Agenda item

The Portfolio Holder for Housing and Community Services will be in attendance to give account of performance within the remit of his portfolio. 

The Portfolio Holder for Housing and Community Services addressed the committee outlining the main achievements within areas of his portfolio relevant to this committee within the past year:

      Housing   

·        The average number of days to re-let council properties now stood at 22 days

·        Rent arrears had been reduced by 10%

·        The council had achieved 100% compliance with the government’s decent homes standard

·        An Asset Management Strategy had been completed and was now in place. This ensured that targeting of planned maintenance was much better as officers knew a lot more about the condition of each property

·        The council’s resident involvement structure had been reviewed and expanded, allowing tenants to have a greater say in services provided to them and they were given more opportunities to make comments

·        Overall satisfaction with the housing service was at 76% for tenants general needs

·        Many new policies had been introduced, so tenants could know and understand their rights, and staff were better informed about what they could, or could not, do

·        A tenants incentive scheme had been prepared ready for introduction in April 2012 to encourage good tenants

·        £130 million investment had been secured for the future of the housing provision in Medway

·        however, there had been an increase of 40% in homelessness applications but the number of households in temporary accommodation had been reduced by 20%

·        the number of empty homes had remained stable at 1.3% (below the government threshold) and the council was actively talking to Housing Associations about the bid system for grants in the future.

Adult Learning (MACLS)

·        the service should break-even at the end of the financial year

·        there had been a downturn in the number of people looking to learn English as a second language but this was picking up again

·        the service was seeking to diversify and looking at a variety of sources. This included tailoring generic courses to meet demand and then selling them to outside organisations, eg other businesses, the Health Authority and other partners

·        A programme had been built specifically to take place in Medway Park to give training and qualifications for fitness professionals. The Portfolio Holder stated that he wished to see more of this type of diversification of the programme to ensure that it was not a future burden on the council’s finances.

Members asked the Portfolio Holder a number of questions and made comments, including:

·        what was the long-term future of the adult learning centre at Green Street, Gillingham?

The Portfolio Holder responded that he wished to ensure an active presence across Medway but that this facility, at present, was behind in quality and it would be difficult to bring this building up to standard, so it was likely that the Council would look elsewhere for an appropriate building

·        the future for buy-to-let properties as the EU was looking to make changes. There were a lot of these properties in Medway

The Portfolio Holder advised that he wished to look into this further as it was a very important issue

·        suggestion that the money from the recent sale of old sheltered housing was re-invested in existing units to improve the standards and that, as a policy, the council should try to knock two of the current units into one larger unit as and when they became available, as a trial

The Portfolio Holder advised that there was an ongoing review of sheltered housing. In his opinion, it was not up to the Council to tell people how to live, it was about providing the choices available to them. It was the Council’s responsibility to house people in appropriate ways using a rational approach based on demand. He also advised that he had not tracked the proceeds for the sale of Queens Court and Fitzhorold House

·        what council support was in place for first-time buyers?

The Portfolio Holder responded that the Council worked hard with Housing Associations on this issue. This was a major problem and meant that people started to buy property later in life. There were new regulations about helping people with deposits for buying property. It was also about preventing homelessness and helping people to remain in their homes. The Council has opened dialogue with mortgage providers requesting that they contact the council before mortgage arrears became too big a problem for home owners

·        work carried out against private landlords who do not look after their properties

The Portfolio Holder responded that the law was quite strong about such matters and the Council had been very active about this, in order to send out a strong message to all landlords. He requested that if Members knew of families that were being taken advantage of, to let the Council know the details, in order that this could be tackled successfully. He admitted that there was a small hardcore of poor landlords and he would like to act on this whenever officers were given the details

·        was there a register of good landlords? If so, Members and the public were unaware of it and therefore it required better publicity

The Portfolio Holder confirmed that there was a list and it was available for anyone to look at. He took on-board the observation that Members and the public seemed unaware of it and proposed to put an article in Medway Matters newsletter. He also undertook to circulate the details of the scheme to all Councillors.

Decision:

The Committee thanked Councillor Doe for attending the meeting and the information and answers he had provided.