Agenda item

This report provides a summary of the Housing service performance over the first quarter of the financial year.  The report details the team’s performance against the indicators that fall within the remit of the Housing Overview & Scrutiny Committee.  It also provides a summary of customer feedback data. 

The Committee has the opportunity to comment and scrutinise the presented performance data.  In addition the Committee may identify future committee reporting requirements regarding performance management.  

Recommendation

It is recommended that the Housing Overview & Scrutiny Committee:

1.         considers the performance figures, as set out in Annexe 1, and agrees any observations or recommendations about performance it wishes to make to the Executive,

2.         considers the customer feedback data and agrees any observations or recommendations about performance it wishes to make to the Executive, and

3.         considers scope of work and identifies areas for the Committee future workplan.

Annalisa Howson, Service Improvement Manager, introduced the Performance Management Report on key performance indicators for the first quarter of 2017/18 (April – June 2017).

The Housing Service had performed well in the first quarter of 2017/18, with only three indicators missing their target.

The void re-let performance target of 20 working days continued to be challenging. The average for the quarter was 22 days, which showed an improvement over the previous two quarters, and 33 out of 63 homes had been re-let within the target time which demonstrated that this was a realistic target to work towards. The Committee was advised that the performance for August had been 16 days.

As usual, a number of factors had combined to result in delays in re-letting homes, some of which impacted on the time taken to bring the property up to re-let standard, and some which delayed the sign-up of new tenants once the property had been passed back to the Council. There had been a number of refusals by applicants on some homes, and action had been taken against applicants who refused three offers by temporarily suspending their ability to bid on properties. A number of properties were restricted to older tenants which limited the number of applicants able to bid. Given the demand for council housing, a review of age-restricted housing would be undertaken to see if it was possible to relax these restrictions.

Unusually, the rent collection performance had missed its target in the first quarter of 2017/18. The rent collection team had an excellent record for rent collection, and this quarter’s performance was expected to be a one-off occurrence resulting from the high number of tenants in credit on their rent accounts and who had adjusted their rent payments accordingly.

Whilst the customer perception of responsive repairs jobs ‘fixed first time’ had dipped slightly in the first quarter, there had not been any impact on the overall satisfaction with the service which was at 92%. Officers continued to work with the contractor to improve performance through accurate diagnosis of repairs and appropriately prepared operatives.

Overall, the number of complaints received by the Housing Service had shown a significant drop in the first quarter, driven in particular by a fall in the number of complaints about the responsive repairs service.

The Committee was pleased to see the overall good performance, and particularly the high number of compliments received by the service, recognising that people were generally more inclined to complain than to praise.

The Committee noted that tenants’ perceptions of whether a repair had been ‘fixed first time’ was very subjective and could depend on their understanding of the fault and what was required to put it right. A lot of work had been done to map the customer journey from initial phone call to report a problem through to resolution, and this had informed the way in which customer satisfaction data was collected. Follow-up calls were made to customers who were particularly dissatisfied to establish exactly what the cause of this had been; analysis was also carried out by trades to see if there were any patterns evident.

Cllr Seaborne referred to the Waverley Scrutiny Group’s report on the voids process that had been presented to the Committee at the meeting in July, and the findings in relation to the time taken at either end of the repair process for Waverley to interface with Mears: there seemed to be some scope to reduce the time between Waverley receiving the keys from the vacating tenant and handing them on to Mears to carry out works; and between Waverley receiving the keys back from Mears and the property being available to the HomeChoice team. He asked if it would be possible to present the performance data in a way that showed how the re-let time was split between the contractor and Waverley?

Cllr Seaborne also advised the Committee that he had discussed the voids process with the Head of Housing after the July meeting, and had been very impressed with the level of analysis and understanding of the work flows. Some variability in performance month to month was acceptable, and could be affected by the type of properties that had become vacant, assuming that that larger properties with gardens would take longer to bring up to re-let standard than a small flat.

The Committee was pleased to see the overall good performance in Housing, and the notable drop in the number of complaints. The Committee suggested that the presentation of the void re-let indicator (H2) be revised to show the split of time between the contractor and Waverley  during the re-let period, and also an indication of the size of the properties re-let, as this could impact on the time taken to complete the works.  The Committee noted that the Housing Service has a systematic, data-driven approach that covers the entire customer journey to understand customer satisfaction.