Housing Annual Statement 2011 - St Albans City & District Council

Value for Money
Your landlord shall have a comprehensive
approach to managing resources to provide
cost effective, efficient, quality services
and homes to meet tenants’ needs and
potential needs.
We continue to experience severe pressure
on housing budgets and the changes to our
financial situation arising from the new self
financing regime will add to these pressures.
Over the last year as part of a Council-wide
organisational development process we have
been reviewing our staffing levels and the way we
provide services in order to identify more efficient
ways of working and reduce overall costs.
This means that while some posts are no longer
required, other people have had new duties
added to their jobs.
We have also reviewed administrative support
across the service to ensure it is sufficient,
responsibilities are clearer and specialist staff
are able to focus on their specialisms rather than
administrative duties.
Some of the proposed changes to staffing
levels and staff responsibilities are currently
under consultation with staff and the union. We
will give further details of the outcomes in the
next Housing Times.
In the last Annual Statement we said that
we would work to ensure all charges to
leaseholders (generally owners of flats bought
under the Right to Buy scheme), would be made
promptly and that we would ensure leaseholders
are charged appropriately for all the services
they receive from the Housing Department.
This is because the majority of income to the
Housing Service comes from housing rents and
it was seen as unfair that leaseholders were
benefitting from some housing services without
contributing towards them.
In April 2011 responsibility for collecting
leasehold charges e.g. for services, repairs
and maintenance, was transferred from the
Councils Finance Department to the Housing
Service. The Leasehold Officer has the latest
information on whether or not leaseholders
are paying their charges and can take prompt
action to recover any debts.
In addition to this, a new leasehold
management charge is to be applied to all
Council leaseholders from April 2012. This
charge will cover the costs of services and
staff time which cannot be recovered from
direct service charges. We feel it is fair that
leaseholders should contribute to Housing
Services in order that costs do not all fall solely
on our tenants.
Housing Accountants Helen Bristow and
Darren Lynch review budgets.
30 Annual Statement