Issue - meetings

Committee considered a report which provided the Quarter 2 outturns for the Council’s Ambition targets 2020-2024.

Out of the 31 targets;

·       20 (65%) were on track

·       1 (3%) continued to be affected by Covid 19

·       3 (10%) had been placed on alert (as unlikely to meet their outturns in 21/22)

·       1 (3%) achieved (partially) this quarter, and

·       6 (19%) achieved previously

Out of the 46 performance indicators;

·       27 (59%) had a positive outturn

·       9 (20%) had a negative outturn

·       7 (15%) continued to be affected by Covid 19

·       1 (2%) was within target

·       2 (4%) did not have data available

Supplementary information on the following items was circulated at the meeting in relation to queries raised by the Chair and Vice Chair at the pre meeting;

SS03 – Undertake Local Environmental Quality Surveys Detritus

Q: Is there a time frame for delivery of these new road sweeping machines?

A: One of three new sweepers was delivered on 5th November 2021 and training was undertaken on 8th November.  Anticipated delivery of the remaining two sweepers was scheduled for the week ending 25th November.

Housing Management 03 – Reduce the Percentage of Current Rent Arrears by 5% by early intervention

Q: A comprehensive explanation provided but has the relevant Government Department been advised and approached for support?

A: The government has recently launched the Household Support Fund Grant.  The purpose of the grant is to “provide support to households who would otherwise struggle to buy food or pay essential utility bills or meet other essential living costs or housing costs”.  BDC is to be awarded up to £200K to be spent by 31st March 2022.  Having discussed with DCC this can be utilised to further support households facing financial hardship and/or threatened with homelessness.  We have submitted a request for this money and specified we will be using this to in part to clear arrears for households experiencing financial hardship/threatened with homelessness across the private and social rented sectors.  This can include our own housing stock and we have already done a piece of work to identify those households who qualify.  This bid was submitted on 19^th November and a response due w/c 22^nd November.

In addition we have received approval from S151 officer to look at using some of the Covid grant to be able to take some proactive steps to tackle rent arrears.  The preferred approach is some software which will help us prioritise the right tenants in terms of rent arrears payments.  This is being explored further with procurement but an indicative business case suggests the software would pay for itself and help us cut arrears significantly in the first year alone.

Housing Management 04 – Reduce the level of Former Tenants Arrears (FTAs) by 5% through early intervention, Monitoring and Enforcement

Q: At what stage will we have to consider write-offs?  What are the cost implications of write-offs and is there Central Government funding to compensate for the problem that they have created?  Do we  ...  view the full minutes text for item 41