Agenda item

Statement from Council Owned Companies

To receive any statements from Directors of Council Owned Companies.

 

In accordance with Procedure Rule 4.2.24 the total time allocated to this item shall not exceed 10 minutes, and no Director, except with the consent of Council, shall speak for more than 3 minutes.

Minutes:

 

Charles Margetts, Non-Executive Director, Optalis:

I just want to update you on the progress within Optalis.  The transfer of statutory services back to WBC from Optalis is running to schedule.  The TUPE consultation is underway and we except the staff to transfer on 1 November.  This will create one clear care pathway for Wokingham residents and will improve the quality of service that we offer. 

 

We are also resetting the structures of the governance of the company in agreement with our partners at RBWM.  The new strategy of the company will be focused on efficiency, quality and innovation rather than growth.  The governance of the company has been slimmed down to give more control to the Executive and senior officers.  This is more efficient and enables the company to react quicker to changes in the market.  Recruitment for a new CEO will shortly be underway.   We will then begin the process of making the provider services as efficient as possible and will benchmark them against the market place to ensure that the tax payer always gets the best value for money and the resident always get the best quality of care.  Plans are underway right through to 2022.  These steps have created immediate, significant, in year efficiencies.  Once all of this is in place we will be able to use Optalis to increase the range and diversity of care services across the Borough for all of our residents.

 

John Kaiser, Non-Executive Director Loddon Homes and WBC Holdings Ltd:

We are currently looking at what we are doing with the housing companies.  As you will probably know, there has been a major change in all the Boards and we are including colleagues from other parts of the Council that will also be involved.

 

We as a Council actually deliver homes from lots of different areas, believe it or not.  We have got regeneration, they deliver their own homes, we have the HRA and we have also got the housing companies.  We have got three housing companies and one of them is a registered provider; one of them delivers the actual building of the houses.  It does seem strange that we have three areas in the Council that actually does this so what I am trying to do at the moment is to pull together a strategy where we will be able to deliver homes.  We will have one place where those homes are delivered, we have our registered provider where those homes will probably be parked which will be affordable homes, and they will be funded in various ways.  My ambition with regards to this, I have been told it is too ambitious, but when we look around at what we have got in the pipeline and what we are already doing at the moment, I do not think it is.  The ambition is145.  Basically that is for us to deliver a thousand homes in 4 years making a return of 5%.  I believe that is perfectly possible.  We have already got the houses that we are building for the town centre which is around 100 plus.  We have got other sites that we are looking at and I think we are probably going to be achieving that.

 

It is very important that we use all the advice, all the resources that we have got within the Council.  It works together.  We should be using the same accountancy staff, using the same consultancy staff, even the same auditors we should be using.  We really do have to have a commitment to the residents in this Borough to providing the affordable homes that we know are needed in this Borough due to the very high house prices.  This will be going through and we will be starting next week at the first Board meetings at WHL.  That will then filter down to Loddon Homes and Berry Brook Homes as well, so we have a very exciting future in front of us with regards to providing homes.  I mean if you go to the 1950s, it was Councils that provided homes.  It was the Councils that through the New Towns Development Agency, the only time 300,000 homes had been delivered was when they were being delivered by Councils so it is not something that is unusual.  We just need to get back into the habit again.