annual Report

Quickly move on to 5 .3. Okay. Please.
Yes, may I quickly? So tenant satisfaction measures annual report for last year showed a positive progress with eight out of the twelve
Tenant perception measures improving and ten performing above the London average
Including a five percent rise in overall tenant satisfaction
eleven of the fourteen management information measures also improved now areas of improvement required is including the
perception of home safety
the communication with tenants and the communal area maintenance which are being addressed
through Your Voice, our action programme which we can discuss in detail in the next agenda
item. But I think overall the picture does seem positive when it comes to tenant satisfaction
measures. David.
Okay, good. David, please.
Just briefly, with tenant perception measures we treat them as an opportunity to understand
and gain insight from what our residents are thinking.
So even in areas where we perform very well
and where we're above the London average,
we always go back to the residents
who express dissatisfaction and do follow -up calls
to try and identify issues and understand what we can do
to resolve the problems that they're experiencing.
And when you take the example of residents
feeling safe in their home,
that can mean many different things to different residents.
So as much as it's important to look at the overall percentage, we try and understand
what are the factors that impact that because for some it could be about the wider neighbourhood,
for some it could be a specific safety issue in their block, for others it might be antisocial
behaviour.
But what we try and do is we go and speak to the residents who have expressed dissatisfaction.
This is all about gaining insights.
We want the highest possible scores and we want our residents to be as satisfied as possible.
But as long as there's 1 % of people who are not satisfied, we will follow up with them and we will find out why
Very good approach can I take everything I'm being
Thank you, I think this is a very good report
In terms of tenants perception measures. I think we're
Apart from I think two or three or four. We're kind of above London average
So well done for that, but what can we do to beat the London average?
That was my question. Do we have to follow the London outreach?
Can we just see 80 -90 %? What can we do to do that?
That was my question.
Second one on management information measures.
Gas safety cheques compared to last year were 90 .5%.
Just wanted to know why there is a dip.
There is an issue of access with gas, there is an issue with courts, with enforcing access
where people are not letting us in. So that's probably feeding into that debt.
Thank you, go on.
So just in terms of how do we get better and get above the London average, at the back
of the pack there's a whole series of issues where when people have given us a dissatisfied
answer we've gone back and found out what that is. So that's why we know ASB is partially
a driver for not feeling unsafe because we've gone back and asked people why did you give
that answer. So at the back of the pack it says you said this and what we're doing. So
whenever we get those negative responses we go back and try to work out what is it that
we need to change. So there's a number of examples at the back which picks up how we're
improving in order to address those. So I could go through some of those but they're
in the pack. I mean I guess one of the things that we're trying to do as well is to really
improve on the cons that we're pushing out to residents because the more we feel like
we're doing an awful lot for residents but residents won't necessarily know about it
So if they're asked a question, they can't relate it to something because they haven't seen it or haven't been told about it.
So Councillor Larmatt and I today had a slide pack from the comms of all of the next wave of the comms,
which is going to be pushed out to advise tenants of all of the things that we're doing around fire safety,
how we're investing the $608 million, what it means for their blocks.
So people will start to see more visible presence from the council,
both in videos and in photographs and in material on their states,
so that of all the things that we are doing,
they will be able to sort of recognise that.
Now they may not be picked up in a survey and asked a question about it,
but there will be a broader, a more broader common strategy about what we're doing.
It might influence some of the perception measures.
Please.
So, I just want to come in and I know I've raised this with David separately, but I think
it's important to acknowledge.
Sometimes, particularly around keeping residents safe, we're the cause of the problem in the
way we approach our housing allocations and place sort of quite prolific individuals within
vulnerable housing settings, particularly if I may mention places like
Bentworth Court where we've brought quite prolific individuals into
those blocks which is generally an over 50s block with lots of pensioners and
elderly people and then those homes become cuckooed homes as well and then we
have to spend a lot of time trying to go through enforcement action, eviction
processes through the courts, but it was us who put those individuals into those properties.
There's also other elements without going into specific details and approaches. So I
think as I spoke to David before, we need to have a wider thinking approach between
housing options, housing management, adult social care and community safety on how we
operate and deal with that. A lot of those safety issues around ASB are done by social
certain cohorts and we need to see how tendencies match up to individuals needs and if those
tendencies aren't secure enough or don't provide enough support, it's not appropriate for us
to put them in those settings and we need to put them in other more supported settings.
Can I just come in, so I think you've raised some really important points there and you've
spoken and I have spoken to Jennifer Winter about it who oversees the scheme. She accepts
that there is a need to improve the way that we administer that scheme and the decision
making around who we allocate homes from and their readiness for actually living in a home
and managing their own home. I think we've got that wrong in the past and it has led
to the kind of consequences that you've described. So we want to be far more rigorous when we're
assessing whether people are ready and what support they need if we are going to move
them in to their own home in that way and do more reflective practise around that, learning
what's gone well and what hasn't and you've clearly had some examples where it hasn't
gone well. So it's an area that we want to improve, it's part of again the kind of investment
that is being made in those services to hopefully put us on a better footing but we do understand
and the issues you are raising are pertinent and we need to address them.
Thank you. Anyone else?
Quickly, I just want to make one or two comments.
Thank you, this is a very good performance and feedback.
Just one or two matters.
So, just that on the satisfaction, on the whole we are doing very good.
Very good as an upward upward trajectory. We're holding ourselves. So and tenants are happy with us and I'm commend you for that
The council but one or two. I just want to highlight
Satisfaction that your home is safe. That's a quite important measure is dipped from 68 to 64 percent
So we are saying proved
now
Do you know as it improved or is it same?
This is an annual report from the last year but we're still collecting it now.
So for the quarter, what quarter was it?
Okay, okay, slightly better but David that's the one we've got to keep an eye on.
People need to feel safe in their home.
People often have children or often have vulnerable people living in the house.
They don't feel safe.
The traumatising effect, impact on them is quite serious and I had one or two cases where because of ASB, neighbours problem, people hang around, they are truly traumatised.
So if you can give eye on that please.
The next one is satisfaction that you are kept informed from 73 % to 69%. It's a dip. How are we doing now on that?
Karen?
I was just having a look.
Okay.
I think that's what I was talking about before.
So the new set of comms material that's going to go out.
I think hopefully that will sort of impact on that one.
But Connor's just got it there.
Yeah, 67%.
Okay, that's still the tip.
Okay, can we again, that simple, we should be going up.
Yeah.
And our communication with our residents should be tenants, should be excellent.
Then satisfaction with communal areas again dip to 63 % from 66 % and 25, 26 and last year,
previous year 24, 25 was 68%.
How are we doing now?
Quarter to 64%.
Just to say, I mean, good, I might want to come in on, we do additional satisfaction
surveys around caretaking, so it's a quest to recommission.
communal areas is extremely important.
Gulam, Steve, because that's the entry exit for people.
I remember when I was growing up as a kid,
you know, I was to be scared going up the flight of stairs
to the third floor because there were people
hanging around, drinking in the communal areas
in the stairways.
You know, my parents were scared too.
My mother was scared too, frightened,
get spat at, get alcohol thrown at you.
In this day and age, we can't have that please, the communal areas must be secured.
I want this 100%. If anything, that's going to be 100%.
Because in this day and age, people, the elders, families, I bring you in David, families, kids
shouldn't be scared or frightened coming up and down stairways.
Yeah, it's so important. David.
Yeah we completely agree and it is a continual effort to do so we're looking at enhancing
the service but I thought also GooLam's got some recent examples of where caretakers have
gone above and beyond in the space that might be good to bring GooLam in.
Thank you David, so one of the things that we are doing with the caretaking team is we're
actually doing a whole decorating programme around communal areas to try and improve that
space more generally so including things like new concrete sealant, general uplift as a
of improving the look and feel and sort of making it more vibrant.
We've had very positive reception to that from residents and we're looking at increasing
that more widely.
I think when we measure caretaking satisfaction and specifically the questions worded that
way, satisfaction averages up around 90 % a year around that.
What we do recognise, particularly around communal areas, and it links back to the point
around ASB, there is a joined up link here and I've met today with colleagues in the
to raise some issues around how we can get better visibility of Theos and some of the other resources that we have available.
So we can see how that has a more tangible impact.
Thank you. Guys, listen. Please listen. This is serious stuff. I'll take this very seriously.
On the whole, I don't know. I don't think it's decoration. Maybe we're lighting, but it's by ASP.
The cases that's come through our doors is ASP.
ASP, yeah, please, yeah.
We do want to note, I mean, we're one council.
You've got Darren, you've got Kieran.
We need both parties to come together.
We need an announced service, put in more capacity in this area, we've got to.
I want a paper at the next housing cabinet, please, how we're dealing with this, and I
to understand how two teams are working together and how we're going to turn this into a real
significant change because as I've said many of us, I don't know some of us who grew up here,
not here last 15 -20 years before then in the 70s and 80s, what we had to go through in communal
areas we don't want that to be our kids to be experiencing that in this day and age or our
We will prepare a spotlight paper that draws together both departments' options for further investment action.
And we will invite Darren and Kieran to come to the next one of these.
Please, just to add on to that, we didn't get that paper yesterday, away day from Darren's team.
And to say you need to pick up on that.
You know the housing CCTV camera investment.
We put in best cameras in every housing state and on communal areas, in entrances.
That will help. We want a paper.
You need to bring a paper to you on that paper where we are with that investment.
That investment needs to be speeded up.
We put the money together.
You know you got to speed up.
The council has to speed up the installation of the cameras.
That will make a difference to the housing state and in the block cameras too will make a difference.
We put the money together and now we need the implementation.
I want you to see the improvement. Okay, please.
Thank you Mayor. So the update that I got today and the paper that is planned to go to the communities away day has been shared with me.
I'm happy to circulate if colleagues have no issues.
But essentially what they are reporting is they expect to get all the CCCEV that was factored in as part of the original investment installed by March 2027.
So the programme is on track and I think what they are now also looking at in the background is potential additional bids around putting in additional cameras to further supplement what we already have on the estates.
David, if you can capture that please.
So make sure if we need to accelerate it, that will bring about the tenant satisfaction in the council estate and the blocks.
We'll need to capture all of this in the spotlight paper that we bring to the next meeting on ASB.
Please, yeah.
Let me bring you in, member, and then I'll bring you in.
Thank you, Mayor. I think we spoke about that in detail in our lead member meeting this morning.
is about just around that whole satisfaction of feeling safe.
Although we understand exactly that point, we understand that it's not just to do with
everyone's home, it's to do with the community areas, the estates, and the CCTV piece is
very important.
So we've discussed how we're going to get the comms piece going, we had the comms team
involved in the meeting, getting the whole piece going, so we need to go and actually
launch the CCTV's where they are.
The ones that are in place, we want to launch them now, and the ones we want to enhance,
We want to make sure that we've got a full plan in place with the lead member as well as yourself Mr. Mayor going forward.
Thank you.
Q .Berti.
So once again Mr. Mayor, regarding CCTV that was also covered in my portfolio meeting.
I've asked for a specific tracker around each estate, around the timeframes of delivery.
So we are on track for the programme by March 2027 to deliver this year's programme.
and there will be a growth bid for next year's delivery programme which will come your way
through the governance process.
But I've asked for a more detailed paper to understand which estates will complete when,
and hopefully I'll get that within the next couple of weeks.
Once I get that I will share with yourself.
In addition to that, as residents of Tower Hamlets we're also sort of jointly trying
to work with the RSLs as well in order to provide further reassurance around the utilising
of our Theo service and the partnership taskforce and the intelligence.
Thank you very importantly that we have put money aside at the last budget to instal
CCT cameras in the housing states and in the blocks.
So that should at least help our residents and push up the tenant resident, tenant satisfaction
in the Council buildings and yes, working together with ourselves.
Thank you.
With those comments, can we please push this through?
Okay, thank you and grateful.

5 d) Your Voice, Our Action: Safe Homes, Great Services Programme Highlight Report

Can we move on to next, please, which is your voice of action.
Okay, quickly.
Thank you, Mayor.
So this report is about the Phase 2 of the Council's Regulatory Improvement Programme.
By July 2026, six deliverables had been completed and work was underway for a further 35.
Key achievements include introducing new tenant and resident risk procedures, launching a
hardship fund and curing a stock condition survey contract.
No deliverables were reported as overdue or at risk.
David.
Great, thank you.
Yeah, just a reminder that this plan and this phase of the year voice our action plan is about elevating
the housing service and sort of reaching for the stars as it were because we have
already completed a lot of the turnaround plan and to raise the bar after our inspection and our
previous
Grading but we really want to look at the best the authorities have been
We've upgraded this C1 and put together a plan that moves us towards that level.
That's what this plan is about.
As the members highlighted, we're already making progress
against a number of those measurables.
We do also talk about this with the regulator in our monthly meetings.
We meet every month with the regulator and this is one of the reports we share with them.
Right, thank you. Can we note this through?
Under page 151, resident engagement and communication workstreams, there were discussions around
during my days within the portfolio, there were discussions around the Tower Hamlets
1400. Has there been any progress on that and is that factored into that workstream?
Yes, Councillor Ahmed, it is factored in within that work stream.
I think what we're now doing, so we've recently obviously onboarded some additional
members of staff to bolster capacity in that area, particularly with key elements like
things like the repairs policy and other major sort of policy reviews that are coming up,
that's where we hope to see the most sort of tangible impact from that 1400 group and
then we should be able to more visibly report back on how we're making and how we're
responding to resident feedback and to make positive changes.
Please, Karen. My room is starting to walk around now. I just live streamed it.
I just wanted to say that we have got a tenant engagement strategy paper. It didn't come
to this meeting. But Guillaume tells me that it's going to MAB. And in that, that will
pick up what we're doing around those groups that existed.
The 1400 arose from all of the people that responded to the insourcing survey and the
consultation.
So, yeah, we'll maybe when we have the MAB discussion, you'll see how we're expanding
and working with that group.
Are we okay to take this forward?
Good, noted, agreed.

5 e) Housing Management Cabinet Sub-Committee Forward Plan

The forward plan is there, so we'll get to know what's happening.
We come to an end.
Please don't go off my you.
I want to say on the whole, it's extremely,
very good what we're saying.
Thank you to all the officers, corporate directors
and officers, and other directors too.
I know where we were.
And the lead members, absolutely,
and Saeed, members too, where we were when we
brought you in house and when the housing regulator
referred to the housing regulator, that report
came back and the significant improvement
plans you put in David with the team and we're seeing the fruits of it coming through.
Please keep up the good work, our residents come first, we're all here to serve them.
Webcast Finished - 1:33:35
Thank you and grateful, we'll close the meeting.