Agenda and minutes

None.

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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 meeting on 27 January 2025 to be an accurate record.

RESOLVED

That the minutes of the meeting held on 27 January 2025 were agreed to be accurate.

This report sets out our performance in key health and safety areas including gas, electric, water, lifts, asbestos and fire as well as Category 1 Hazards, structural walls, and playgrounds.

The report also provides an overview of H&F response to date to the Grenfell Inquiry Phase 2 report and sets out the Council’s journey to improve communication and engagement with residents,

Richard Shwe (Director of Housing) highlighted that keeping residents safe in their homes was not only a legal duty but at the heart of what were done. This report set out H&F’s performance in key health and safety areas including gas, electric, water, lifts, asbestos and fire but also Category 1 Hazards, structural walls, and playgrounds.  He remarked that the Residents and Building Safety team had done a lot over the last 3 years, and it was phenomenal for a local authority to get compliance as high as between 98% and 100% and it would continue the journey.

Richard Buckley (Assistant Director, Residents and Buildings Safety) briefed members on the report:

• The Council was the landlord to circa 17,000 homes of which around 12,000 were tenanted.  It was also tasked to ensure the safety of about 1,600 temporary accommodations and 49 high-rise buildings (HRBs).
• A lot had been done under a wider strategy encompassing compliance to the Grenfell Inquiry reports, Building Safety Act, Fire Safety Act, Fire Safety Regulations and Social Housing Regulation Act. The aim was to ensure residents felt confident and safe within their own homes.
• Building safety services were subject to annual accreditation and audits by third parties and internal monthly scrutiny by Cabinet Member and SLT assurance.
• H&F’s responses went above the recommendations in the Grenfell Inquiry reports and changes in legislation pursuant to the incident including physical work (upgrading fire doors, installation of sprinklers and evacuation systems, improvements in fire detection like upgrading fuse boxes and lighting) and soft engagement work with fire brigade and residents (training provided to H&F staff and contractors, testing home appliances, creation of personal emergency evacuation plan (PEEP), advice letters  and leaflets about the risk of e-bikes, posters on lifts banning the entry of e-bikes and e-scooters).

James Berry (Station Commander, Hammersmith Fire Station) outlined the background of developing “Make Every Contact Count” package with colleagues in Adult Social Care and Safeguarding teams to prevent fire deaths. Through this package, stakeholders might set foot on homes that were not visited and checked for 6 months, mitigate any fire risks detected and improve safeguarding for the residents therein. An online training package, lasted for about an hour, was available to frontline officers and H&F’s contractors/subcontractors who could assume accountability and meet the required standards. The package was developed some two years ago and might require improvements to the core skills. 

James Berry further said that the Fire Brigade was also involved in the provisions of the evacuation systems, wet risers and Lithium-ion battery project.  On the latter, he noted the Lithium-ion market was moving ahead of the technology to ensure their safety. To reduce the fire risk up the HRBs, the Fire Brigade was considering requiring all batteries in a tower block be charged on the ground floor via commercially viable charging facilities. Meanwhile, educational events on safe use of the battery were held in Shepherd’s Bush Green and Hammersmith Apollo targeting at gig economy riders. James  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

This report provides an overview of hidden homelessness and data which gives insight into the level of hidden homelessness in the Hammersmith and Fulham borough.

Clare Dorning (Head of Homelessness Prevention and Assessment) presented the report, including an overview of hidden homelessness and data which gave an insight into the level of homelessness in Hammersmith and Fulham (H&F), the mainstream homelessness approaches and the housing options available for single people.

Michael Angus (Director, Barons Court Project) shared five case studies of people they currently working with who were experiencing lived hidden homelessness. He noted that all of them were not of UK origin who usually had high expectations in terms of accommodation and housing yet more resourceful than rough sleepers. Some of them had mental health issues resulting in the lack of trust. He also observed that none of them was young people as they might be sofa surfing in college and had meals during the day. About 25 Baron Court Project’s guests who were classified as hidden homelessness and this had put extra pressure on the Project as the number of rough sleepers continued to rise, from about 400 guests with 8,500 attendances in 2017/18 to 900 guests with 14,000 attendance in 2023/24. Michael highlighted that people experiencing homelessness tended to feel invisible and hide themselves for safety.

Richard Shwe (Director of Housing) said he would like to have a discussion to to see if the Homelessness team could extend help to the vulnerable communities of refugees, including the 5 cases.

As regards the Chair’s question about the quality of accommodation for single people with low income, Richard noted a lot had to be done together to help non-English speaking communities from asylum seeking background from understanding their issues and meeting their needs. He highlighted that a one-off grant of £65,000 was available this year to help single people at risk of homelessness and rough sleeping with direct financial support to go into private rented accommodation. They would work together to tackle rouge landlords to ensure accommodation quality from a regulatory point of view. Hopefully, this could help rebuild homeless people’s trust that the Council would do things with the residents and make a difference.

On the need to interrupt the journey of hidden homelessness and escalate it into an area under the Council’s statutory duty, Richard Shwe said the Housing Services teams were working together with co-production and public health to help these vulnerable adults, for example, providing wraparound care when they sought help from 145 King Street.

Clare Dorning highlighted the difficulty in maintaining non-statutory services like the wraparound care when the budgets were tight. Sometimes, the services had to become a floating support service or had to end. She undertook to discuss with Dr. Nicola Lang and partners to see if wraparound care could be continued. 

ACTION: Clare Dorning

Dr Nicola Lang (Director of Public Health) thanked Michael Angus for presenting the moving case studies believing that they had no recourse to public fund (NRPF).  She suggested:

• linking cases one and five to the thriving Iranian Association in the borough and case four to the Egyptian House.
• matching the religious  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

To note the dates of future meetings:

·       22 July 2025

·       5 Nov 2025

·       3 February 2026

·       20 April 2026

Members noted the dates of future meetings:

• 22 July 2025
• 5 Nov 2025
• 3 February 2026
• 20 April 2026

The Chair suggested discussing the following at future meetings:

• Sheltered Housing
• Repairs Update
• Capital Programming and Regeneration
• Tenants’ satisfaction surveys