Agenda item

Cllr. Barry Anderson, chair of the EH&C Scrutiny Board will be in attendance to update the board regarding the forthcoming work programme for the EHC Scrutiny Board and suggest possible themes for the next TSB inquiry.

Councillor Barry Anderson introduced himself to the board members and outlined some potential suggestions for the next area of scrutiny for the board. The suggestions for possible areas of scrutiny given were;

·  The effectiveness of the Housing Advisory Panels (HAP’s) in delivering local priorities, and whether more funding is required to allow them to do so. BA suggested that an inquiry could establish how could HAPs accomplish more, and which bids are appropriate. Suggesting that some bids might be funding works that other funds should be paying for so the board might want to consider if the HAP project criteria currently sets the right expectations?

·  Whether the repairs strategy meets the needs of local communities, and how the repairs service has, or could better respond to the council climate emergency? How much value for money there is in the responsive repairs service, and looking into how many appointments are missed or cancelled by the service?

·  The effectiveness of estate walkabouts, questioning whether officers and councillors are regularly attending and how they are being advertises and promoted to local tenants to ensure they are aware of the estate walkabouts taking place, how to take part and if they understand how they can contribute.

·  An inquiry into fly-tipping and its causes, are tenants being made aware of the council collections for bulky waste effectively. BA noted that some tenants have a free bulky collection service but this wasn’t available to all.

·  How the issue of adequate car parking on estates can be resolved noting there has been a long standing problem of car parking at some locations but noting that this was an expensive problem to resolve and had resulted in bids being made to the HAP’s who could not justify such expenditure.

·  Whether tenants are happy with the service when contacting housing via the corporate contact centre and whether calls could be answered more quickly, avoiding the need for repeated calls.

JG asked if BA could explain the HAPs to those that may not be familiar. BA explained that the HAPs are local tenant and councillors groups who represent their area and are able to fund community projects in their area, with Housing revenue account funds allocated on the basis of on the number of council tenants in the HAP area. The HAPs follow a similar framework but each of the 11 HAPs have different funding priorities, BA, by way of example explained that the Outer North West HAP had one priority to increase their work with schools and young people in the area. HAP spending is monitored and tracked, with the meetings open to anyone who might wish to observe. BA suggested that the HAPs should be more closely linked with the community committees, but some tenants are of the opinion that the committees have differing views and have become disengaged.  BA suggested that there is scope for having fewer HAP areas, and that more match funding or other outside contributions will help the HAP money go much further. BA also commented that the average age of HAP members is high, and more could be done to encourage younger people to take part?

JG told the board he has attended some HAP meetings and felt that some of the projects being funded should have been for the council to fund, and noted that it isn’t possible to fund projects over multiple years as the budget is managed through each financial year. JG stated that some projects seem to be rejected before they make it to vote by the members, to which KM advised that all projects are assessed by the Tenant Engagement Officers against the HAP criteria and require approval before being presented, and these checks can often highlight projects which are unlikely to be passed, inappropriate, or are able to be funded elsewhere.

JG asked if there was still an issue of councillors not receiving feedback from estate walkabouts, BA replied that many are getting feedback but there are some cases in which they are not, and there is not always an explanation why. Some issues are raised on multiple walkabouts but do not get addressed and tenants are not getting a response either. Some larger walkabouts might benefit from being split into multiple smaller walkabouts to increase the focus in the area. BA questioned who has the authority to ensure jobs are completed, as they will just continue to be raised until they are resolved.

JG noted that previous recommendations highlighted that officers conducting walkabouts can vary and that they should be the ones with local knowledge, and that some councillors are not attending either. JG recognised it is difficult to ensure consistency across all areas, and BA replied that despite any hurdles, he believes that the current housing officers are now much better placed and equipped than they have previously been. JG commented that some areas swap officers to increase the local knowledge, and asked if this was a regular occurrence.

JG asked if BA had any updates on bin collections across Leeds. BA replied that it was recently raised as a potential topic for scrutiny by the Environment Housing and Communities board as many people have had an issue with parked cars blocking the refuse bins from making any pickups. Some areas do not have bins at all and leave bags out for collection, and there has been discussions on changing the collection routes and guidelines for tenants and refuse collectors. Traffic Regulation Orders are being implemented to alleviate the issues of parking affecting collections. JW noted that there have been occasions where brown bins haven’t been collected when they should have been. BA replied that these bins are not currently on an official collection route, and the one vehicle that collects from these bins can become full and so collection is disrupted.

JG thanked BA for his attendance and input.