Audit Commission report on Homes for Islington

More documents

Recommendations

Info

p 18 London Borough of Islington - Homes for Islington (ALMO) 72 A planned reconciliation of all diversity information held about tenants is not complete although HFI are on target to complete this by April 2005. 73 Monitoring of equalities and the approach to equalities is not robust for all the TMOs. They have a requirement under the EOP action plan to introduce a code of conduct, profiling and translations sheet for publication but otherwise no monitoring is carried out. There is a recognition by HFI that TMOs are not proactive in this area. 74 There is a lack of consistency in collecting and using ethnic monitoring information. For example in the antisocial behaviour (ASB) files we looked at, ethnicity is recorded but it is not systematically used to inform, identify and address trends and issues which may be arising. There is a lack of diversity information for estate agreements and the secure tenancy agreement does not include the collection of any ethnicity data. HFI’s leaseholder survey includes information on a range of issues that provides it with a better profile of their leaseholders. However the survey only covers a sample of customers and the home ownership section (HOS) does not collect or carry out any routine equality or diversity monitoring of customers, missing an opportunity to gather comprehensive information it can use to target and improve services. Value for money 75 In our previous inspection, we found that the council levered in additional external resources. They had increased the subsidy received through lobbying central government, which reduced the losses in management and maintenance allowances. Spending on capital programmes was to budget and the council was providing more funding on a planned basis to reduce response repairs. Losses through legal disrepair cases had been reduced and the council had invested to save. Income generation through current rent collection had also been improved. 76 However, while service reviews had been strong on driving service improvements, cost efficiency and the council’s performance on accumulated debt from former tenants and leaseholders required considerable improvement. 77 The council in consultation with HFI are building in reductions in budgets to respond to efficiencies required by central government following the Gershon <strong>report</strong>. 78 HFI have carried out a range of VFM assessments including assessments of key service level agreements and cost efficiencies made in the repair and maintenance service contracts and supply arrangements. However VFM has been of secondary focus the prime focus has been improved service delivery. Consequently there is no clear strategy to address VFM throughout the organisation and, opportunities to get savings from the repair joint venture agreement (JVA) have not been taken forward and some improvements have yet to yield cost efficiencies. VFM is an area that still requires some development. 79 Within the repair and maintenance service there have been a number of savings made. The development of framework contract arrangements with a pool of contractors that can deliver the decent homes programme at agreed schedule of rates prices that allows HFI to significantly reduce the time and cost of specifying, tendering and allocating work to contractors. However assessment of the saving has yet to been made.
London Borough of Islington - Homes for Islington (ALMO) p 19 An increase in the ratio of planned to response repairs, the figure is now 65:35 and a rationalisation of a number of service contracts and a partnering contract for lifts has been put in place. There is also a better integration of repair and replacement programmes to reduce the likelihood of repairs being carried out unnecessarily. Schedule of rates items for the removal of asbestos were market-tested in 1999 resulting in negotiations to reduce the price with the contractor. Caxton has reviewed and reduced the cost of removing rubbish. This has resulted in the payment of £1.4 million to the council’s general fund. Mobile working for technical staff has been piloted in one of the area office for pre-inspection, post-inspection and repairs ordering and further funding has been secured to develop this initiative and roll it out to other areas, expected efficiency saving of 15 per cent on staff costs. There are incentives built into the contract to encourage better performance on customer satisfaction, to reduce the number of no access calls and there is a 50 per cent profit share with the council above an £800,000 threshold. This has resulted in the payment of £2.4 million to the council’s housing revenue account (HRA) during the course of the contract. Caxton has a stable and well established supply chain, their parent company Kier has purchasing power to secure large discounts and they have over 15 local supply chain providers. In addition locks on voids are recycled. 80 VFM assessments are being carried out for HFI’s service level agreements (SLAs) through this process they are developing a methodology for future VFM assessments. 81 A number of initiatives have resulted in efficiency savings for example, HFI caretakers now carry out minor repairs resulting in savings of around £8,000 over eight months. Savings have been made by identifying fraud, HFI have a housing investigation team (HIT) that have a target of identifying and evicting 90 unauthorised occupants per annum, so far this year they have taken action on 65 cases. They work closely with Housing Benefits on investigations, and have identified a number of fraudulent HB and right to buy (RTB) applications. 82 In roads are continuing to be made in the recovery of debts with net former tenant arrears reduced by £500,000 and leasehold service charges reduced by £250,000. There are also some new developments which are increasing income or delivering value for money, for example HFI are earning additional income by carrying out human resource functions for the council’s Housing and Performance department and by providing the training and development arrangements for the council’s ‘positive action for staff placement scheme’. 83 They have procured a new wheel clamping and vehicle removal contract that splits the income from payments for vehicle recovery between the contractor and HFI; this is expected to generate an average annual income of £35,000. In addition some contracts have been changed to ensure greater value for money; instead of a fixed rate annual payment to the DVLA for information on abandoned and stolen vehicles, HFI pays a set price for each enquiry and costs have been reduced.
Page 1 and 2: Inspection report
Page 3 and 4: Summary London Borough of Islington
Page 5 and 6: London Borough of Islington - Homes
Page 7 and 8: Recommendations London Borough of I
Page 9 and 10: © Audit C
Page 11 and 12: The service London Borough of Islin
Page 13 and 14: How good is the service? London Bor
Page 17: London Borough of Islington - Homes
Page 45 and 46: Service charges London Borough of I
Page 59 and 60: Summary London Borough of Islington
Page 61 and 62: Documents reviewed London Borough o
Page 63 and 64: Gary Doolan GMB London Borough of I
Page 65 and 66: Positive practice London Borough of

Audit Commission report on Homes for Islington

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?