Issue - items at meetings - Response to Tenant Scrutiny Panel report on the Housing Customer Service team

(1)               That the evidence, findings and recommendations of the Tenant and Resident Scrutiny Panel relating to the HCST be noted. 

(2)               That the actions proposed in the report in response to the Tenant and Resident Scrutiny Panel’s recommendations, be agreed.

70.1    The Committee considered the report of the Executive Director Environment, Development and Housing which set out the Housing response to the recommendations of the Tenant and Resident Scrutiny Panel in their report on the Housing Customer Service Team (HCST).   

70.2    Panel members Dave Murtagh (Chair), Chief Blackbear and Philip Bradick attended the meeting to present the Panel’s findings and answer questions.    

70.3    Dave Murtagh made the following statement:

“This has been a very positive scrutiny experience for myself and my panel members and we have learned a lot about the Housing Customer Service Team.

I would like to express my gratitude to my panel members Chief John Blackbear, Philip Bradick and Lesley Cope.

On an equal note, thank you to all the Officers involved in this scrutiny review from Geoff Raw, Hilary, Ododo, Janet and the Housing Service Advisors who welcomed this scrutiny opportunity.

The panel were keen to request as much information as possible for this review from the team such as a team business plan, job descriptions, and performance information to see whether the new 303030 telephone number was meeting the needs of its residents.

The panel wanted to hear from the team to learn about their issues and ideas to improve systems to get better results for tenants. All the documentation was provided by Janet in a very professional format with clear explanations.

Right from the beginning after hearing from the Executive Director right through to the Housing Service Advisors that ICT was the team’s biggest issue. The current system is not fit for purpose and lacks performance reporting information. The panel felt it was a priority to upgrade the ICT system and see a business plan for this.

Also it was very positive to hear that the team have already co-located to the Housing Centre to work along their colleagues and solve residents’ issues quicker.

The panel’s only disappointments were the lack of resident’s feedback and not having the opportunity to carry out telephone surveys with tenants who had used the service. The Tenant & Resident Scrutiny Panel will work hard to improve these in the future.   Thank you”.

70.4    Councillor Mears thanked the tenants for their work on the Scrutiny Review.  It was helpful for tenants to have the budget figures especially around the HRA and ICT.  Councillor Mears reminded the Committee that the Health and Wellbeing Board would need a whole ICT structure to enable the council to work with the Clinical Commissioning Group.  Councillor Mears stressed that Housing Services was paying for ICT through two budgets.   She stressed that tenants would not receive the service they needed until improvements were made to ICT.

70.5    Councillor Peltzer Dunn stated that the Scrutiny Panel’s report was excellent.   He considered it was disturbing that the report found deficiencies in the service.  Only half of the respondents were aware of a single telephone number.  Councillor Peltzer Dunn was worried at the response set out in the covering report at paragraph 4.15 which referred to old technology.  This was more evidence that the Council had not got to grips with the problem. 

70.6    The Chair stated that there had been a lack of investment in ICT. 

70.7    Dave Murtagh explained that the Tenant & Resident Scrutiny Panel members were informed that the reason why they were not able to listen to phone conversations was due to data protection.  This had prevented the Panel from doing its job properly and Mr Murtagh considered that there were ways round this problem.   The Panel had expected they could use laptops and tablets but were told they could not use Wi Fi due to data protection. 

70.8    The Housing Services Operations Manager explained that it had not been possible to listen to live telephone calls.  Officers were looking to make it possible in future.  There was no Wi Fi in the Housing Offices.  The Chair stated that these issues needed to be investigated. There was an issue about making tenants alert to the fact that some live calls might be monitored.   The Chair suggested that Dave revisited this issue in the future.

70.9    The Chair thanked the Tenant and Resident Scrutiny Panel members for their work on the Scrutiny Review

70.10  RESOLVED – (1) That the evidence, findings and recommendations of the Tenant and Resident Scrutiny Panel relating to the HCST be noted. 

(2)               That the actions proposed in the report in response to the Tenant and Resident Scrutiny Panel’s recommendations, be agreed.