Housing & Regeneration Scrutiny Sub Committee - Monday 5 October 2026, 6:30pm

Housing & Regeneration Scrutiny Sub Committee
Monday, 5th October 2026 at 6:30pm

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1 DECLARATIONS OF INTERESTS

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Declarations of Interest Note

4 b) Performance and Accountability of RSLs: Delivering Timely Repairs for Residents

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4 a) Improving Council Housing Quality

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5 a) Housing & Regeneration Scrutiny Sub Committee Work Programme 2026-27

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7 ANY OTHER BUSINESS

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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.

to this Housing and Regeneration Subcommittee meeting.

I'm Councillor Hassan Mahmood

and I will be chairing the meeting.

And can I start off with some housekeeping rules?

The meeting is being recorded and broadcasted

for the Council's website for public viewing.

If there are any technical issues,

I will decide if and how the meeting should continue

after taking advice from officers. Can I remind members I should only speak to you

on my direction and ensure to speak clearly into the microphones. As a

courtesy please have your mobile on silent and people joining online can can

you keep microphones on mute except when speaking. Those of you online who wish

to speak, please use the raised hand function.

Tonight, our order of business includes

spotlight on performance and accountability

on registered social landlords, on delivering

timely repairs for residents, spotlight on improving council

housing quality.

So with this, Nasima, have you received any apologies?

Apologies have been received from Councillor Huyen -Miyaw.

Also we'll cover housing origination in the work programme 2026 and 2027.

Can I just go around and ask members kindly to introduce yourself and declare if you have

1 DECLARATIONS OF INTERESTS

any DPI and if any please say it.

Yeah, can I start with my left?

Councillor Martin Parker, Bow West, nothing to declare.

Thank you, Chair.

Councillor Abdul -Wahid, I don't have anything to declare.

Is that better?

Thank you.

Good evening, everyone.

Councillor Sadiqur Rahman.

And nothing to declare.

Thank you.

I'm Susanna. I'm the resident co -opty.

I'm stated as observer because of some red tape in HR.

So I'm retained as a resident co -opty member.

And I'm a leaseholder in Tower Hamlets.

Good evening everyone, I'm Councillor Sinegal Abend. Nothing to declare.

Councillor David Edgar, Limehouse Ward. I have nothing to declare for myself but of a relevant person.

As it's described on the ratio of interest as a leasehold interest in properties owned by Tower Hamlets and Riverside.

But I don't think, looking at the agenda for this meeting, that there's any pecuniary interest in respect to these items.

Thank you. The minutes from the last meeting on the 20th of July, 26th, have been circulated.

Can members agree the minutes of the last meeting as a true record? So this can just be noted.

We have one outstanding action plan response, but we should receive this response hopefully

by December or possibly early New Year.

We will continue to use the action law to capture areas that may require more detail.

Before we start, I wanted to just advise the Committee that I will be taking item 4 .2 first

as we have external guests with us and don't wish to keep them waiting.

So with this mind, our first substantive item is a spotlight on the performance and accountability on registered social landlords on delivering timely repairs for residents.

Repairs are one of the services that residents interact with most frequently and are a key indicator of landlord performance.

For many residents, particularly those living in high -rise accommodation, waiting too long for repairs can have a direct impact on their health, safety and quality of life.

This review is therefore focused not only on whether repairs are completed within target times,

but also on the quality of repairs, the management of complaints, responses to dump and mould,

lift reliability and how lenders are learning from resident feedback.

4 b) Performance and Accountability of RSLs: Delivering Timely Repairs for Residents

The committee is seeking assurance that housing providers are delivering a responsive, accountable

and resident -focused repair service and the improvement plans are in place where performance

is not meeting expectations.

Can I now welcome our housing stakeholders partners Clarion and Peabody.

I understand we have Felicity Darmon, Regional Director, Clarion Housing Association,

Sunny Denham, Head of Repairs, Clarion Housing Association,

Tracy Baker, Managing Director, North East London Pre -Body Housing Association,

and Elizabeth Williams, Tarhamdas Housing Forum Chair.

Can I ask if you kindly introduce yourself, please?

Hi, I'm Tracy Packer, Managing Director for North East London Region of Peabody.

Hi everyone, I'm Amy Keeble, the Director of Repairs at Peabody.

Hi everyone, I'm Lisa Turner, Head of Repairs at Peabody.

Good evening, I'm Felicity Dunnell, Regional Director for Housing for North London for

Clarion Housing Group.

Good evening, I'm Shonie Dunham, I'm Head of Repairs for North London for Clarion Housing.

Good evening, I'm Joe Webb, Regional Repair Lead for Clarion in North London.

Good evening, Sheldy Mangin, Regional Housing Lead for North London.

Thank you.

We also have our Partnership Board offices, Shalemuddin, who supports engagement with

ourselves.

He is online.

SHALEMUDDIN, REGIONAL HEALTH IN LEAD, NORTH LONDON

Evening, everyone.

As mentioned by the chair, my name is Shalima Din, I'm the partnership board officer.

I'm working within our strategy policy team and also working with our time -lapse housing

forum predominantly.

Thank you, Shalima.

So welcome to all and thank you for accepting our invitation and making the time to give

evidence to this committee.

Can I remind members that an updated RFP report has been sent as supplementary and members

can refer to this, please.

Before we start, I wanted to add that we had reached out to residents to see if they wish

to give evidence from a lived experience, but on this occasion, we did not have much

response.

So it is important that we do hear from the residents and this will help our discussions become more robust and considered.

I hope we can have some of our residents at our future meeting.

Can I ask Clarion to go first and then Peabody to follow?

So, might I add that please take your slides as read.

So, only highlight any pertinent information

so that we can spend more time on questions.

You will have five minutes each to give us a high -level overview

and then we'll move to members' question.

Is that okay?

You may start whenever you are ready.

Has everyone got a copy of the presentation if we quickly run through it?

Yeah, okay.

So we're just going to do an overview for you of our performance, quality, complaints

and key challenges for 2526.

We have just launched our resident strategy and part of that is looking at our large but

local.

We know we're a large housing association but we want to provide local services for

our residents.

We've got 5 ,653 units within Tower Hamlets and the majority of that, two -thirds of that

are general needs properties.

Leasehold properties make up a further quarter of our stock there.

I'm going to hand over to Joe and he's going to run over some of our performance figures for you.

So our Q4 performance overview, we closed with a stronger demand but also a stronger output.

Our aged WIP did increase following the impact of the introduction of AWABs law,

because obviously we now have 12 weeks to complete on AWABs law jobs depending on the investigation phase as per the...

As per the rules of the law, the jobs reached an annual high in Q4 of 417 and our output

completions increased to 347 which was also the highest level of the year.

As mentioned our age whip did increase, our over 28 days repairs increased from 125 to

172 but this was driven by the additional AEWS law investigations and follow on works.

Our service continued to meet the 28 day completion target despite this high demand.

In our overall performance we saw a positive improvement in repair performance in general.

The WIP reduced through the first half of the year and reached its lowest point in Quarter 2,

before rising again in the second half predominantly due to the ARAB's law reporting that I just mentioned.

routine repair performance improved significantly with increased completions

and our emergency repairs performance remains strong throughout.

So our service level performance, we've got targets of making safe 98 % of our emergencies

and we were just very slightly under this in Q4, within roughly a percent and a half off of that completion.

Our SLA for routine repairs is we need to make a first time attempt to complete within 86 % of those,

and we finished in Q4 with just under 91%.

For our backlog and ageing complaints, we have made strong progress in reducing older repairs during Q3,

with significant reductions in both our over 60 day and over 90 day cases.

While there was some increase in Q4, performance remained much better than it started the year in Q1,

showing a sustained improvement despite the additional demand that we got from AWAB's law.

So our hazard whip, which was brought in as part of the introduction of AWAB's law,

we saw a significant increase in the number of repairs identified as hazards,

and as the graph shows, you can see the very real impact of AWAB's law coming in,

and how that increased very sharply.

With our sub -contractors performance, we do the majority of our repairs

We identify our in -house direct labour operative workforce, so we only subcontract just shy of 10 % out to our subcontractor and that's all specialist stuff such as roofing and scaffolding.

And we are quite big on getting customer feedback on our repairs performance, so we've got a slide in there under locales, which is our real -time customer feedback.

So as soon as one of our engineers leaves the property, the resident will get a text asking how their experience has been

and whether or not they are happy with what's gone on in their home.

And the feedback demonstrates a consistently positive experience, remaining around the 90 % satisfaction mark

throughout the year and improving further in quarter four.

We also measure our customer satisfaction via our TLF 12 month targets.

The targets of those are slightly lower at 88 .5 % satisfaction and these aren't quite so tied into real -time feedback

because people get approached roughly a month after the repair has been undertaken.

I'm just going to talk you through a little bit around our damper mould.

So, during 25 -26 we had 531 active damper mould cases and our average resolution time

for those was 13 .82 days.

Repeat cases remained the main area of focus.

We had 130 properties receiving more than one work order and where we see properties

that have higher levels of work order, two or three, repeat, we will send out a surveyor

to have a look to see if there was anything else going on at that property and whether

we need to instal a device to monitor to see what's going on and what repairs we can undertake.

There was 37 cases were open for more than 28 days and when we have a complex case such

as that we appoint a resident liaison officer to that resident to talk them through and

see what we can do to help.

And we moved from a national LCDM team, we call it LCDM that's leaks, condensation, damper,

mould, that was a national team.

We bought those regional last year so we've got regional teams and we've got dedicated

training for our octaves, so they're able to respond more locally.

On to complaints.

As you can see, we had 165 stage 1 complaints last year.

The highest issues we had for complaints, the main reason people raised complaints with

us, our residents, was due to failed resolutions or they were leak related.

So in response to that, we've introduced targeted customer callbacks where we commit to calling

customers back within 48 hours so we can keep them updated of what's going on.

And we also have a system -led post -resolution follow -up task.

We raise tasks in our system so we can make sure that we follow up on that repair and

keep the resident updated and see what's going on.

Due to changes in our system, we've recently changed the way in which we, the system we

use for complaints.

I was unable to bring you the stage two information tonight for which I apologise, but we will

I'll be able to provide that to you after the meeting.

On our Ombudsen determinations, you can see we had 68 Ombudsen decisions in total.

We received no severe maladministrations, but we did receive 20 maladministrations,

20 service failures, 21 were reasonable address and seven no administration.

A review of our determination showed that our key issues was resident communication and record keeping.

So we've now introduced new reporting on operative performance and behaviours so that we can

look at that and we can have those discussions with those operatives if there's any underperformance

and take any action that we need to take.

A little bit about high -rise living and lift reliability.

There's been 490 call -outs across 94 lifts.

That averages 5 .2 per lift compared with 2 .6 nationally.

Sorry?

Okay.

I'll speed up a bit.

89 % first time fix against the national average of 86.

So in essence, what we're saying is despite higher call -out

levels, Tower Hamlets achieve faster repairs

and a stronger first time fix rate,

with almost 9 in 10 nifts restored within 24 hours.

Onto our key challenges and our main focus areas.

One of our key challenges, as Jo explained, we have a DI,

so we deliver in -house.

recruiting and retaining skilled operatives remains difficult in a competitive market,

as that's one of the things that we do struggle with sometimes with our recruitment.

AWABS law phase two is due to come in, so we're currently building on the successful implementation of phase two,

and developing our processing systems to support phase two,

and with ground repairs volumes there's also something that we've seen as part of AWABS law as well,

But that is again, as part of our budget setting,

we are looking at how we got the right amount of operatives.

Is there a, do we need to subcontract out more work?

What do our budgets need to look like for next year?

I know that we're running out of time.

I did have a case study for you,

but I'll leave you to read that for yourself.

That was a case study following a critical pump failure

in one of our tower blocks and how we dealt with that.

And that's our presentation to you.

If you've got any questions for us.

Yes, Peabody, do you want to?

Okay, hello everybody.

So thank you for the scope that you shared with us of the information you would like to see.

We have tried to adhere to that in the pack that we've shared with you.

Peabody manages 4 ,274 homes in Tower Hamlets, which are set across 43 estates and some street -based

properties.

Across Peabody, we take a mixed repairs delivery model, so we have in -house and contractor

delivered repairs, but mostly in Tower Hamlets.

These are delivered by United Infrastructure is our partner for general responsive repairs,

T -Brown for gas related, FixaTech for electrical and Anduis for lifts.

Our responsive repairs spend in Tower Hamlets in the last financial year was 5 .2 million.

In the pack you'll see some information that shows you our performance against our target

completion time for emergency repairs and non -emergency repairs, with 96 % within target

for emergencies. And there's some more information about more specific repairs relating to things

like heating and hot water, communal electrics, things like lighting in hallway areas, and

then leaks in general, and with the average response times that we achieve in there with

our target being 28 calendar days and average response times being below that target.

In terms of contractor performance, we closely monitor that through data and through regular

reviews of our contractors.

And where contract performance differs from the expected levels, we implement improvement

plans that are targeted to getting things back on track.

In some cases, and where necessary, we redirect certain trades or certain jobs to alternative

contractors.

So this is where our mixed model helps us so that we have that resilience to move things

should we need to whilst performance recovers.

There's some information in the pack specifically about lift repairs, because I know that was

something that was requested.

And again, our target completion time

is achieved with 14 .3 days as an average completion time

overall.

And then with a particular focus on damper mould

and keeping homes safe, we introduced a new damper mould

process back in 2023 that included a dedicated triage case management with repair priorities

and then we further enhanced that from the learnings from that initial implementation

and we rolled out a revised process in June 2025.

Any high and significant risk cases are managed end to end by a dedicated damp and mould team

until risks are eliminated and risk group causes are addressed

and then any lower risk cases are progressed through the responsive repair service levels.

We take a resident -centred approach in assessing the risk of damper mould,

so it's about the impact on the resident in their home.

In terms of general repair satisfaction,

So in the packet we've shared some information from our tenant satisfaction measures for

the past year and you can see from that that overall in Tower Hamlets satisfaction has

moved up by 9 % and up by 5 % specifically with repair satisfaction and 3 % specifically for

those who had a repair in the last 12 months.

Unfortunately, for those with the most recent repairs, so in our transactional surveys,

we have seen a slight dip down by 4%.

Then just looking at repairs complaints, there's some information about that.

So in the past year, we had 195 repairs complaint, which represents 4 % of the homes that we have

in the borough.

One minute, please.

57 of those escalated to stage 2.

Of those, seven were determined through the Ombudsman.

There were no severe maladministrations, but three maladministrations and four service

failures.

The main reasons for repair complaints are related to heating and hot water, plumbing

leaks or lifts, and the learnings from the complaints in the Ombudsman cases are about

delays in resolution, time taken to fully complete works and the quality of the repair

works.

So in summary, we know that we need to continue to make improvements to our repair service

and we are focusing on what residents tell us matter to them.

We have many engagement events and resident meetings to really hear directly from our

that works for residents in their homes.

Obviously our focus is on getting the repairs done properly first time

and improving how we communicate and how we respond more quickly.

The data tells you how we are performing

and we are working hard to also make our repair service more local and accountable

by having contractors assigned to specific estates and operatives better able to build

local knowledge and carry out those repairs more quickly and effectively.

In summary, we are seeing a mixed view on resident satisfaction with repairs in Tower

Hamlets on an improving trend of satisfaction in the past 12 months with that slight more

recent decrease.

So we are addressing this through performance improvement plans with the relevant contractors

to drive, to return to improving trends across the board.

Thank you.

Thank you for the overview, speakers.

Do members have any questions, what you heard today on the agenda?

So thank you for the presentations and the documents we've given.

I've got two questions.

One is about damp and mould and the other is about contractors or own workforce.

On damp and mould, I've been involved in various housing bodies for really quite a long time

and up to AWAB's law, what was often described in response to somebody coming to a counsellor

with a damp problem was that there was something about the resident's behaviour.

They weren't opening windows enough.

They were doing all sorts of things that were wrong and sort of it was their fault often.

and clearly AWAB law doesn't really run with that.

And so people have had to think about things

in a very different way.

But I'm just interested in what people have to say,

what you have to say about the shift in the approach,

which may not have been adopted by other people

or Clarion in the past, but the sort of shift in mindset

that seems required and why it might be now,

but it is possible to find solutions

that aren't to do with resident behaviour,

but they are more sort of fundamental

to do with the stuff that you can do

in a particular property.

So that's one question.

And the other question was about workforce, either contractors or own workforce, because

certainly in other settings the argument has been put to me, but when the building industry

picks up then it becomes more difficult for housing bodies or contractors to find staff,

because it's much easier if you're an electrician or whatever to go to one site week after week,

you know your way there, there's nobody there who's really upset by the fact that their

are working or they've got a leak, you're not dealing with people who are really frustrated

by the problems that they're facing and you don't have to deal with lots of different

people.

So I don't know quite where the housing cycle is at the moment.

I think the new building is pretty low.

But I'm interested in, I suppose, the things that you do, Clarion, in terms of having your

own workforce and much of your work and you would focus on particular states.

I can see how that addresses the issue and helps with the issue, but I also wonder how,

for example, your experiences in holding on to people, you've mentioned that a bit, how

easy is it at the moment for you to see the stability in contractor force or in workforce

and the benefits that come from that?

So when it comes to Awab's law, I think the biggest shift for me was how wide that shift

was. So I think we used to attribute that with a housing officer who goes out and sees

and understands the resident and understands the home. And actually what Awab's law made

us do is widen that awareness to our contractors, our contractor's partners and for us at Peabody

that was the biggest shift, was for every person that stepped foot in our home, from

a housing officer who was superb at it, to a contractor who actually we recognised we

trained really well to do the job that they were there to, but we hadn't really always

given them the tools to see wider than that. I think for me, and particularly us at Peabody,

that was the biggest campaign. We've been at Peabody a very long time, the three of

and that awareness and bringing to the forefront

of what you should be doing while you're there

is not looking for a reason for the dampen mould

but helping people just solve the issue.

It's actually been the biggest shift that I've seen

in this role and any role that I've had at Peabody.

We're getting reports from incomes officers

that are out doing an income cheque

because people are looking and people are wanting to do more

and we've had a real fantastic buy -in

from our exec and our board.

we've recruited ready for phase two an additional 34 people so that each person that is experienced

and per mole that is classed as emergency or significant based on the people in the

home, not the bricks and mortar, have someone that is a one on one for them so they know

that that's their case handler, they know that they're going to get a call when the

contractor's been so that they see that case through to completion so they feel like we're

thinking about the resident not the home.

And I think for us it was that above everything else.

It was every single person that interacts with any one of our residents feels that we just want to make it better than them, not find a reason for it being there.

So I think for us at Clarion, it's been a big retraining exercise through a lot of the teams.

I think in the past it was very easy to, we have a huge problem with overcrowding as we

know and there's not a lot of housing stock available.

So I think in the past it has been too easy to look at that overcrowding and blaming condensation

and damp on overcrowding issues.

So we've had to look at other ways of how we deal with that, retraining people, bringing

in systems that we can put into people's homes to monitor to see what's going on.

And being prepared to look at solutions to, you know, that we can help.

So if we're putting in whole house ventilation systems, for example, which is something we

probably wouldn't have done previously, but that's something that we do now.

We've invested a lot of money into new technical equipment that we can put into people's homes

to help them if they are, if there is an issue with overcrowding and condensation, we don't

actually now put the blame, as you said, onto our residents. It's about how can we actually

assist you in managing this while you're in this property. And I think on the workforce

element, yes, it is difficult sometimes to hang on to people, hold on to people, but

I think our main issue is around, one, the workforce, it's quite a small workforce out

there, we're a competitive market out there. One of our things about holding on to our

operatives is more around their performance and us wanting to keep them as opposed to,

you know, a lot of them do want to stay off us and do stay off us, but with us, with the standards

we hold them against, sometimes we do lose operatives that way. We do invest heavily

into apprenticeships, so we do every year take on at least two per region apprentices

and run them through that programme.

And this year we've even taken on apprentice surveyors as well

because there's a shortage of surveyors out there

and that again is a very competitive market of AWABs law

so we have taken on apprenticeship surveyors as well

so we're trying to kind of grow our own as so to speak.

Yeah I think it's the same with us with apprenticeships

and I think you've touched on a really good point about surveyors.

I actually think that's going to be

and is currently our biggest challenge,

is retaining surveyors for those complex jobs.

So our DLO is obviously a lot smaller than Clarion's,

but I think I can only echo what's been said.

It's about investing in those people

and actually recruiting people into different roles

with an aim to get them into a trade.

So we've just taken on 10 repair inspectors as apprentices

who are post -inspecting the work of our tier one

and tier two contractors with a view

that they can then see what they like to do.

and we've already got people saying,

I wanna be in the electrician, I've been out,

I've seen it all, so we're just trying to get people in

through different routes that isn't your usual way

of doing it, but yeah, I think for us apprenticeships

and trying to retain them and the right people,

like we don't want the wrong people working for us,

so we would rather be honest with residents

and say it's gonna take us a little bit longer

to do your repair because we want the right people

doing your repair and keeping people doing it quickly,

but then the work's poor, so I think it's just about,

I think as we move forward, it's continued honesty

with our residents, we only want the right people in your home.

And that may mean we take a bit longer, but for the right reasons.

Thank you. Before I go to Councillor Sulu, can I ask our members and responders, kindly

please be brief with your questions and answers please.

Okay, Councillor Sulu please.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Chair.

I'll just try to combine two questions in one,

to answer one question.

As Paul reported, Paul in performance suggests

that the mastery pairs are completed

within the target times.

It says mastery pairs, so it's just a grey area here.

One thing, and second, I wanna ask that our current

repair service, operating,

sustainably or are using any external service to just to minimise the call -out and how efficient

the services are, in your opinion, is it something that you're carrying in daily routine or you're

just depending on external services, temporary services or contractors. Thank you.

Thank you.

of improving a service is to set yourself achievable goals.

So if we said all of our service level agreements

for everything had to be 100 % across the board,

realistically speaking, that would be living

in a utopian perfect world, and that's not achievable.

So whilst we hold ourselves to very strong standards,

I think it's important to set ourselves achievable goals.

And I think we're working very strongly with,

You know as from clarion we mentioned the lion's share of our work is done by our in -house

Direct labour so they are clarion employees so they they are expected to work within a set guideline of

Characteristics and behaviours etc to deliver the service the small amount we do subcontract out

Are fairly long -running yet competitive?

Agreements that we have in place with specialised subcontractors

So for example we tend to use external contractors for scaffolding or complex roofing repairs

because actually we've done a piece of work to compare what it would cost us

and can we save money to deliver that particular trade of work by taking on our own employees

and if that's going to drive improvements and save money that we can then invest in other repair services, brilliant.

but the comparison came out that actually staying with our sub -contractors for those small areas of specialist repairs was actually preferable.

So we do scrutinise what we are doing and we are constantly trying to evolve to improve.

And I think that is how we make sure that we have got an efficient repair service.

I just want to clarify on this.

As you started, I think it was something like 10 % of the repair job goes external.

That's about right.

And 90 % you do internally, which is in -house, all your contractors.

How satisfied are you in terms of getting complaining from the residents?

Can you switch your mic, please?

Because clearly from a residents point of view there are some issues that they are concerned about in the services.

What we do is we have an in house complaints team as well.

We are a big association so we have specialist teams that do specialist things.

And our complaints team are constantly monitoring the reasons behind our complaints.

and that's something that we've got several focus groups set up on and they work with

the other areas of the business such as the repairs service to ensure that we get the

right feedback so that we can adjust our approach accordingly.

It's all very open and honest, we're not trying to hide from any of our shortcomings

or those that we have because the only way to improve that is to take the feedback on,

listen to our residents who essentially are our customer base and try and build the improvements

into the service as we go. I think overall we do pretty well. We need to reduce our complaint

number levels slightly, I would agree with that, but generally speaking I'd say I'm quite

proud of the repair service that we deliver.

Can I remind our members and officers please, can you kindly talk to the chair please.

I have some questions for Clarion, which are concerning a graph that's in our packet, concerning

the amount of whether you're meeting a decent home standard.

In our pack it's on page 75 to 76 and it suggests that you have a very high percentage of homes

that don't meet their decent home standard.

But they're known when we look on the following page, it refers to units.

So I do not know which of this data is correct.

And then in your part of your presentation, which is on page 118, in your presentation,

it refers to North London customer satisfaction.

And I'm aware that you actually group your business across more than one borough.

So I'm wondering how specific that is to Tahemehits and equally how specific any of the other

figures in your presentation are to Tahemehits.

And then I've got a follow -up for both of you.

I'll respond to the customer satisfaction figures first.

So across the presentation, yes, North London is an area that covers both North and East

Most of the presentation, well all the presentation is actually specific to Tower Hamlets.

When it comes to the customer satisfaction you've got two graphs on there.

So the locales customer satisfaction which is a real time feedback that Jo explained

whereby we, soon as an operative finishes a repair, the resident gets a text to say

your repair is complete, please leave feedback, that's in real time.

That is based on Tower Hamlets alone.

Our customer satisfaction on the next slide,

where it's got TLF, that's the leadership factor,

that's an external company that does our customer satisfaction for us.

That is for North London.

We have been unable, we don't split that out per borough,

because it's an external company.

That is for North London, that's the one that's at 87 .27.

The one for the specific to tower Hamlet's is the one that's at 91 %

Okay, thank you for that

The decent homes that was part of a data request that was requested and then it was questioned

When they came back we did respond

It was actually an issue with the data behind it in our BI portal and we explained that

the figure was incorrect and we currently couldn't pull it.

That isn't correct.

We did go back and inform them of that.

So what is the correct percentage then in that case?

We have to come back to you with that.

We currently do not have it because there was an issue behind the data that was pulling

I think it was like 43 % or something, it was rather high anyway.

And we did go back and say it is incorrect.

So what I would do is when I get back I will see if that particular dataset is correct

and then I can get that back to you if that's okay.

Okay, thank you.

And now for both of you, I think this might be down to what we've requested.

So this will be a request for additional data.

And this is around complaints.

And that is how many were dealt with right first time, how many visits are required on

and how many repeats are there in respect to the same issue within a year?

And finally, what quality cheques that you do on things like repairs?

So that's all we refer to repairs.

So some of the information we haven't got available for you, some of the information

you've requested we don't have available this evening.

We will look at making that available for you.

Could you just repeat the very last part of your question, please?

So how many of the complaints or repairs do you find that you're going back within a year

because it hasn't effectively been met a quality standard?

So is there some sort of quality cheques that you do?

Oh, what quality cheques that you do?

So, for example, one method might be to take a random sample of repairs, stroke complaints,

and then sort of follow up individually. Now, I can understand people complete surveys,

but that's reliant on people actually wanting to complete surveys, so surveys can actually

give a false picture.

And also the same would apply to people of the year as well,

the same information on it.

So in relation to the complaints and repairs related to complaints,

every time we do get a complaint in about repair,

we do make contact with that resident,

a particular person will make contact with that resident.

If the resident wants us to visit, we will visit to talk through the issue with them.

We also do post inspections, so we will go and post inspect work to do quality surveys.

That is a random selection, so we've got team leaders who manage the operatives.

Each team leader will manage a team of 10 to 12 operatives, and part of their role is

to go and do random post inspections of work for quality assurance.

So do you have that data in a form that you could supply to us?

Because that's not something we supplied in the presentation, so we will have to look at that too.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Councillor Abdul Wahid, you have a question?

Thank you Chair, thank you for your presentation.

One of my questions has been answered already, so that's good.

My question is, a couple of questions, very short.

Where does a resident who is vulnerable, maybe elderly, has children,

what mechanism do you have within your organisation to automatically prioritise those appointments?

Also in terms of, it's not a repair issue but I think it's very important for our residents when it comes to anti -social behaviour.

Do you think our cells are playing their role when it comes to tackling within anti -social behaviour within your estates, your blocks etc.

Or is that falling, the responsibility falling on Tahemedek's council to deal with that.

So just those two questions for now.

So when it comes to triage and vulnerabilities, that's done at first point of contact,

whether that be on the telephone or when someone's reporting it online.

And we assess the repair based on the resident, not the repair itself.

So dependent on what the needs of the household are is the urgency in which someone will attend.

We also introduced a priority which is called V -14, which is a 14 -day turnaround time for a standard repair for any home that's got a vulnerability in it that isn't an emergency.

And then we report that as a separate reporting line to our governing bodies.

So the introduction of that has meant that if it is just a standard day -to -day repair but the household has anything that we would class as a vulnerability, we will do that within the 14 days, not 28.

And then obviously the introduction of a WABs law means that anything that is a hazard,

the urgency is assessed by the resident, not what the hazard is.

And that's how we monitor it.

And that is picked up at the first point of every contact.

I was just going to cover off the ASB question at the same time.

So, yeah, just as a general approach to ASB, the most effective approach we believe is

a true partnership approach.

So we do believe we are partly responsible and we take responsibility for trying to resolve

ASB in the neighbourhoods where our properties are, but we can't do that alone.

So we do feel we have to work in partnership with the Council at Tower Hamlets and with

the local community and sometimes with the police as well.

So obviously it very much depends on the specific circumstances of that particular ASB and what

it is in particular, but we definitely play a part in that but just not stand alone with

everyone else.

So in terms of vulnerability, we obviously similar sort of approach, we deal with the

individual so we'll have flags on our system so as soon as they call in it will flag up

on our system if there's a vulnerability, what that vulnerability is or any special

measures that we need to take to access support. We've also just introduced what we now call

our compass team and so these are our vulnerability leads and so we've recruited these not only

from a housing background, but from social backgrounds as well.

So we've got some social workers.

So where someone is identified with a need or a vulnerability,

we can then pass it over to that team

that they will then ensure that any complex action

groups are set up, that professionals are called in,

GPs, mental health, education, whoever it may be,

to make sure that we're taking a holistic approach to support

in the residents and any vulnerabilities

within the family.

We also have a tenancy sustainment team.

so should they need support to continue to sustain the tenancy, they will be given an

officer who will work directly with them around what support they need and they will feed

them into other areas of the business, such as money guidance, benefit and welfare support,

it could be job support and advice.

We also have our RLO team, so our Resident Liaison Officer teams, and so they sit across

multi areas of repairs, LCDM, and so we will then pick the right officer to work with that

family who will stay with that family and will deal with that family until completion.

And then so they provide all the support and they will then become the advocate for that

family within the organisation.

So whilst it may start out that they've become an R &A because they've raised an issue around

damp and condensation, whilst working with them we might find out there's an issue around

education, we may find out there's an issue around employment.

And so those officers will then feed them in and make sure that they're getting that

holistic support.

In terms of antisocial behaviour we do have a robust team.

We work very closely with Tower Hamlets.

Similar to what Tracy was saying,

we have to take a partnership approach

because obviously you have statutory powers that we do not.

So therefore when we're dealing with things like fraud

and we need to interview people under caution,

then we would come to the borough.

We also come and work with you around closure orders

and we've been quite successful

in getting a number of those across Tower Hamlets.

Obviously with the newest Beatles and powers coming out,

giving us a little bit more power

in terms of being able to do some of those works ourselves,

we will continue to work with you, but we're also gearing up to be in a position to take

those actions forward ourselves, those legal actions and remedies.

We attend the community maracks and so we have quite a presence across the Tower Hamlets,

certainly with your community safety team.

We've also just commissioned a new fraud team who will again have reached out to your community

fraud team to set up an agreement to do those things like interview under cautions because

actually we feel that's another way that we're going to be able to get homes back and offer

to them, to those in need.

Just a follow up, just a follow up, just on the quality assurance aspect where my colleague

asks whether or how jobs get closed.

So for example, a certain job the contractor goes, a tenant calls up, contractor goes,

it may need several different repairs team or contractors to go.

So on the first call, if that job is completed, does that get closed and another job raised?

I find it in my experience where contractors have gone for one job, but it needs multiple contractors going

and it gets closed and then residents have to go through the whole process again

and where a job can be finished within a couple of weeks is taking months and months.

So how does that work and what process do you have?

So in terms of multi -complex repairs, several different repairs requiring different,

that's where our resident liaison officers would step in to be that advocate,

to make sure that everything was being pulled into one central place

So the resident wasn't having five different contractors

or five different departments to deal with.

They would only deal with their resident liaison officer.

They would have their contact details

and they would have an agreement set up

to keep in contact with them.

I can probably answer from a perspective.

So with follow on works, we raise them by trade

and they do get closed down.

So if there's another trade that's needed,

that operative won't leave until they've made contact

and made the new appointment for the next trade, so that's a recent change that we've

made.

And that's because exactly what you're saying, I think there were some gaps between jobs

getting completed down and then the resident having to make that effort.

So we had some feedback from our own resident committees and they said to us that this is

what we want you to change.

So any operative that's on site, they will call ahead, raise the new job with the resident

So the resident knows exactly what's happening before they leave.

So that's what we're doing at Peabody at the moment.

Thank you.

Sudhana?

Thank you, Chair.

My question is to both Clarion and Peabody at the same time.

So for Peabody, page 105, you said we are seeing a mixed view on resident satisfaction

with repairs in tower handlets.

So, part that. And then on Clarion, page 15 of your deck, there were 68 ombudsman decisions,

of which there were 20 cases of male administration, and you said in your footnote that there are definitely issues with better resident communication that's needed.

So the question to both, what have you done to encourage more residents' participation?

For example, do you promote the forming of tenants and residents' associations?

Do you support such groupings? Do you hold any resident engagement sessions?

Maybe you can answer one after the other.

Yes, so we very much value resident feedback.

Sorry, Susan, the mic, please.

We very much value resident feedback and we try to find lots of different ways for residents to respond to us. So

we have

resident board members and we have a resident

experience committee, which are a formal

subcommittee as part of our board governance structure. We have a resident -led panel that

guides some of our

decision making and then we also encourage the forming of TRAs. We have many TRAs across

Peabody neighbourhoods and we regularly meet with the chair and vice chairs of the TRAs

to hear their feedback. In addition we have regional forums, so in our regional structure

each region has a forum made up of residents, which is a forum that is run by residents

and then we get invited to that as the residents wish to talk about whichever

the things they want to discuss and then obviously like everyone we do the TSM

surveys and we get feedback that way but in addition to that we do our own what

we call transactional surveys to give us that and that's what was meant by the

mixed view comment because in our formal TSM surveys we're seeing an upward trend

in the last year, but then just in the most recent transactional survey it was a slight

down. So it's just trying to dig into why is that. But yeah, we take a broad view from

residents across the country.

Our year -to -date transactional satisfaction has gone from 75 % to 80 % specifically in Tower

Hamlet and I think that's because we've had contractors really engage with residents on

estates in our community. So I think that's what's really helped. We've had people there

engaging with the TRAs?

Yeah, so we hold a similar approach.

We have lots of different initiatives.

We have our formal scrutiny committee, which looks at

obviously a lot of the policies or the services

that we offer against Clarion, and then they

feed back to us.

We also look at all the data throughout the year, so

when we're looking at our resident engagements at

sort of annual calendar, we'll look at where we've

received complaints, high level of repairs,

non -engagement as well from residents where we haven't heard from residents for a long

time.

And so then we focus on what we do is we tend to go out on those estates for days, invite

all the residents, take a food truck and things and invite people to come out, put our repairs,

colleagues come, the housing colleagues come and we tend to go out so we can take a holistic

approach to engaging with residents.

We also do transactional surveys as well in terms of after they've had a touch point with

one of Clarion's services to fully understand the feedback from that.

What I will say is sometimes difficult to engage with residents.

We do try a number of different ways. One of the other ways that we do is we have a

community inspectors programme and so we train residents to go out and actually tell us what they think of our estates

and the neighbourhoods in which they're living and then we create action plans and work with residents to try and put those improvements in place.

It is difficult at times to get people to look past their own front doorstep, I'll be honest.

But actually we continue to work in a number of different ways.

We have scrutiny panels, we have regional panels, we have TRAs that we happily set up.

We have a whole sort of resident engagement team that will go out, we'll do consultations on services.

So we do try a number of different ways.

We have online services.

They can do sort of give us feedback through the website, through their portal, and then

we do look at that within the regions and break it down and then look to put plans in

place to make those improvements.

Thank you.

Councillor Sadi, do you have any...

Okay.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, President Ra.

My question is how many of your repairs require a second or third visit to resolve the problem?

And what action are you taking to improve first time fixed rates rather than simply

meeting response time targets?

Thank you.

So in similar response to Councillor Parker, we will have to get that number to you.

We haven't got it here.

of how many repeat repairs that we go out to.

But in terms of improving that first time fix,

it's getting the diagnostics right

at the first point of contact.

And that's really what we're working on

with our contact centre.

The only way we can ask an operative

to get it right first time

is if they know what they're going there to go.

So we've tried to look at the repair journey,

not just the operative knocking on the door,

but actually from the second that resident reports it.

And so we're doing a big piece of work

when it comes to technology

to see how we can use tools such as AI

and systems so that we get it right there so that we can get the right person in the

front door.

We are seeing an upward trend on our first time fix and particularly around the tenant

satisfaction measures that relate to did it get done on the first time is in an upward

trend.

But it's definitely a journey that we're on and we've not always got it right, but we're

learning from it and we're trying to improve.

Thank you.

Did you?

So on our repeat repairs,

I haven't got that information with us today,

but what we do,

so if it's LCDM related, damper mould related,

we do get a report on the number of repeat repairs

per property,

and if we're seeing repeat repairs on those ones

because it's damper mould related,

we will send a surveyor out to go and do a visit

and see what's going on with that.

We've got a target of full on work as well,

So we, at the moment our target is no more than 15 % of our work is followed on, so that

work is completed first time, fixed and not followed on.

And we monitor that daily alongside our productivity and the follow -on work, each individual operative,

because of the way they work with their PDAs, we can monitor each operative to see what

percentage so we can see who's got high follow -on work, who's got low.

So if we're seeing a repeated follow on, high follow on work for a particular operative,

then we may have a performance issue with them and that's when a conversation will be had around

why they're following on so much work.

Is it around their van stock that they've not got?

Is it a skill set they've not got?

So we constantly engage with the workforce monitor, follow on work and engage the workforce around that.

Thank you.

Last question from me.

So looking beyond the operational performance, what does success look like for your repair service in three years time?

And what evidence can you provide that resident will experience genuinely better service rather than simply improve performance against targets?

I think it's a tough one because I think it does

differ, burra to burra, and I think that's the

whole point of local Peabody is that in

order for us to be able to tell you how I'm

going to measure Tower Hamlets is to

understand what Tower Hamlets wants from us.

I think that's what we're really getting under

the skin of when it comes to local repairs.

I think it's about, for me, I measure my repair service success of when a resident is engaged

enough to tell us that we've done a good job.

Really an adequate repair service is like going to the shop.

It should just happen.

You shouldn't feel completely overwhelmed either way.

It should just become day to day.

You go to Tesco's, you don't tell anyone about it.

You just went to Tesco's.

So it's really, really difficult because that's really where you want to get to, that you

expect that they're going to come out when they say and they're going to do a good job.

Therefore, how do you measure that success when no -one is screaming and shouting either

way about it?

So I think for us to answer that, it is about a mixture of are our residents engaging with

us and telling us that we're doing a good job?

Are our demands lowering because we're getting to the root cause of problems?

And are our complaints reducing?

Anything of each extreme, we don't really want to see.

We just want our repair service to become the day -to -day and just the normality of people

because they know they're going to get a good service and it doesn't really infuse them

positively or negatively.

Similarly to us, I mean it's difficult to say where we are in three years, but what

I can say is we've just relaunched our new resident strategy, which again looks at, I

think Shani mentioned it earlier, it's about being local, so it's looking at reducing patch

sizes, it's about getting back to what I call old -fashioned housing management, about understanding

in the communities you serve, understanding the residents,

building those relationships with residents

to come out and have those conversations.

I think a real good marker for that would be, as you said,

it would be a reduction in complaints,

would be higher satisfaction, would be residents

talking about their lived experience to yourselves

and a reduction in complaints coming

through members' inquiries.

I mean, we currently meet with Uma Kamaran every six weeks

to discuss casework and with her caseworkers.

But again, the reduction in those numbers of cases that have started to come through

to us generally leads us to believe that we're headed in the right direction in terms of

they are reducing and residents do say that we are getting better at delivering services.

For me really it's about embedding ourselves in those communities, one from us and allowing

them to tell us rather than us continuously telling them what we're going to deliver.

It's about understanding what they need from us.

So in three years time I would like to see much less of a us and them kind of relationship

and more of a we are one community here to each perform our roles within that.

Thank you.

Thank you to our residents and representatives from housing provider for attending this evening

and for responding to members' questions.

Tonight's discussion has highlighted

that a significant volume of repairs is being delivered

and that performance in some areas,

particularly emergency repairs, remains strong.

However, members have also heard evidence

of ongoing challenges around routine repairs,

repair blockage, repair backlogs, repeat repairs, resident satisfaction, dump and mould cases and complaint handling.

Ultimately our residents judge performance not by targets and statistics alone,

but by whether problems are fixed quickly, correctly the first time and with clear communication throughout the process.

So we expect to see continued improvement, greater transparency over performance and stronger accountability to residents over the coming years.

On that note and in the spirit of partnership working, we have a few recommendations for ourselves to take on board before you go.

Firstly, our committee recommends that our RPs undertake periodic independent reviews of repair services,

including residents' experience, repair quality and contractor performance,

with findings and improvement actions shared with residents and elected members.

Secondly, we recommend that our RPs threaten the monitoring of repairs affecting vulnerable residents,

particularly older people, disabled residents and households affected by dump and mould

to ensure cases are prioritised and resolved without delay.

Finally, we recommend that our RPGs strengthen board level oversight of repairs performance

by ensuring that repeat repairs, outstanding repairs, resident satisfaction, complaint

and housing embossment findings are routinely reviewed, challenged and translated into measurable

service improvement.

Thank you all and you are free to leave or continue to observe from the gallery.

Thank you very much for your time.

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

We'll give you just a couple of minutes, please.

Thank you.

somewhat related is considering a spotlight on improving council housing quality.

Providing safe, decent and well maintained homes is one of the council's most important responsibilities.

This report gives members an opportunity to examine how effectively the council is improving the quality of its housing stock,

responding to repairs and dump and mould issues, maintaining compliance with key safety requirements,

delivering major investment programmes and responding to resident feedback and complaints.

While there are clear signs of progress including improvements in repairs performance,

residence satisfaction and regulatory compliance, there remain challenges around over -dear repairs,

complaints, housing, safety actions and the number of homes that do not yet meet the decent homes standard.

This session will hopefully allow our committee to assess whether the pace of improvement is sufficient

and whether residents are seeing meaningful improvements in the condition of their homes and neighbourhoods.

So on that note, can I welcome Councillor Saeed Ahmed,

committee member for Home Building and Enhancing Council Homes and Neighbourhoods,

David Joyce, corporate director for Housing and Regeneration,

4 a) Improving Council Housing Quality

Karen Swift, director for Housing Policy Strategy and Regulatory Compliance,

and Stephen Pla, Director of Housing Property and Asset Strategy.

If Councillor Ahmed wants to kick off and officers can add to the lead members comments,

please take this item as read.

So only highlight the most pertinent aspects of the paper so that we have time for questions.

I will allow up to 10 minutes for a high -level overview and then we will move to a member's

question.

I will let you know when you are nearing your last minute.

You may start whenever you are ready.

Thank you, Chair, and good evening to the Committee.

I think, Chair, you've touched on the most important element here, which is one of the

main priority of the Mayor and this administration is to make sure that we can bring our housing standards to a good quality.

And I think what we have here is very important. This level of information that we can see since taken as an administration wasn't available to us to start with.

after we've insourced our housing stock and moving away from THH and bringing it in -house

has given us a level of transparency and things are now in a much positive trajectory which

is the most important thing.

So the report highlights several improvements in our council's housing services including

repairs, safety, housing standards, compliance, handling and resident satisfaction.

Though it's not at a level that we are satisfied with, but it is improving in terms of the

feedback we're getting and the work that we are doing in the background.

We know we're working very closely with the regulators to make sure that we can bring

our homes to a good standard and we are investing significant amount of money to make sure that

we can get to that point.

So on repairs, performance has improved since 2024 -25, with more emergency and routine repairs

completed on time and more issues resolved in the first visit.

A new specialist leaks team has also been introduced and the repairs policy is under

review.

On safety and compliance, significant progress has been made in reducing overdue actions

across key areas such as fire safety, water safety and communal electrical safety since

2025 regulatory inspection. On decent homes, non -decent homes has reduced by 1 .8 % while

the ongoing stock condition survey is helping build a clearer picture of the condition of

all council homes and that is ongoing and residents may be getting knots from our partners

to carry out the survey which is council run surveys to identify the decent home standards.

Although it remains at 18%, it has reduced, so we are working towards progressing those

into better living conditions as much as possible.

But on top of that, we have the capital investment.

The procurement is underway for long -term contracts to deliver a £609 million investment

programme over the next decade, with major improvement works already progressing across

estates and that includes new bathroom, kitchen, windows, doors and a lot of fire safety works.

On compliance, performance is being closely monitored with work underway to improve stage

one responses and ensure lessons from compliance drive service improvements and stage two complaints

are on 100%.

On resident satisfaction, overall satisfaction has increased by 5 % with more tenant satisfaction

and management performance measures showing improvement compared with last year.

So it shows that we are working in the right way and hopefully soon we will meet our targets.

But again there is no room for complacency, we will work at pace to make sure that we

can get there.

Finally, estate service has improved through the faster bulky waste removal, action on

supply shipping and enhancements to communal areas, helping create cleaner and brighter

estates for residents.

So the work is still continuing, we are going for the right trajectory and I would like

to bring in David Joss and the rest of the directors.

Thank you.

Thank you, good evening members.

So I will bring in Steve Platt first of all who oversees a number of the issues that the

lead member has just introduced to you but I suppose just to say a couple of things by

way of introduction.

We do have an ongoing relationship with the housing regulator, we meet with them every

month and I'm pleased to say that the improving performance we're seeing around areas such

as compliance and repairs accords for the commitments being made to the regulator when

we did our self referral around about 18 months ago and the time skills that we set out for

improving.

We are also doing deep dive discussions on different topics with the regulator to really

get under the skin of the different types of improvements that we are making.

So for instance, recently we had a session with the regulator around complaints.

That's partly about how we're improving the response rate, but it's also about the root

cause analysis and how we're learning from complaints and changing the culture within

the team.

So as I say, we are getting deeper into the work and I think really starting to see the

results.

But I'm going to ask Stephen to give you some updates particularly around our repair service and particularly around

The planned investment programme which we're getting going with with some immediate

Outcomes that are going to become apparent

Thanks, David and those two those two

Initiatives obviously one leads to the other we need to look after our properties

but if we're investing in our properties, then that repair profile will be reduced.

So it's interconnected.

On the repairs, I think context is interesting.

We're showing real improvements in our repairs,

but we've got some initiatives that we think will really improve performance, customer satisfaction,

and the introduction of the leaks squad is really key.

A lot of our problems are around complex leaks,

around access into properties, et cetera.

And we are recruiting a team which will just concentrate

on those aspects.

And that in itself will really help the performance

and the resident satisfaction of the repairs team.

And we're also looking at how we manage our control

of appointments because we have failure demand

coming back into the call centre when appointments are being handled externally and we're looking

at changing the way that we control our appointments which will help again reduce failure demand

and potentially put more opportunity online. Building safety is key to all of us, everyone

talks about decent homes and things like that but actually building safety we are, we have

80 HRBs which are higher risk buildings.

We've also got lots of lower rise buildings

that are kind of four to six, four to five storeys.

And there's some really complex layouts in those buildings

that we need to understand,

that we need to be able to mitigate the risk.

I mean, we've got some real complexities,

some really interesting designs here.

So it's nice to, they're nice to work on

as a surveyor or as an ex -surveyor.

And then coming through to the investment programme,

We've got the 500 million that we've launched, that process.

We're out to lease -hold consultation as we speak for those eight contracts.

And that is really exciting.

On top of that we've got another 100 million which is around the mechanical and electrical and lift investments,

which again will drive some of our compliance and also resident satisfaction.

If you think around the heating issues, the water issues we had last winter especially.

And we've also been getting on with progressing work through the South East Consortium, which

I've previously spoken to the last scrutiny committee about.

So the more we can invest, that's great, it's a longer term ambition.

The more we can do short term to improve the here and now is really important

Thank You councillor

Ahmed David

Karen and Steve for your overview. I know members of Christian

Can I have first question, please?

How confident are you that the council has a sufficiently up -to -date understanding of the condition of its housing stock?

And tell us what risks are associated with properties that have not been surveyed recently?

We are working through getting that 100 % surveys done by Christmas, which is what we reported widely and what we're saying to the regulator.

Just to clarify on condition, the 100%, we will know 100 % of our, at the outside of our properties, certainly by the end of the year.

We're also aiming to get 100 % access into individual properties by the end of the year.

And that can have its challenges around access.

So we're making sure that we will have an access process in place by the end of the

year if we haven't been able to get in.

We had some schemes that were our highest priority that almost kind of fell off the

end of the better neighbourhoods framework.

So we do know our highest risk properties and our highest priority properties around condition.

And those are the properties which will be delivered to start with through the South East Consortium.

And then in the first four years of the term contracts that we're letting.

So we believe we do know our highest priority properties which will be delivered.

and then we'll have that full picture by the new year of stock within five years.

That's the key thing, having an up -to -date priority within five years.

I'm conscious that was a two -part question.

Does that answer both bits?

Thank you. Do members have any questions?

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, everyone.

My question is, tenant sufficient scores have improved in some areas, but many residents

still report concern about communication and responsiveness.

What are the main drivers dissatisfaction and what evidence do you have that current improvement programme are addressing them?

Thank you.

I think you're right. I think we report high satisfaction, but we're doing 90 ,000 repairs.

So there's a real high number of percentage who won't be satisfied by what we've done.

So what we are doing is doing initiatives like the LEAK squad,

which will really have a point of contact for complex areas that often

become dissatisfaction and often become disrepair. Initiatives like that will

make a real difference. We are looking at reducing the number of emergency repairs

we do. We do a very high number of emergency repairs. We can reduce

emergency repairs that will give us more time to deliver the day -to -day repairs.

So initiatives like that will be improving satisfaction.

And I think just part of your question

was around communication.

And then we have been doing a lot

around increasing the amount of communication

with tenants involvement in development of policies,

but then also feeding back to them

what impact that's having.

We've introduced new channels as well.

We were one of the first landlords

to introduce a WhatsApp channel,

was based on direct feedback from our residents that that was their preferred method of communication.

Obviously it's clearly not something that would work for all tenants but it was an additional

string to our bow as it were. We've also been doing estates because there is no substitute

for face to face and going out to meet residents in their own estates. We've been doing a series

of estates days through the summer and we've had a big door knock as well where we've been

out and knocked on thousands of doors to talk directly to residents.

These are just some of the initiatives we've been doing and it has fed through to I think

an increased score around the tenant satisfaction measure and how we communicate with residents.

Karen is there anything you want to say more broadly about tenant satisfaction measures

because clearly it doesn't just cover the repair side, it doesn't just cover

and social behaviour, it covers a whole suite of things.

Yes, so I think at the back of your pack you've got the ten perception measures.

So the ten perception measures are they're not measuring somebody's

transaction, i .e. I've had a repair or you satisfied. If you looked at that

transactional satisfaction it's in the sort of high 90s, low 90s I think. If you

have after you've had a repair we ask you if you're satisfied that's in the

sort of high 80s low 90s depending on sort of you know what what month we're

counting but these ten perception surveys are surveys of a thousand

residents called at random 250 every quarter to ask them how they rate the

service so it's a perception of everything to do with the service and

and they answer one specifically around repairs,

how safe their home is.

If you look at the table, you'll see that there are 12 measures.

And eight of the 12 measures had a higher satisfaction rate

than last year when we did the survey.

And 10 of the measures are within the London average.

So I think as David and Councillor Said said,

We were starting from a certain baseline and what we've done over the last couple of years is sort of be on a journey where year on year we're improving in terms of the perception that residents have of services.

Sorry, can I just also add that the perception element is very important.

We understand that we're talking about the council stock at the moment, but for a lot of resident perception also comes from our registered providers.

So the session that we had today was one of the first sessions where we were bringing RPs in to talk about their repairs and how things are going in with our RPs.

Because that builds the perception of whole of the borough across Cala Hamlet, not just the council stock.

So myself and Karen, we've gone out with my Deputy Cabinet Member to meet some of the RSLs in the borough.

We've met with four so far, we want to meet with all major RSLs.

And just to make sure that relationship is there, at the same time the perception and our priorities are aligned.

That's very important that what we want to deliver for our residents,

they also have that willingness and the collaboration with the council to make sure that they also deliver for the residents.

Thank you, chair. I have two questions.

One is, the first one is around missed appointments and also sort of data issues.

So I noticed the missed appointments have gone down.

Is that because contractors get charged as a result if they miss the appointment?

And I'm pleased to see there's, right first time, it's been recorded.

Are you also recording sort of the number of visits that are maybe needed to complete

a repair and whether you need to go back within a year and the sort of the quality of the

repair?

I'll come to the other question after that.

Yeah, thank you.

Yes, it's good the misappointments are reducing and that's partly just down to hands -on management.

we do need to micromanage these contracts to know what's happening and hold them to account.

So I think that's probably one of the reasons that that is happening.

Write first time is also great that we want someone to go in quickly,

not quickly but finish it in one visit and go away and we don't need a repeat visit.

But we want to take more control on that process.

Part of the follow -on, the second question, was about whether we measure follow -on.

At the moment we don't measure the follow -on works particularly well,

because the IT system that MIRS work with at the moment doesn't give us a forward slash one, forward slash two,

for a related job, it raises another job.

So we are in our plans to have more control on the appointments.

We'll have linked jobs.

So then we'll be able to say this job, these jobs were done first time, this job was done with three visits, etc.

Because at the moment it's a new visit every time.

The other thing that I wanted to ask was on page 30, the Legionella risk assessment.

I note that there's cheques being done and these are improving, so that's really good.

I was wondering what the risk factors still are with respect to that,

on the places that haven't been recently checked,

because obviously Legionnaire is not something that we want to have.

Thank you. We do cheque all of our tanks twice a year.

The tanks where we are having particular problems are down to access.

We've got some outstanding visits because often we have to get through a property to get into a tank to then cheque it.

So we feel confident that we are controlling that risk, but we do know that we've got some particular inspections to make sure that we complete.

And the other thing is whilst there may be some outstanding works, the water quality

has been tested, but it might be that there's some work relating to that water tank that's

required.

Okay, thank you.

Councillor David.

Thank you, Chair.

So I'm pleased to hear from the Councillor on that generally, but also I thought your

providers in the borough is a really important one.

I think part of the role of the council, particularly when there is quite a range of housing providers

in the boroughs to hold them to account and that clearly is a part of how we would do

that.

On a point of detail, I was also pleased to hear about the league specialist team because

certainly my experience is that it can be quite a frustrating thing for a resident to

have to deal with this thing.

Not easy to sort out but there is a league specialist team I think is a good development

and I hope we've solved some of the problems that people have come to me with.

Just one quick point of fact, I'm sure councillors have been told at some point or other when

the next regulator assessment will be, but I'll be interested here for that because I

just don't know myself when it is.

On major works, one of the things I've been trying to do is get a sense for my ward, and

presumably people might have done another ward, so what's the plan of work on the council

housing in my ward?

And I got sent another member's inquiry in because I'd just been not very successful

and getting a sensible answer.

So what I wanted to do was to understand how easy it is

to answer that question.

Richard, doing this 18 -month stock condition survey,

you've talked a bit about the work that's being done.

How much is an amount of money that's been allocated,

609 million over a number of years,

how much of that is being identified as,

it will do this work here, roofs here, new bathrooms over there,

and what is the timetable for getting that information out?

And then on the broader point that quite a few people raised with me, how green are we trying to make our estates?

I've seen some work on trees for cities, I think, or trees for London on estates in my ward.

I just wonder how much that forms a part of what they're thinking.

And finally, on damp and mould, as I asked the Clarion and Peabody people, certainly in lots of situations in the past,

I think councillors have been told in response to questions about damper mould, but really

residents are just not doing things right, in a way which sort of pushes it back to residents.

And clearly it arrives to law and one hopes housing staff thinking about it is changing.

What's going on in the council in thinking about how we really change the mindset and

approach that whole area in a different way?

Thanks, Councillor Edgar.

So I think on the first point about the re -inspection, I think the first thing to know is that clearly

with the housing regulator is a co -regulatory model where we work kind of hand in hand with

the regulator.

We're having monthly meetings and it will be a decision that we take together when we

broadly got to a stage where we think actually the data is showing that we're ready to have

that re -inspection and we're confident that we will see a material change in outcome.

Clearly for us we're guided by getting to the place where the service is in as good a state as possible

so the residents are getting the best service that they deserve and can expect.

But we have set ourselves some really clear targets, particularly around improving the issues that led to the C3 outcomes

of things like what Steve described earlier around the stock condition.

We're really committed by the end of the year to resolving that and get it having being up to 100 % stock condition information

As we work through all of that and the other issues and what we call our your advice our action programme

We've got a phase two of that which I forget how many actions there are Karen, but it's 72 Karen's on top of it

We've got 72 actions that we're working through and I think once we've really kind of got through that programme

We'll be in a position to say we're ready and providing the regulator agrees for our monthly meetings will trigger the inspection

So, you know

I don't want to put a precise time scale on it because it'll be determined by doing the work and making sure residents are getting

the service they deserve

Counter I think there was three questions is like forward programme

estate improvements

More wider than just the block. Was that the second?

Through you Chair, I suppose the green of the states, which is something that clearly

has a big impact on people's lives, increasingly so, as climate change happens we have much

warmer weather.

And then the last one was the AWABs law, wasn't it?

So the forward programme, we've got the South East Consortium programme together, we've

We've already been doing early consultation,

and we'll be doing some leasehold consultation as well.

But I'm very keen that it's a resident consultation

as early as possible.

So I can certainly share those blocks

and those estates with the committee,

because they're pretty much defined.

The first tranche is all defined.

The second tranche, which is the many blocks

that we've identified where we can improve some of the decent homes figures quickly,

can be shared as well.

And then the third tranche is actually some of our HRBs, Latham House and Pauline House,

which are two high profile and priority blocks.

When we go out to the second stage of tender for the procurement in January next year,

we want to have a four year indicative programme of the work that those eight contractors could

be expecting in the first four years.

So that could be shared as well at the time it will be shared with the contractors because

Because obviously at that point it's a public document.

So we're looking at a four year plus a five year visibility of future works.

And I'm happy to share that.

The greening of the estates is probably slightly...

I probably need a bit of support on that.

We're looking at the blocks, we're looking at the footprints.

and we've got a limited amount of money.

Obviously there are other initiatives around.

If you look at the food gardens that we've got on the estates,

and the work that kind of estate services do,

the climate action team are looking at increasing shading.

I mean this summer was obvious sometimes.

I mean all throughout in Limehouse,

and actually that's got lots of lovely trees and it was quite shady.

Other areas of the boroughs, the streets are quite open,

and the estates are quite open.

So I'm I'm not too involved with that directly, but I'm sure we can

You know we can coordinate

That that type of work. I don't know if anybody can help me on the greening

Yeah, so I didn't also know whether you meant retrofit of

Existing properties you you were talking about the crimes

So through you s**** I mean that would be yes a whole nother question I was thinking more trees

That sort of thing.

Which take a while to become mature and actually have the full effect.

So just to say that the tree planting and greening initiatives that we've got on estates is actually overseen by our Parks Department.

We could ask them to do an update to the future meeting.

As part of the bigger commitment around planting trees and tower hamlets, they have been doing work on estates that you've probably seen some of.

So it's definitely a nativity that's underway.

I think alongside that I would just say the point that Steve made around food gardens

is really important because we are continually looking for opportunities to expand that where

there is a demand from residents.

So I think there are a number of things but perhaps we could take an action if the chair

agrees to ask for our parks team who oversee the greening initiatives to come back to you.

The final thing I'd say is, and you probably saw it in the tenant satisfaction measures

that are in here, our grants maintenance team do consistently get really good feedback for

the quality of their work and it was certainly something I noticed when I moved to this council.

I think we do have a really good standard of grants maintenance on our estates and we're

to maintain that and maintain the very high level of satisfaction that we have, which

is definitely above the industry and London average.

And then just the last point about A -WAB's Law. I mean, unfortunately, A -WAB's Law Court

was something that caused huge ripples from a very unfortunate situation with A -WAB at

change in how we work with taller buildings and with fire safety and building risk.

And AWAB's law has had a similar profound effect on the industry.

I think that the old, you know, blaming the tenant really was dying out.

I think that tenant management, tenant resident engagement, I think had improved and was improving.

and I think it took AWAB's law to absolutely knock it on the head.

And when I go out to properties and I see situations where we may have some damp and mould,

we may have some overcrowding, the residents are always very conscious of keeping windows open.

I show them trickle vents, things like that.

So they are contributing and they can help, but that's not to say the problem is theirs.

We need to deal with each one.

Cold bridging, some structural design of our buildings just don't help us get that internal

surface warm enough to prevent condensation.

So it's intrinsically linked, but I do think in a positive way it's changed that approach

to how we deal with tenants.

Thank you.

Susanna?

Thank you, Chad.

My question is about estate inspections.

I could only share from our experience that as a Tenants and Residents Association,

we partake in this estate inspection, but we could only do it quarterly.

But we have provided a system whereby we track every scaffolding and every communal repair.

And I think the good news is because of our constant monitoring,

it has come down, which is a great win for the council and for the residents.

However, I just want to give some feedback that the housing officer, his scope needs

to be clarified.

There is always kind of finger pointing as in housing officers saying his role is only

about ASB for example, I mean he is new undoubtedly.

And when it comes to repair, he says that he points his finger at the caretaking team.

And I think it's not a very good reflection to residents because of all the internal finger pointing.

And that is your first line and that gives a poor perception.

And it gives a lot of frustration for us.

So I would recommend that the scope of the caretaking team and the scope of the housing officer is clarified.

I would request for that, number one.

Number two, it says here that estate inspections that happen monthly, you have a bronze, silver and gold for transparency.

I think this has to be shared with the Tenants and Residents Association, especially when we go around and spend so much of our time.

I think it's good for the Council to be transparent because we work in collaboration.

We want it to be goals, certainly.

So I think that's the second request.

And thirdly, I'm glad now it's publicised and any resident can partake of it.

But of course, you know, residents normally tend to just not have time.

And then we take this on and therefore I hope we are given more support and more transparency.

not just for myself, but for any TRA that is willing to do the extra step that the Council supports us by being supportive with information and reports.

Thank you.

Thank you, Susanna. I'll hand over to Karen.

I think just to say, first of all, on scaffolding, I do want to thank you and your fellow TRA members.

I think when Steve and I last visited you, you showed me the inventory or your colleague Jonathan did and I was very impressed with how much dedication that you put into that.

And it's no doubt got a large part to do with the improvement that you've raised because you're so on top of it.

I would like us to learn from what you do there and apply it more widely because as you say scaffolding can be detrimental for residents.

but it can also bring a cost to us which is very frustrating if it's not necessary that it needs to be up.

So I think first of all a big thank you and if you can share that also with some of the others who are involved in that work.

I think in terms of your second point, it should never be the case in my view and this is a cultural point for us

that an estate officer is saying that it's someone else's job or pointing in the opposite direction.

I must say it's not something I see a lot of but if it is happening I will make sure that senior managers

reiterate that we don't want that to happen. A resident doesn't mind and doesn't

shouldn't have to worry themselves with whose department it is. That's our job to sort that out. So

if that's

happening and it clearly is in your in your case, I'm going to be asking managers to stamp that out.

would be the second thing. And then in terms of estate inspections and sharing the outcome

of those, we always want to be transparent with the data. So again I'll take that back

to the estate services team about how we share that data with residents because also if we

would want to seek your views on how we're scoring our estates. Karen is there anything

you want to add. Yeah I just wanted to pick up the point about the caretaking team and the role of the housing officer.

I think we've talked about this before about the regulators code of conduct and competency.

So the regulators set out what they expect people working within a housing company, housing provider.

They've set out what certain competencies and standards they expect staff in those organisations

to uphold.

That came into force in October this year and we've done an extensive piece of work

with all staff around what are the, these are the council's values, but what are the

competencies and behaviours we expect you to have as a housing officer on the front

line or a caretaker.

And we've had, it was a blank sheet of paper, what we've had from residents, we had a residence

and staff input.

And what we've had is all of the things

that they think that we should be doing.

So if you're doing a handover to somebody else,

you make sure that that handover is clearly done,

that you treat every query equally,

that you're accountable for the actions

that you've been taking on.

And so we've set out all of these competencies

in a sort of framework and behaviours.

We're more than happy to share,

it's in its near final version,

so more than happy to share that with you here.

and obviously there will be, these are things that the staff themselves said that they all need to be accountable for.

So we'll be taking, we can be happy to share that with you at some point when it's got the final sign off.

Sorry Chek, can I also, coming here, I think David and Karen have answered very well.

Let me thank Susanna for some of the points you've made because you're echoing exactly what I speak in my lead member meetings.

and a lot of the conversations are the ones that me and the Mayor have late night when we have resident issues in their states

around cleanliness, around ASB and

especially caretaking work. So these are very important roles and very resident focused roles and it impacts everyone's lives and

David Joyce and I we speak about this very often on how can we make our caretaking services up to that standard?

How can we have our housing officers more visible?

How can we work with our housing officers?

And also where there's enough signage, enough information, enough displays of where we know who to go to,

and that kind of conversation.

It's good that you're involved in your local area, whereas a lot of residents aren't involved.

How do we get to sort of understand what their needs are?

So these are very, very important points you make, and I really echo your sentiments,

and I will support my directors David Joyce and everyone to make sure that we can speak

to our senior officers and also trickle the information down all the way to our housing

officers and our caretakers to make sure that we can continue providing that service and

work inevitably how we can find gaps and sort of close the gaps going forward.

Thank you very much.

Councillor Sulu -Karmat, please.

Thank you, Chair.

I've got several questions, but I'll just make it very short.

In terms of old buildings, obviously they need repairs.

Some of the buildings I know that are sitting on the verge of taking down or repairing it, the council is,

People are thinking like they're not 100 % sure whether the building is being under demolition or is being repaired.

I know some buildings by names and they are sort of very unorganised in terms of entrance and things like that and repair.

So have you got target dates for all names of those buildings or you have already allocated those buildings?

These are going down and not being repaired and what's the time scale on them?

And if you can share with the community that those buildings have been targeted with the names and the area where it's taking down.

and instead of repairing it, you probably decided to rebuild by demolition and removal.

I mean I would say that part of that is a discussion with David and the other team in

regeneration and the Hanandau glitch. I know there are blocks that come up that there are

decisions around opportunities of regenerating and then do we include the block that's there

in that or do we not? So we don't have a definitive list.

I know, is it Ashburton or Ashdown, which is one that is, we are,

Ashington. Ashington is probably the one that's closest to, I mean we've got not many people in there.

So I think that's closest to that region. There are others around.

So but it is a big decision to bring a building down because it can be refurbished

Obviously there's a cost associated and and and there would be large bills for the council and for police holders

And it's a case of where you put the people while you're building

So it's one of those games where you build something to put move people into then you can demolish

So it's got it's an expensive and complex area

Can I just come in off the bat, I think an important principle, even when we are considering

a block for estate regeneration, like with the Harriet Abse and Paterson scheme nearby

and Stepney, where we are doing an estate regeneration scheme, an important principle

for me is that you do continue to repair existing blocks ahead of demolition.

Clearly we wouldn't do a major work scheme where we invest millions in it when we know

we're about to demolish it.

However, Welsh residents are still living in those blocks and these schemes can take years to get going.

You know, Welsh will do things like the ballot consultation and planning and all the other stages.

They deserve to live in a block which meets the standards we should expect them to.

So just around the language of repairs, yes we will absolutely continue to carry out repairs and maintenance

and make sure that it's a liveable block that meets the right standards.

What we might do is decide not to do a major work scheme, bearing in mind that would end up being millions of pounds

which we wouldn't be recouping because we're going to demolish it.

But I just think there's an important distinction there because I think there's nothing worse than when a council

makes a decision about regeneration and then leaves the block in an unfit state for years and years.

It's certainly something I will never want us to do here.

Just a quick one here. Just to understand the stuff that you have explained, but in

terms of residents living in this building, all those buildings, they're quite uncertain

about how they are going to be treated and what's the future and whether they're going

they're going to decide to repair the building.

So if you have a timeline or if you have something positive

come out from your discussion or from your department,

so the committee will appreciate even the residents.

I do chair a joint meeting with my region colleagues.

We were concentrating, we have been concentrating

on the handover when a new block is finished and residents occupy it and then we take on

the maintenance responsibilities. But it's now evolving into a liaison between the teams.

We're looking at the acquisition voids that we had a big programme of last year. And I think

it has blocks have come up where we're now going to overlay some of our schemes with

potential regen schemes and that will bring a bit more clarity.

Time wise I think it's a comms issue again and I'm not too sure whether David could guide

on whether we can get some comms out at some stage.

Yeah I mean I think we do need to get better at the issue of communications, particularly

before we have a contractor on site so with the scheme I just mentioned the contractor

now on site and as a point of contact for residents and I think as well as the engagement

team in regeneration we can constantly have those conversations but until you get to that

stage there can be a period of time and we do need to improve that.

One of the things I do want to look at more is using our operational housing staff as

well.

I attended a recent service meeting of our caretakers actually and one of the caretakers

from the HAP regeneration scheme said to me,

I would love to be able to tell residents more myself.

So there's something about actually keeping

our existing staff on board as well,

and being able to make those linkages

is back to being one council and not being,

not just all sticking within our departmental boundaries.

Thank you.

I would have the last question, please.

So residents do not experience housing services through performance indicators.

So they experience them through the condition of their homes.

So what would you say to a tenant who believes that despite improvement programmes and investment,

their day -to -day experience of council housing has not improved?

Well I mean I think as we mentioned earlier although we have good satisfaction levels

compared to London average and beyond, it's still not good enough when actually 30 odd

percent of our residents are telling us that they aren't satisfied even if it is a perception

measure.

So I think the first thing that I would say and we do say a lot is that we need to go

and find out more about why they're not satisfied.

So one of the things we do with the tenant satisfaction study

that Karen mentioned earlier, the perception studies,

is we follow up with those who say they're not satisfied

and find out more about why they are dissatisfied.

We also will look to follow up on any specific issues

they have about their property or their estate.

So I think the first thing is to keep

those channels of communication open

and seek to find out what we can do to resolve the position.

So that's the first thing, not to shy away from what those individuals are experiencing.

It's similar to the repair side as well.

We might have over 90 % of residents, or roughly 90 % of residents saying they're satisfied with the service they've received.

but if I forget how many repairs you said 90 ,000 10 % aren't that's still

9 ,000 unhappy residents or not or not or several thousand residents who are

unhappy about their repair something is really important that we we keep

drilling down into that and then and then the second thing is even the

residents are saying they're satisfied we'll have suggestions about how to

improve the service and and so that's about the estate conversations it's

the big door knock and it's about involving residents and things like policy development

so that we're putting their voice at the heart of what we do.

But I don't know, Karen, do you want to come in as well?

I could give you an example which we're all familiar with which is the tenant satisfaction

measure which talks about are you feeling safe with your home?

And people often will think about that in terms of the physical building and whether

it's related to fire safety, but when you drill down and you talk to people about that,

because it is something that we look at really closely, it's one of the ones that we haven't

been trending very positively on, but when we go back and have a look at that, it's often

related to ASB, where you wouldn't necessarily think that if you had been asked the question.

So at the next housing cabinet subcommittee, we've got our ASB colleagues who manage ASB

for us on our estates to come along and try to unpick that a little bit more as to what type of service

residents are getting from the ASB team because that seems to be driving some of the satisfaction about people feeling safe.

Thank you officers for attending and responding to our members' question this evening.

Our committee welcomes the positive improvements reported across a number of areas,

including repairs performance, dump and mould, response time, compliance activity,

tenant satisfaction measures and council significant long -term investment programme for housing.

However, today's discussion has also highlighted that many residents continue to judge housing quality through their day -to -day experience of repairs.

Communication, state condition and how quickly persistent issues are resolved.

Members will therefore continue to monitor progress closely, particularly around overdue repairs, complaints,

decency standards, building safety compliance and residence satisfaction to ensure that improvements result in tangible benefits for residents across the borough.

I would like to conclude with some recommendations for the lead member and officers to take away

from tonight's session.

Firstly, we recommend the service develop a clear delivery plan with measurable annual

milestones to reduce the proportion of homes failing the decent home standards and increase

the percentage of homes with up -to -date stock condition surveys.

Ensuring investment is prioritised towards homes presenting the greatest risk of residents.

Secondly, we recommend that the service threatened its approach to managing overdue repeat and

complex repairs by implementing an approach of enhanced case ownership, performance monitoring

and contractor accountability arrangement, with the particular focus on leaks, dump and mould,

and cases that generate complaints. Finally, we recommend that a resident's feedback,

complaints, trends, satisfaction drivers, and housing embossment learning are more routinely

used to shape service improvement plans and reported alongside operational performance

measures to demonstrate how residents concerned are influencing service delivery.

On that note, I would now like to conclude this item.

Thank you, lead members and officers.

You are free to leave.

And we'll move on to our next item.

Thank you.

Our final item this evening is the Housing and Regeneration

Scrutiny Subcommittee Work Programme 2026 -27.

Our approach has been to hold a members workshop in July

where OSC leads and chairs engaged with cabinet leads

to better understand the priorities

and how some aspect of our work programme

can be better aligned as to hold the executive to account.

Our officers have also engaged DLTs through a series of interactions

to get a better understanding on key decisions that will need to be considered.

And this will be an ongoing process throughout the year,

hence why we will have to think about pre -decision scrutiny.

Finally, our scrutiny officers have been engaging with community groups and local residents

to better understand their views on topics and issues that they want scrutiny to consider.

Our overall work programme has been agreed at OSC in September and I wanted to use this opportunity for my committee to add any comments and feedback for the Housing and Regeneration Scrutiny Subcommittee Work Programme.

This is a live document and throughout the while there is structure to our work programme,

we may have opportunities if there is a capacity to consider emerging item for scrutiny consideration.

If there are no comments or feedback, that's it.

Suzanne.

Thank you, Chair.

I think we had kind of a critique of our scrutiny, I think last year, or I mean the last term,

that we act as a critical friend but sometimes the policy comes out and we haven't really been inputting into those policies.

And I think the team seems quite open to us critiquing policies even before they become policies.

So, because I think our role is much bigger than just listening to presentation and giving feedback.

So I do not know how to phrase it better, but I do not know whether the rest, especially those who have been in groups in scrutiny,

whether you all could feel that we should have more power to critique before it becomes a policy.

So, yeah, Chair, that's just a very broad, sorry, it's a very broad comment.

The officers will respond to it.

If you have a look through the work programme, there are a number of policy development areas

where there is an opportunity to feed into before key decisions.

One of the other aspects you'll have, we missed last week's housing cabinet because it was

brought forward for council, but going forward the housing scrutiny subcommittee meetings

will have opportunities to kind of feed in as well through previous scrutiny as well,

so there is that in situ at the moment, so at the next meeting hopefully it should be

more aligned, and so the opportunities to feed into some of those areas.

But if you look for the housing scrutiny, and as the chairs mentioned, if there's emerging

issues that's going to be coming up, there's an opportunity to feed in.

We will also have, you'll recall from last term's housing screening committee that the

consideration was taken on around decent home standards in terms of policy development.

5 a) Housing & Regeneration Scrutiny Sub Committee Work Programme 2026-27

I think it was as a cartoon, raised that as bringing that forward as a deep dive in terms

of looking at policy. So that's been taken forward and there's

as well from the directors and the cabinet lead to engage with scrutiny in that process.

The major words that there is this budget that is put aside, which is about 500 over million,

I think the scrutiny here got to see how that is going to be spent.

I would like that to be one of the, whether you call it work programme or agenda item,

that the team comes back and report to us, because the worst thing that could happen is this amount gets spent on a few blocks

and we don't need the decent home standard.

Are you talking about the £609 million investment?

Yes, £609 million.

So that's within the work programme.

It's already in the work programme for them to feed back.

So they will update every time they...

I just want to thank everyone that I'm reappointed as a leaseholder representative.

My question is what about the vacancy for the council tenant representative?

Okay, Philip if you can respond to it please.

Hi, we did have somebody who's in but unfortunately dropped off so we're going to have to go back and re -recruit for that role.

So I think that's in situ at the moment. Happy to update the committee at the next meeting to see where we're at with that.

If there is anyone interested with a council tenant, they can look at the vacancy being

re -advertised?

Yes, that's correct.

They will re -advertise the post, yes.

Okay.

I have a couple of bits.

Sorry, okay, David.

Just on that particular point, when it's being re -advertised, will we be told it's being

Simply that I think that I suspect we all know, people who might be interested in this,

with councillors generally encouraging people to think about applying.

Certainly, councillor, I mean we can put it out and also we can put it on the members bulletin, just to notify all members of our way.

Okay, yeah, thank you. So I have a couple of bits, so I understand that democratic services received public questions on weak lane,

actual junction and the surrounding development. A briefing note was shared with the committee offline last week,

which sets out the questions and respond from the service.

Do members have any comments? If not, then I will ask Dr. Lucknow

to add response has been received to the questions

and that this will be shared with the member of public who raised the question.

Our next Housing and Regeneration Screw -to -Neo Subcommittee meeting will take place on Monday,

30th of November, 2026, at 6 .30pm, with pre -meeting started at 6 o 'clock.

As set out by the OSCE Chair and OSCE meeting on 22nd September meeting, the pre -meeting

attendance is compulsory and you are expected to attend on time.

This is there to help us collectively as a committee on how we tackle the items ahead of actual meeting

and discuss any key lines and recommendations for items.

So we also have a Q &S, a scrutiny improvement workshop, workshop next phase as part of the wider corporate programme,

corporate improvement plan as stipulated by best value inspection report, which will be open to subcommittee members

and is taking place on 27 October 2026 from 6 .30pm to 8 .30pm.

Can I encourage you all to attend please.

7 ANY OTHER BUSINESS

Thank you, School Committee members, for your attendance and participation tonight.

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

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Housing & Regeneration Scrutiny Sub CommitteeMonday, 5th October 2026 at 6:30pm

1 DECLARATIONS OF INTERESTS

4 b) Performance and Accountability of RSLs: Delivering Timely Repairs for Residents

4 a) Improving Council Housing Quality

5 a) Housing & Regeneration Scrutiny Sub Committee Work Programme 2026-27

7 ANY OTHER BUSINESS

Housing & Regeneration Scrutiny Sub Committee
Monday, 5th October 2026 at 6:30pm