Agenda and draft minutes

An apology for absence was received from Councillor Asif Siddique.

If a Councillor has a disclosable pecuniary interest in a particular item, whether or not it is entered in the Authority’s register of interests, or any other significant interest which they consider should be declared in the public interest, they should declare the existence and, unless it is a sensitive interest as defined in the Member Code of Conduct, the nature of the interest at the commencement of the consideration of that item or as soon as it becomes apparent.

Where Members of the public are not allowed to be in attendance and speak, then the Councillor with a disclosable pecuniary interest should withdraw from the meeting whilst the matter is under consideration. Councillors who have declared other significant interests should also withdraw from the meeting if they consider their continued participation in the matter would not be reasonable in the circumstances and may give rise to a perception of a conflict of interest.

Councillors are not obliged to withdraw from the meeting where a dispensation to that effect has been obtained from the Standards Committee.

There were no declarations of interest.

To approve the minutes of the previous meeting held on 30 January 2024 as an accurate record and note any outstanding actions.

Matters arising

The Chair noted having reviewed both the recording and the minutes of the meeting held in November 2023, she was satisfied that no actions were outstanding from it. She reminded members that within the constitution, councillors might request information and updates from Housing and Homelessness officers at any time, and they did not need to be made formally during meetings.

RESOLVED

That the minutes of the meeting held on 30 January 2024 were agreed as an accurate record.

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The Housing Ombudsman makes the final decision on disputes between residents and member landlords. The Housing Ombudsman carried out an investigation on the Council under paragraph 49 of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme.

This report presents the key actions taken by the Housing Services in response to the recommendations of the Housing Ombudsman highlighted in their special report published on 20 February 2024.

Councillor Frances Umeh (Cabinet Member for Housing and Homelessness) apologised on behalf of the Council to residents who had been affected by the issues raised in the Housing Ombudsman report. She said where appropriate, residents who had been let down had been compensated and the Council had worked hard to put things right.  Going forward, the Administration would make sure that residents could live in safe and decent homes and get the services they needed, as committed in the Housing Strategy and Manifesto. 

Jon Pickstone (Strategic Director of Economy) presented the Housing Ombudsman Special Report on Hammersmith and Fulham (H&F) Council. He noted that the Council’s journey of improvement predated the Ombudsman’s intervention. As an outcome of the report, the Council was ordered to publish and provide the Ombudsman by May 2024 with an action plan to deal with the issues raised in the Ombudsman’s 8 key orders and 10 recommendations. In terms of H&F’s response, Jon noted the Council had reiterated its regret in different ways, from meetings and correspondence with affected residents, in the media, and at formal council meetings. H&F’s commitment was underlined by the establishment of a Chief Executive-led Taskforce to strengthen housing services and leadership. In going through the wider actions, Jon drew members’ attention to the breath of the transformation in Housing, which was wider in scope than the Ombudsman Report. He said that Housing Services should be approached holistically with different teams delivering intended outcomes in synergy. To contextualise the situation amongst other social landlords, he highlighted that H&F had the lowest combined number of key orders and P49 recommendations out of the RSLs that the Housing Ombudsman had reported on.

Councillor Adronie Alford said she had heard the same commitment of listening to residents and making improvements in the past but she was still receiving complaints that council officers were not listening and contractors were not completing work. 

Richard Shwe (Director of Housing) offered his sincere apology to the tenants and leaseholders for the Council’s poor performance of housing services.   Richard recalled shortly after he came on board about a year ago, a brand-new Repairs team was created to embark on a journey of transformational change. During this period, Contract Officers were appointed to work with individual contractors for about 12 hours daily.  As a result, the resident satisfaction rates had increased from 60% to 90% and one of the under-performed contractors no longer worked for H&F. Apart from managing contractors, the Repairs team had also enhanced its partnership with the Direct Labour Organisation for Repairs (DLO) and strengthened the in-house team to undertake repair services for sheltered housing.  Richard said with the dedicated staff on board, the Housing Services team was now ensuring the right people would deliver their commitment on time.

Jon Pickstone highlighted the Repairs team was conducting over 50,000 repairs a year and that the majority of them were completed to the satisfaction of the residents. For individual cases requiring correction, they would  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

To note the dates of future meetings:

·       23 July 2024

·       12 November 2024

·       27 January 2025

·       23 April 2025

The Committee noted the dates of future meetings:

• 23 July 2024
• 12 November 2024
• 27 January 2025
• 23 April 2025

The Chair suggested discussing the following items at these meetings:

• Homelessness Prevention and Temporary Accommodation
• Private Rented Sector Policy
•  Voids Management