Agenda item

Lara Wells, Business Manager – Corporate Policy and Improvement:

a)    presented a range of proposed performance measures for the upcoming financial year 2025/26, intended to support Housing Scrutiny Sub-Committee to effectively scrutinise the Council’s role as a social landlord

b)    requested approval of the range of performance indicators as attached at Appendix A of the report for presentation to the Sub-Committee on a quarterly basis

c)    advised that there were a total of forty-one measures for the Sub-Committees consideration; a slight increase on the thirty-seven measures reported in 2024/25

d)    explained that the increase in the number of performance measures was largely due to the introduction of new national reporting requirements, and recognition that some of these reporting requirements added value to the Council’s scrutiny process by providing context to support existing measures

e)    added that the new measures would be introduced in Customer Services in the next few weeks

f)      summarised the proposed changes to performance measures, proposed to be deleted and new measures as detailed at paragraph 3 of the report

g)    invited Housing Sub-Committees questions and comments:

Members discussed the content of the report in further detail, asked questions and received relevant responses as follows:

Question: Concerns were raised regarding the connection between our Control Centre and the Hamilton House Team. Did the out of hours  emergency calls include assistance for homeless people?

Response: The Council had a statutory duty towards homeless people at any hour of the day. Lincare would contact the out-of-hours housing officer on-call to arrange temporary accommodation or somewhere to stay.

Question: In relation to performance measure 85A ‘Percentage of allocation offers accepted first time, why wasn’t the target set at 100%? What were the reasons why properties weren’t accepted first time?

Response: Prospective tenants had numerous reasons why they didn’t accept a property first time, perhaps due to it not being what they initially imagined it to be. The homeless legislation was different to the Allocations Policy.

Comment: by Lincoln Tenant’s Panel Member – Concerns were raised about the assistance offered under the out-of-hours system and the length of time taken for the Call-Centre to answer calls beyond even the new target of 500 seconds proposed.

Response: The response from the out-of-hours service covered legislative responsibilities only. The target for customer call response time was not set by officers, however, the target had been amended to reflect the increase in call volumes and complexity.

Question: Did the figures for call time responses relate to housing calls only or all calls in general? It would be helpful to receive data on how many enquiries were resolved first time, also requested by members at Performance Scrutiny Committee

Response: The figures related to all calls.

Question: In relation to performance measure HSSC4: Percentage of properties at SAP rating C or above,when would work commence on bringing this desired outcome into operation?

Response: Hopefully this would come into operation by May-June 2025, once processed through Legal Services. There were approximately 200 properties affected.

Question: How many vacant garages were there in the Birchwood area?

Response: Officers would provide this information to members of Housing Scrutiny Sub-Committee under separate cover.

Officers suggested that the new volumetric measures proposed in relation to the Lincare Control Centre were not a landlord function and should not be included in the performance targets listed at Appendix A for this reason.

RESOLVED that the performance measures proposed at Appendix A of the report be approved for inclusion in the quarterly performance reporting for 2025/26.