Audit Commission report on Homes for Islington

p 58 London Borough of Islington - Homes for Islington (ALMO)
Because all associate directors are residents it is an important way in which
residents influence the services they receive and as these meetings are public it
allows any resident to see performance on a comparative basis, hold staff to
account for this and make suggestions for improvement. These meetings are well
publicised in the local press, website and area offices, attendance at the sub
board for contracted services attracted around 20 people. Reports on the
agendas of meetings are available on line three days before.
367 When we attended the sub-boards we considered that there was challenge to
services and poor performance. For example there was an IP to deal with poor
performance by the PFI contractor delivering refurbishments, this was being
closely monitored.
368 The council has effective arrangements in place to monitor HFI's performance at
officer and member level. The partnership officer receives regular performance
monitoring information and has a range of meetings with HFI to monitor
performance. Monthly joint meeting focus on the quality of service provision,
financial issues and other relevant issues, such as performance against the
council’s key objectives as set out in the performance management requirements
in the contract. HFI also <strong>report</strong>s progress on equalities to the council
departmental equalities action group.
369 However, VFM was a key weakness identified in our last <strong>report</strong> and has not been
given the priority we would have expected. HFI have concentrated on improving
quality and service delivery with VFM as secondary and not consistently being
carried out for all new initiatives. There are plans for future assessments of
services based on risk that follow the same principles as SLA reviews in terms of
VFM.
370 There is a need to ensure resources are prioritised to meet HFI’s objectives and
this has not yet been done for tenant participation. We considered the progress
of attaining level 2 of the government’s equality standard has been slow, HFI are
beginning to formulate their own equalities strategy and an interim equalities
manager has been appointed to co-ordinate and map current activity and to
gather information to inform the strategy. There are some high risk areas for
example the governance arrangements for a number of TMOs are weak and
some may be unsustainable, these organisations need intensive support to
ensure they can function effectively and deliver service improvements. There are
also some issues around the capacity of some TMOs to manage HR issues and
negotiate with unions.
371 HFI are unable to build up surpluses and as a consequence they are unable to
build up resources to deliver their own priorities unless they can agree growth
funding through the council, therefore there is a need to ensure long term plans
are agreed with the council for future funding needs.
372 We also considered improvements could be made to plans by both HFI and the
council. From the SDP it was not clear how some of the council’s corporate
objectives translated into targets and therefore what the outcomes the council
expect from HFI and although the SDP provided details of achievements in
2002/03, it did not identify original targets nor any explanation of why some
targets were missed, for example the gas servicing target. We also found that the
council’s housing end of year performance <strong>report</strong> fails to <strong>report</strong> on all BVPIs,
specifically non decent homes. Consequently it is difficult for residents to
measure performance from these documents. There are still some
inconsistencies in service delivery, VFM is not at the forefront of improvements
and feedback from informal sources is not always being used to inform
improvements. In addition we still had some concerns about the contract
management of one or two major works sites.