Minutes:
“On Monday 1st March, cabinet ‘noted’ the management response to the Eversheds report, by implication therefore condoning it. That management response was not seen prior to publication by most Councillors, nor was it presented to CHP, leading to a failure of appropriate governance. The response has clear and demonstrable failures to actually address the fundamental problem, namely a failure to deliver an appropriate health and safety minded culture across the Council.
Will the leader join me in rejecting the management response as both inadequate and potentially dangerous?”
Answer
“Thank you Councillor Zukowskyj for your question.
First of all, a minor typo, I thought 1st March was a Tuesday.
The Cabinet Member for Housing and Climate Change has already answered a similar question at the Cabinet Housing Panel meeting last week. The Eversheds report was commissioned in light of the housing compliance issue. The terms of reference of the independent review were shared with the Group Leaders. The Eversheds report was published on Friday 25 February and the management response was circulated as part of an urgent Cabinet report on 28 February and this was circulated to all members. The aim of the management response was to address the twelve root causes identified by Eversheds and if Councillor Zukowskyj had read the report carefully, it does cover the wider health and safety aspect, namely, management actions 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 and 12. Some of these key responses were also covered in an earlier question tonight. I have no reason to reject the management action plan.
If there are any specific actions that Councillor Zukowskyj thinks we should take, I would be more than happy to hear about them but I keep hearing negative comments about the report, and I am sure if officers did not draft the management response presented to Cabinet, this would have given him more ammunition to score political points. This is demoralising to the staff that had a very tough time in the past ten months doing their best to achieve such a marked improvement on the housing compliance position.”
In a supplementary question, Councillor Zukowskyj asked if the Leader believed that the response from management, that was solely focused on compliance meets the requirements for the health and safety act given that the Council’s solicitor suggested that the Council was falling short of that.
Councillor Kingsbury stated that the Eversheds reported focused on the housing compliance issues. There is an action plan in place to address that. Part of the action plan looks at health and safety in various different ways. The Council is going through a senior management review to which the health and safety team are going to be brought closer to the health and safety team for housing. Councillor Kingsbury believed that the actions in the Evershed report addressed the housing compliance issues. Health and safety is looked at in different ways across the Council and not just in Housing. Work was being done and the Council needs to focus on health and safety. Councillor Kingsbury was confident the Council was doing that.