Minutes:
“The Council commissioned an independent review into how the Council’s Housing compliance issues arose.
That report was published in February and identified the root causes contributing to non-compliance.
Can the Leader kindly outline what actions are now being taken to firstly, addressing the findings in the report and secondly, to prevent this or similar situations from happening again?”
Answer
The Leader asked Councillor F.Thomson (Executive Member, Housing and Climate Change), to answer:-
“Thank you Councillor Ganney for your question.
Members will recall that following issues found in the way that housing compliance was managed, we made a decision to make a self-referral to the Regulator for Social Housing in May last year. Our priority has been to focus on making significant improvements in our housing compliance service, and as members would have seen the latest progress report presented to Cabinet Housing Panel last week, very good progress has been made in all the six compliance areas.
We have also worked with our Chief Executive to commission Eversheds Sutherland to carry out an independent review in order to provide further assurance that historic concerns have been identified and that remedial measures that are being put in place are effective.
We have further demonstrated openness and transparency on the matter by waiving legal privilege and published the independent review report in the public domain. Officers have acted swiftly on the matter by presenting the management actions to Cabinet earlier this month to address the twelve root causes identified in Eversheds report. This is combined with a complete change of management team to oversee the Housing Property Service.
I think it’s worth highlighting some of the actions being taken on the twelve root causes that were reported to Cabinet on 1 March 2022:
• There is more transparency on the sharing of compliance data. Our Housing Compliance Manager sends compliance statistics covering all six compliance areas to senior management every fortnight. Cabinet Housing Panel also receives an update on housing compliance in every meeting since November last year. Both the Leader and Cabinet Member for Housing also receives a monthly briefing.
• The Council now has a comprehensive record of the properties for which we are responsible for in terms of housing compliance. We have also put procedures in place to ensure the record will continue to be kept up to date.
• Our governance framework on the corporate reporting of Health and Safety matters have been strengthened, in particular there is a direct reporting line to the Corporate Governance group which is chaired by the chief executive. This ensures that significant health and safety issues are flagged to senior management at the earliest opportunity.
• A new asset system is due to go live in April, which will create a centralised asset register in the housing property team.
• There is now a greater focus corporately on compliance matters.
• The proposed senior management structure, which is currently subject to staff consultation, will reduce silo working on health and safety matters. Once the structure is in place, there will be a comprehensive review and reset of our organisation values and there will continue to be regular staff briefings to nurture and develop an open and honest culture within the council. Again, the very fact that we have decided to publish Eversheds report in the public domain shows the openness and transparency that we want to develop in the council.
Officers have also been meeting with the Regulator for Social Housing to keep them up to date with the progress on housing compliance. They are pleased with our progress so far and no concerns have been raised to date.
I am particularly assured by Eversheds report, which states that the changes made during 2021/22 have put the Council in a much stronger position. In their words, the changes have created a sustainable solution to achieve compliance whilst also recognising the resource pressures and other challenges that exist in local government. There is now a transparency and frankness around matters of compliance that appears to have been missing. I am confident that the actions that officers are putting in place will put us in a much stronger position going forward.”