Agenda item

A report of the Head of Strategic and Private Sector Housing to provide an update on the delivery of the Housing Strategy 2015-2020 and the continued actions to deliver the priorities.

A report of the Head of Strategic and Private Sector Housing was submitted (item 8 on the agenda filed with these minutes).

The Lead Member for Housing and the Head of Strategic and Private Sector Housing attended the meeting to assist the Panel with the consideration of this item.

In response to issues raised by the Panel the Lead Member for Housing, the Head of Strategic and Private Sector Housing and the Head of Landlord Services stated that:

·         the housing acquisition policy included acquiring properties on the open market but also included development land options.  Modular homes which were considered significantly cheaper than what was available on the open market could also be considered.  Currently there was £1.2million left of the budget to spend by March 2019.

·         rough sleepers that were located in the Borough, that the Council were notified of through partner agencies or to itself had been engaged with, seen by officers and provided support through the Rough Sleepers project.  A Rough Sleepers count was being arranged to monitor rough sleepers across the Borough.  This event had taken place in the last two years and one rough sleeper had been found in the first year.  There was a vacancy for a councillor to participate in this year’s event.

·         the lightbulb project was a County wide initiative providing a holistic assessment of an individual’s needs to determine the support that could be offered.  170 individuals were currently on the waiting list, with the number of referrals between 17-20 per week.  The Council were working in partnership through the project to reduce the number of people on the waiting list and the oldest case was from the end of June.

·         with respect to Credit Union facilities there was an existing arrangement with Clockwise and the Council had recently entered into a service level agreement. The Borough Council was the most successful in their area of operation in encouraging people to sign up to rent accounts.  Largely to the efforts of the Financial Inclusion team the Council were being considered as a good practice case study and were using the clockwise rent accounts as a tool to encourage tenants to pay rent rather than progress to the next stage of the rent arrears process.

Due to the depth of discussion regarding this item, Councillor Fryer declared a personal interest in this matter as a Leicestershire County Councillor.

·         the scheme was being promoted as a successful way to prevent tenants falling into rent arrears through articles in the tenants magazine, and proactively discussing with tenants when discussing their rent arrears.

·         the Affordable Housing Delivery Paper would not be presented to all councillors; it was being considered through a Cabinet Member briefing that had been arranged.

·         with respect to the local Housing Needs Surveys for Woodhouse Eaves and the Wolds parishes, a date could not be provided for the refresh during 2018-2019 as negotiations were ongoing with Midland Rural Housing.

Member of the Panel raised concerns with respect to this progress update report and the Empty Homes progress update report (item 7), that many of the completion outcomes were defined as ‘continuous’ and that it would be preferable for specific dates to be included in the updates provided in future. 

RESOLVED

1.         that the first action on page 26 be updated to state that the Affordable Housing Delivery paper would be presented to selected members and not all members;

2.         that the Housing Strategy Progress report be updated where possible with dates for the action to completed;

3.         that the information in the report of the Head Strategic and Private Sector Housing be noted.

Reasons

1.         the Panel wished the action to accurately reflect the progress made on this action.

2.         Members of the Panel wished to see tighter and smarter completion criteria where possible to support their performance scrutiny of the matter.

3.         The Panel were satisfied with the information provided.