Agenda item

As a registered social housing landlord, we are required to meet all relevant government legislation. Due to recent changes in the sector, it is important that the councils performance can be scrutinised. This report sets out a new suite of performance measures that will be presented to members, executive team, and residents on a regular basis. These suites of measures are in addition to the Tenant Satisfaction Measures required by the Regulator.

Upon invitation of the chair the Business Development Manager advised members that there had been a lot of changes made by the regulator for social housing. The new consumer regulation will be implemented in 2024 and the regulator expects members to know and be in engaged with the legislative changes, as explained in the report detail it sets out the key areas that will be measured by these new additional performance measures, it will ensure that members will be provided with regular assurance surrounding performance as well as allowing the residents of Arun District Council being able to hold the council to account more easily.

The Chair then invited members to make comments or ask questions, where it was queried how regularly members will receive these updates. It was confirmed that it was planned to bring a report every 6 months to the committee as they will also feed into the other performance reports.  It was commented that 6 monthly was too infrequent, and it would be preferred for monthly reports.

It was then proposed by Councillor Pendleton and seconded by Councillor Batley that the committee receive quarterly updates to fall in line with reporting to the Policy and Finance Committee

Moving on to debating the proposal it was discussed that as the data source as noted in appendix 2 was reported monthly, the updates should therefore be completed monthly. The officer explained that data source in the report was a dummy source, not all data was received monthly. In response it was commented that these updates could be provided by email to members. Councillor Pendleton then made a request to add to her proposal the following; the committee receive quarterly updates to fall in line with reporting to the Policy and Finance Committee on the performance measures outlined in the report with any concerning data being reported by email to the committee as soon as it was known. Councillor Batley as seconder was happy with this addition.

Further support for monthly reporting was heard, with the opportunity to ensure that early intervention was available to the council should there be fall in performance across any particular area. The Head of Housing then explained that it was very infrequent that performance would decline and show as a trend over the time period of a month. And whilst quarterly reporting was a more frequent reporting time period it would be sufficient for the purpose of seeing trends.

          The Chair then moved to the vote on the proposal and;

          The Committee

                     RESOLVED that

It was to receive quarterly updates to fall in line with reporting to the Policy and Finance Committee on the performance measures outlined in the report with any concerning data being reported by email to the committee as soon as it was known.

          Continuing with the debate members moved on to discuss the satisfaction levels to be reported, it was asked if the officer could provide more information on what and how these satisfaction levels were arrived at. The Business Development Manager confirmed that residents were regularly surveyed, and the satisfaction levels were derived directly from these surveys, it was confirmed that the surveys were completed by telephone after a resident has received a service or job completion from the council. It also helped to highlight where processes or service had been less than satisfactory enabling the council to intervene and follow up where necessary. A further query was raised regarding the layout of the template where it was confirmed that the template had been provided by House Smart and works with the data that would be supplied.

          In turning to the vote, it was requested that the recommendations were taken and voted on separately.

Recommendation 2.1 was proposed by Councillor Haywood and seconded by Councillor Yeates.

Recommendation 2.2 was proposed by Councillor Haywood and seconded by Councillor Batley

The Committee

          RESOLVED

2.1) Approve the suite of performance measures for housing services set out in appendix 1.

2.2) Approve the reporting template set out in Appendix P