Tameside Housing Partnership

Minutes of Meeting

Date:  Friday 16th July 2010

Venue:  Committee Room 2, Council Offices, Wellington Road, Ashton-under-Lyne, Tameside, OL6 6DL

Present

• Alan Franco - Tameside Welfare Rights
• Peter Mowbray - Tameside Strategic Planning
• Claire Bibby - Tameside Services for Children and Young People
• Lisa Lees - Tameside Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership
• Simon Hopes - Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue
• Peter Marland - Ashton Pioneer Homes
• Angela Rafferty - Irwell Valley Housing Association
• Jim Davies - Tameside Housing Services
• Steve Goslyn - Threshold representing Supported Housing Forum
• Gareth Bruff - AGMA
• Huw Davies - Tameside Economy and Environment
• Cllr Lynn Travis - Tameside Executive Member Personal and Community Services (Chair of the Partnership)
• Andrew Leah - Tameside Housing Services
• Emma Cohen - Tameside Performance and Change
• Dave Berry - Tameside Performance and Change
• Tony Powell - New Charter Housing Trust
• Cllr Ann Holland - Tameside Assistant Executive Member for Personal and Community Services
• Colm O'Brien - Tameside Housing Services
• Diane Barkley - Tameside Housing Servcies

Apologies

• Ian Munro - New Charter Housing Trust
• Paul Spencer - Accent Group
• Gill Cook - Adullam Homes
• Janet Hilton - Tameside Housing Services
• Ilys Cookson - Tameside Borough Treasurer
• John Hughes - Tameside Housing Services
• Richard Barnes - Greater Manchester Probation Trust
• Tony Berry - Ashton Pioneer Homes
• Andrei Szatkowski - Regenda

Notes

Diane Barkley

1.  Introductions and Apologies

Cllr Travis introduced herself to members of the Housing Partnership, as this is her first meeting in her role as Executive Member for Personal and Community Services.

2.  Declaration of conflicts of interest

No conflicts of interest were declared.

3.  Minutes of the last meeting - 14th May 2010

The minutes from the last meeting were agreed, but with one item of clarification.  Dave Berry will not be leaving Tameside Council.

4.  Matters Arising

a)  Reducing Re-offending Delivery Plan

Lisa Lees gave a progress report.  A draft document has been circulated to members of the Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership for comments by the end of August.  It will go to Tameside Strategic Partnership for comments in September.  All the strategic partnerships will be consulted before sign off.  It will come to the November Partnership Meeting.

Diane Barkley gave an update on the development of the Offender Housing Pathway that will be one of the delivery mechanisms of the plan.  The Offender Housing Pathway is a sub group of the Housing Partnership.  Diane Barkley and Steve Moss, New Charter Housing Trust, have drafted new terms of agreement for the pathway.  The group will be a multi agency group including Registered Social Landlords, Supported Housing Providers and Criminal Justice Agencies.  The group will agree an action plan which will focus on:

• Mapping and Promoting existing Housing Advice, and support provision for offenders in the borough.
• Improving access to housing (all tenures, all types) for offenders and ex-offenders, with a particular focus on the housing needs of young offenders and women.
• Ensuring that offenders access the Independent Living Skills course, and that the course is suitable to their needs.

b)  Housing Inspection

Andrew Leah tabled a paper that summarises the findings of the 'mock inspection' undertaken by Housing Quality Network, and provides an action plan for improvement.  These include some actions with partners that will be addressed at future meetings or via the sub-groups of the Partnership.  The two priority areas for action are the development of a private sector housing strategy and a new allocations policy.

Huw Davies advised the meeting that the Council is in discussions with the Audit Commission about the option of us not having the inspection.  An alternative would be a Peer Review.

Part One - Implementing the Housing Strategy - Performance Management Framework.

Annual Partnership Agreement - Andrew Leah and Dave Berry

The Annual Partnership Agreement will form part of a comprehensive Performance Management Framework for the Housing Partnership.  The task is to review and prioritise the targets that are included within the overall Housing Partnership Agreement.  The agreement includes 31 indicators, the Partnership needs to identify a small number of indicators that should be reported back to this meeting.  The indicators selected should give a clear view of performance and trends.  The Partnership should try to identify key themes, for example, quantity, quality and accessibility.

Dave Berry reviewed the existing agreement that includes a mixture of national and local indicators. The whole agreement will continue to be reported to the Tameside Strategic Partnership. Dave Berry showed an illustrative slide of a potential future report to the Partnership on 6 indicators. This would show the current score, a red, amber, green indication and a column for comments. Any indicator showing red would need an improvement plan to be reported on at each meeting.

Dave Berry provided an A3 sheet with a list of 13 indicators. He requested members to review the sheet before they left and identify priority indicators that should be reported to each meeting. Dave Berry also requested that members indicate if they could provide data to contribute to measuring performance and contact details.

Agreed

Dave Berry to send out list to members to indicate priorities with a short deadline for returns.

Cllr Holland asked a question about how we monitor the performance of private landlords. Andrew Leah explained that the council does focussed work on specific areas where we know there are concentrations of private landlords. We also keep a database of all landlords we have contact with. 

Dave Berry told the meeting that Grant Shapps has written to all local authorities asking for ideas of where savings may be achieved. Tameside has responded that savings could be found in performance and monitoring functions.

Part 2 - Core Business

5. Current / Emerging Strategic Issues

a)  Impact of Emergency Budget – Huw Davies

An article for Inside Housing was circulated.  Huw Davies gave an overview of a range of areas impacted:
He reported that the Council has received an in year cut of 10%, £2.5m in the Area Based Grant. The ABG expenditure is mainly on services for people with multiple disadvantages. It includes spending on housing, community safety, Adult Services, and education. To deal with the reduction the Council has proposed no in year cuts in the Supporting People programme, but reductions in spending on worklessness projects via the Working Neighbourhoods Fund. 

Huw Davies advised the meeting that the Government has proposed a regional growth fund focussing on the areas that will be hardest hit as we move forward with more cuts. This fund may include the availability of capital investment against which areas must submit competitive bids. 

Local Enterprise Partnerships will be chaired by the private sector.

b) National Affordable Housing Programme

Earlier in 2010 Greater Manchester was allocated an additional £30m for new housing schemes. Local authorities submitted expressions of interest and 2 submitted by Tameside were supported. It is not clear to date, following the emergency budget how much of the £30m is still available. All authorities that have bids supported have been asked to submit progress reports to AGMA by Friday 23rd July 2010. Andrew Leah to progress.

c)  Greater Manchester Housing Strategy, Gareth Bruff presentation

A presentation was given to the meeting.  A copy of the presentation is available from the Supporting People Team.

d) Welfare Reform – Alan Franco

Alan Franco circulated a graph produced by the Institute of Fiscal Studies that shows the impact of changes in Tax Credit. 83% of children in Tameside are in families that are in receipt of Tax Credit. 

The changes in the way local housing allowance is calculated will impact Tameside, e.g. the current LHA for a one bed is £92.05, and under the new calculation it will reduce to £86.30. From April 2013 HB will be reduced by 10% for claimants who have been on JSA for 12 months.

The changes will create a cumulative pressure on housing supply and accessibility. They will impact on people in private rented tenancies at the lower end of the market.

Action

Alan Franco to estimate the cost of the impact on the local economy of all the changes.

e)  Feedback from TSP Conference, 13th July 2010

Dave Berry advised the meeting that materials from the conference and information about the outcomes of the discussion will be on the Tameside Strategic Partnership website today.

6. Performance Report - Supporting People 2009/10 report – summary previously circulated

Diane Barkley advised the meeting of the key outcomes of the SP programme in 2009/10 from the summary end of year performance report.

The meeting noted that the % of people leaving supported housing and moving into RSL tenancies has gone down in 2009/10 to 35% (from 45%) the previous year. This is against the trend of the previous three years. Diane Barkley said that this was an issue to discuss with the RSL forum.

Steve Goslyn proposed that this indicator should be included in the priority indicators.

7. Sub-Group Reports

a) RSL Forum – Draft allocations policy

Colm O’Brien updated the meeting on progress on the Allocations Review timetable presented to the last meeting.

A draft scheme is currently with our legal section to ensure the Council's legal responsibilities are covered. A report has also been written for Executive Team requesting permission to embark upon a consultation process and outlining the reasons why a review of the council’s allocation scheme is required.

The need for a review was identified in the mock inspection and is a priority area in the improvement plan. The key challenge is for the council to take on a more visible role in how social housing is allocated and to work towards a single point of access.

Tony Powell suggested we look towards breaking the process down into achievable steps to ensure we see some progress and not let the process drag on too long.

Action

Housing Services to set up a project group to oversee the progress of the review.

b) Private Sector Housing Issues:

Jim Davies updated the meeting on a range of issues –

Private Sector Housing Strategy

A new strategy is being developed. Information from other authorities has been acquired to help benchmark the new policy. The core of the strategy will be compiled from a number of sources within Housing Services.

• The main part of the document will be sourced from the Stock Condition Survey report completed early 2009. This provides information on where our housing issues are and provides the data on a number of other factors (vulnerability, thermal efficiency, Fuel poverty, etc).

The strategy will address the following issues:

• Gaps in our provision of assistance how to fill them.
• Is group repair still a viable proposition, are there any other ways of carrying out schemes to provide the same or similar impact in the community?.
• A replacement for the equity release scheme that ended in 2009
• Anchor Housing withdrawal from the Home Improvement Agency market – how do we provide the service to the elderly?
• Is it viable to continue using Housing Investment Programme funds to support the various initiatives we currently have
• Empty residential properties
• Tackling non-decency in the Private Sector.
• Introduce a fully functional landlord accreditation scheme. The AGMA scheme will help us to move this forward.
• Continuing to support older, vulnerable and disabled people in the borough

Regulatory Reform Order

The current document, which sets out our policy on providing forms of assistance to the community on housing related issues, has been in force since 2003. This needs updating and the new policy will be formulated to complement the new strategy and any changes in legislation and guidance that have come into play in the intervening period.

Empty Property Strategy

• The draft of the strategy that was discussed at the previous meeting is undergoing a further revision due to the political changes at the council and to include further information.
• Due to the merger between Housing and Planning Services it was agreed to create a strategy that covered all property, residential and commercial.
• The strategy has a number of options for dealing with the issues at hand that are based upon the toolkits used by all AGMA authorities plus the PHS initiative.
  

Action

Jim Davies to circulate an electronic version of the latest draft to members of the group.  All members to feedback.

The inclusion of the extra information from planning to include commercial property means that a further revision is now required. This final draft should be ready by the end of August and can be circulated for comments

Ashton Pioneer Homes Initiative

This initiative will form a major part of the empty property strategy. The scheme involves owners of empty properties being targeted to provide a source of property that will be available for rent and managed by Pioneer Home Services.

• The issue of data sharing has been with the Borough Solicitor for advice and we now have a way to move it forward. We will be setting up a meeting with APH on this issue shortly.
• We are also currently looking at the possibility of including some form of financial assistance/ loan tied to the property to bring them up to a standard for letting. Conditions would be attached to ensure compliance.

8. Community Support Foundation, Steve Goslyn

Community Support Foundation is a partnership of four housing organisations (Threshold HP, New Charter Housing Trust, NACRO and Tameside Women’s Project) and St Peter’s Partnership. It combines the expertise of the partners in delivering supported housing to a diverse range of client groups with the employment, training and education expertise of St Peter’s Partnership.

Action

Steve to give a more detailed presentation at a future meeting

Part Three: Commissioning Decisions

None at this meeting

9. Any other business

None

10. Date and time of next meeting

Friday 10th September 2010, Tameside Council Offices, Committee Room One