Agenda item

The Corporate Performance Report provides an analysis of the Council’s performance for the first quarter of 2019-20. The report, set out at Annexe 1, is being presented to each of the Overview and Scrutiny Committees for comment and any recommendations they may wish to make to senior management or the Executive.

Recommendation

It is recommended that the Overview & Scrutiny Committee considers the performance of the service areas under its remit as set out in Annexe 1 to this report and makes any recommendations to senior management or the Executive as appropriate.

Housing Delivery

Andrew Smith outlined the highlights of the Housing Delivery section of the Corporate Performance Report Q1 2019/20 (April – June 2019).

The Committee was advised that the Ockford Ridge regeneration was going well.  The committee members would be invited on a site visit in the autumn to view the progress.

Work was progressing on the use of S106 agreements to purchase housing units from commercial developers.  WBC was looking at acquiring units from certain schemes to rent out.  The Committee asked if Waverley would be paying the same prices as social housing landlords for these units and were advised that the Council would bid in the same way as them so would not pay any more.  Hyde was taking most of the units on the Amlets Lane development but there was opportunity for Waverley to bid on 5 units.  The Committee also asked for information on the rent levels to be applied on the development.  Advice was given that the provisional rent levels had been based on 80% of market value but the rents would be set when the development was closer to handover.  A query was raised as to whether the units acquired would comply with WBC design standards?  Louisa Blundell advised that this would all depend on when we started our enquiries with the developers.  With regard to the Amlets Lane development we joined the conversation late so the properties may not be totally within our design standards but would be well built.

A query was raised as to why there were fewer KPI’s included in this report compared with the report for Q4 2018-19.  It was explained that this was the first quarter of the new year and the last committee had removed some of the KPI’s which they felt were not informative.

Andrew Smith was asked to clarify the date we would know the level of Better Care Funding for 2020/21 onwards.  He advised that this was not known as yet but it was likely the funding would be of a similar level if not more.

SP18/19H3.2 was highlighted as off track and a revised timetable was being drafted.  The committee asked if we were now on schedule for a revised timetable to be presented to the next meeting.  Andrew Smith was hopeful that this would be available.

Housing Operations

Annalisa Howson outlined the highlights of the Housing Operations section of the Corporate Performance Report Q1 2019/20 (April – June 2019).

The Committee was directed to KPI HO2 and it was explained that the dip in the time to re-let performance was expected due to demobilisation and mobilisation of the new maintenance contracts. So far in Q2 the average re-let time has dropped to 21 days.

It was highlighted that the introduction of Universal Credit had not had the negative impact on rent arrears that was feared.  There were currently 100 claimants on UC in arrears but 144 were in credit.

It was noted that L1 complaint response rates were poor this quarter.  This was down to one officer not prioritising responses correctly but  this has been identified and additional training has been given.  It was, however, noted that complaints had dropped this quarter.  The committee asked how many complaints are upheld out of all those received.

It was highlighted that, as a consequence of there being 53 payment weeks in the current year, the annual rent decrease of 1% translated into a weekly reduction of 2.83%.  This was explained more clearly to members and advice was given that it would also be explained to residents via the newsletter.

Officers were asked if all options had been exhausted in dealing with the ongoing legionella issue. The Committee was assured this was an ongoing piece of work which would continue until a solution had been found.

Annalisa was asked to explain how properties with long void times affected the figures.  She advised with the new contracts this had now been cut down to between 10-15 days so did not adversely affect the figures.

The chairman thanked the officers for their reports.

The Committee AGREED the recommendation as set out in the agenda.