Agenda item

This report will follow in supplementary papers after it has been published for the meeting of Executive Committee (due for publication on Friday 13 February 2026).

A Quarter 3 update on the Housing Improvement Plan was provided for Members’ consideration. A summary of progress against each of the Consumer Standards was presented within the report and some of the Consumer Standards metrics were highlighted within the presentation for this item.

The overall progress was that 15 actions within the Housing Improvement Plan had been completed within Quarter 3 of 2025/26 compared to 6 completed actions at Quarter 2. 9 of the actions completed at Quarter 3 were denoted as green-rated.

On the overdue repairs and maintenance jobs, it was reported that since the Regulatory Judgment, the number of overdue jobs had reduced from circa 3,000 to 1,047 at the end of Quarter 3.

In terms of overdue fire safety remedial actions, it was explained by Officers that there would be a proposal within the budget to provide additional funding to finance fire door/compartmentation works and accelerate the programme.

In terms of engagement with the tenants, new communications strategy was currently being drafted and a draft engagement policy was being worked on and was expected to be presented before the Overview and Scrutiny and Executive Committees in June 2026. This year’s Tenant Satisfaction Survey was reported to have achieved 887 responses which was a 35 per cent increase on last year’s response rate. It was expected that the Civica Cx Tenants Portal would go live in April 2026.

To strengthen staff resourcing, following a review, a Senior Complaints Officer had been recruited, starting in December 2025, and the post of a Complaints Officer would be recruited to in Q4 2025/26.

For anti-social behaviour (ASB), there was one outstanding item relating to the implementation of an ASB module on the Housing Management Software, which was to provide greater consistency and performance in monitoring of cases.

A Member commented that the report appeared to indicate that issues with software systems for housing management and for repairs and maintenance were among the main reasons preventing the Council from addressing the backlog in repairs and issues around tenants portal and housing management.

The Assistant Director Environmental and Housing Property Services clarified that the Civica Housing Management System was operating correctly and the use of the system by the Council had evolved as Officers learned and utilised more modules on the system. In contrast, there had been issues experienced with the Total Mobile repairs and maintenance system with the project being behind schedule. To address the problems experienced, the Council’s Officers met with Total Mobile representatives, and a project team had been formed to work on resolving these problems.

It was highlighted that the Total Mobile project implementation suffered from issues such as initial consultant assigned to work with the Council not being able to effectively resolve the issues that the Council experienced with the system as well as previous issues with capacity in the Housing Team hampering the project. The focus remained on staff members being trained to feel confident in using the system before it would be rolled out and it was now expected that the Total Mobile system would go live in May 2026.

The number of stock condition surveys undertaken was queried as Members commented that the proportion of the housing stock having had the survey completed was reported at a higher figure in prior years. It was clarified that the Social Housing Regulator required the figure for stock condition surveys to reflect those done over the last five years only. The Council’s figure had dropped because there was a drop in the number of surveys undertaken, in particular over the pandemic period. It was noted that as of present only 20 per cent of housing stock had a condition survey undertaken in the last five years with 25 per cent having no recorded condition survey. It was explained that from 2022-23 there had been an increase in the number of surveys undertaken and there was a programme in place to improve the reported figure to 100 per cent.

The Assistant Director Environmental and Housing Property Services explained that the format of the quarterly Housing reports would change for the next quarter with a forward view of what is planned in terms of work for the next quarter and a statistical summary showing if the planned work targets had been met.

A question was asked with respect of the frequency at which the Council revaluated its housing stock property values. It was responded that there was annual valuation in place.

RESOLVED that

the Housing Improvement Plan Quarter 3 2025/26 Update, which includes actions to address areas for improvement, confirmed as part of the Regulator of Social Housing inspection process, be noted.