Audit Commission report on Homes for Islington

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p 44 London Borough of Islington - Homes for Islington (ALMO) 282 HFI has also produced a new RTB customer commitment (CC) which was launched in June 2004 and a leasehold management CC launched in September 2004, both include clear service standards. It has also developed two new service charge performance indicators (PIs) and one for major works is in development. There are clear and challenging targets for the collection of service charges and invoicing. 283 HFI’s newsletter for service charge payers, the ‘Islington Home Owner’ has been well received since it was launched last spring, around two-thirds found it useful and a similar percentage also found the leaseholders’ handbook useful. 284 HFI actively consults with service users through the leasehold forum to review and improve services. Through this group they have drafted a leaseholders handbook, re-designed service charge bills and waived costs for lift charges to ground floor properties in response to leaseholders views. 285 RTB and homeownership policies are set by the council as this is a landlord function retained by the council. However, HFI does carry out an annual leasehold survey and knows that 60 per cent of owner occupiers are original RTB applicants and the other 40 per cent have bought on the open market. This is used by the council to inform their policy plans. 286 Although customer satisfaction among leaseholders with information sent out has improved since the last survey in 2003, it is still relatively low. The 2004 leasehold survey shows leaseholders are more satisfied with information they receive from 53 per cent to 61 per cent satisfied between 2003 and 2004, while 54 per cent found their bills easy to understand compared to 44 per cent in 2003. 287 HOS performance on responses to complaints within ten days is worse than performance in other HFI services areas at 76 per cent. 288 HFI does not collect diversity information on HOS customers other than in the leasehold satisfaction survey. This means it does not fully understand its customer profile and this limits its ability to respond appropriately to users and ensure access to the service is fair and equal. Customer satisfaction is low, although it has risen since the 2003 leasehold satisfaction survey from 24 per cent to 33 per cent, although a significant proportion 39 per cent of leaseholders still remain dissatisfied. Right to Buy 289 HFI does not comply with statutory timescales on RTB. In 2003/04, HFI issued 1,949 RTB2s but only 10 per cent met the statutory timescale and the average processing time was 12.7 weeks. Performance has improved but is still poor. HFI received 418 RTB applications between April and the end of November 2004 and issued 416 RTB2s with 29 per cent meeting the statutory timescale of four weeks, on average it took 9.7 weeks to process these applications. 290 The council is outsourcing its valuation service following a best value review. This service has provided a poor service in the past in terms of providing timely valuations for RTB applications so outsourcing presents an opportunity to secure a more efficient and appropriate service for HFI. The HOS manager is involved in a project group the procurement of a new service and has been involved in drafting the specification and evaluating bids. HFI has used this opportunity to emphasise quality aspects such as gathering information on probity when pre and post applications are done as well as setting timescales for valuations. This should lead to an improved and more efficient service. 291 There is a joint policy with the council of selling on freeholds to leaseholders, the process is simpler than the statutory enfranchisement one and therefore helps leaseholders. Over 200 street property leaseholders have taken up this option.
Service charges London Borough of Islington - Homes for Islington (ALMO) p 45 292 HFI has a target of 100 per cent for sending leasehold service charge bills and estimates out on time: it is now achieving this target. And, they have taken systematic steps to improve the arrears recovery of service charges. Prior to our last inspection the Council did not take any legal action to recover service charges. HFI has set a target of recovering 115 per cent of service charges and has achieved 131 per cent in 2003/04. This compares well to other London boroughs compared to other authorities in the Association of London Government (ALG) benchmarking group where Islington were the third best performers in 2003/04 out of 18 boroughs. 293 HFI offers leaseholders the option to pay service charges in instalments, rather than as a lump sum, including payment of annual charges in ten monthly instalments, and two years interest free for major works charges. They have also drafted debt recovery procedures, improved the working arrangements with the council legal services through the service level agreement and as a result 500 cases have had legal action to recover around £250,000. Current arrears, however, are still £2,340,000 for service charges. 294 The HOS has assisted one TMO to scrutinize and analyse their charges, using the expertise they have built up in apportioning charges. This resulted in a 50 per cent reduction in charges for leaseholders. 295 More could be done to promote welfare benefit and debt advice to leaseholders who experience financial difficulties. It has established arrangements for referring those having difficulty paying bills to CHAS (catholic housing aid centre). But it is in very early days for this arrangement and HFI have only referred one person for debt counselling to date. And, there is no written guidance on the forms of help available such as extended payment periods, loans, charges on properties or buy back schemes. Major works 296 The major works team within HOS updates the RTB team with details of current or forthcoming major works projects to ensure up to date and accurate estimates are included in S125 offer notices. For properties in the PFI scheme, HFI request an indication of the PFI contractor’s plans and they provide this with the survey details for the property. Annual estimates are informed by a single document which details all the cyclical repairs and maintenance that are planned. 297 To respond to a weakness identified in our last <strong>report</strong> HFI are piloting a major works disputes procedure but it is too early to assess how effective this will be. They have consulted with the Islington leaseholder forum (ILF) on options for reviewing the methodology for apportioning major works charges. The forum’s preferred option differed from the council’s, they have now agreed to endorse ILF’s choice. 298 HFI has benchmarked performance for the collection of works capital charges and comparative performance is poor at 13.7 per cent with a debt at 30 November 2004 of £11.04 million. HFI does not have an age profile of this debt so it is unclear how effective it is in managing these arrears. Less attention has been paid to recovering major works charges and HFI has not established proactive and sustained recovery action for these debts. This needs to be addressed to prepare for the increase in bills with future works associated with achieving DHS.
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 43: London Borough of Islington - Homes
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

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