Agenda item

Jen Challis asked the Executive Member for Finance the following question:

 

Question:

When the 21st Century Council Project was first announced one of the key elements was to improve local coverage and reduce the costs associated with multiple personnel having to carry out visits to localities thus helping to improve community involvement and development. Is this still one of your priorities, as the opposite appears to be happening?

 

The Neighbourhood Officers, Rent Officers and the Community Development Officers are front line staff dealing with your customers on a daily basis and as such their roles are critical to local communities. However over the last six months we have seen these key staff leaving, being seconded to projects, having to attend multiple training sessions thus leaving gaps in availability. The recruitment of short term replacements with little local experience also adds to the pressure on existing staff whilst they are being trained. Long term some of these replacements may become valuable members with the short term nature of their employment there is no commitment to either the area or the communities. Tenants are finding it increasingly difficult to know who to contact, in one case the Neighbourhood Officer who was introduced one week had left when they tried to contact a week later. This does not inspire confidence in residents. The Rent department has seen a massive turnover of staff which is extremely frustrating for Tenants trying to make contact and get a problem resolved. Our overall impression is of total chaos with letters being generated that no one understands even the staff whose signatures are on them. Rent arrears are a problem for the Council but the lack of credibility in your systems only frightens the innocent while the intentional non-payers just ignore them. This needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.

 

Minutes:

When the 21st Century Council Project was first announced one of the key elements was to improve local coverage and reduce the costs associated with multiple personnel having to carry out visits to localities thus helping to improve community involvement and development.  Is this still one of your priorities, as the opposite appears to be happening?

 

The Neighbourhood Officers, Rent Officers and the Community Development Officers are front line staff dealing with your customers on a daily basis and as such their roles are critical to local communities. However over the last six months we have seen these key staff leaving, being seconded to projects, having to attend multiple training sessions thus leaving gaps in availability. The recruitment of short term replacements with little local experience also adds to the pressure on existing staff whilst they are being trained.  Long term some of these replacements may become valuable members but with the short term nature of their employment there is no commitment to either the area or the communities. Tenants are finding it increasingly difficult to know who to contact, in one case the Neighbourhood Officer who was introduced one week had left when they tried to contact a week later. This does not inspire confidence in Residents.  The Rent department has seen a massive turnover of staff which is extremely frustrating for Tenants trying to make contact and get a problem resolved.  Our overall impression is of total chaos with letters being generated that no one understands even the staff whose signatures are on them.  Rent arrears are a problem for the Council but the lack of credibility in your systems only frightens the innocent while the intentional non-payers just ignore them.  This needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.

 

Answer

Thank you for your question.  I can confirm that it is still a priority of the 21st Century Council Programme to deliver locality working.  The Programme has been split into two phases with the initial stage (which has now completed) focusing on our back office systems and services.  We have been making changes to how we serve each other within the Council first of all so that we could learn from this before we look at those services which directly serve our residents.  This two-stage approach will explain why you feel you have not yet seen any direct improvements.  The Programme will be seeking to make service delivery more customer focused and much easier for our residents to access our services.

 

With regards to staffing, there have been a number of moves in and out of the service, as you mention, and over the last few months some surgeries have unfortunately been cancelled, as there is currently only one Housing Officer in post.  It is hoped surgeries will return to normal once we have recruited into the vacant post. 

 

For the first time in a while the Asset Management Team is now almost fully staffed albeit with a range of permanent and temporary staff.  Attempts continue to strike the appropriate balance and ensure that critical roles such as the Procurement and Contracts Manager role are occupied by permanent staff.

 

It is recognised that there has been turnover in Housing, and that there has been some recruitment and retention issues.  We are therefore having to employ agency staff to supplement our permanently employed staff but I can assure you however that the team is currently very close to full compliment. 

 

A rent review project is already underway, overseen by our most senior Housing Officer, looking at all key processes with a view to adding capacity and stability, and improving the service offer for the benefit of all concerned.  The rent review project has reinforced that additional staff are required in the rent team in order to provide the necessary focus on high level debt, continual non-payers, former tenant arrears etc.  This will pick up the wording of all letters that you refer to.  The outcome of the review will be reported to Tenant and Landlord Improvement Panel in September and will be available on request. 

 

Supplementary Question

As the HRA is already part of community houses and the rent team are currently under review, why does the Council not consider incorporating the rent and community development teams into a housing department, thus creating a fully holistic team for communities and tenants whilst saving officers general time?

 

Supplementary Answer

I think it is fair to say that as part of the 21st century Council project we will be looking at the way that all of these areas operate and looking to ensure that they work to the optimum.