Agenda item

·        Report on the visit to Wychavon District Council

·        Best Practise – a Presentation from Wychavon’s Housing & Revenues Manager, Kath Smith

·        Update on progress against the Improvement Plan

The Housing Improvement Programme Facilitator referred members to the Strategic Housing Improvement Programme.  The programme was designed to improve strategic housing to a two star service in 12 months.  To help with this programme and best practice the District Council contacted Wychavon District Council which were the best in the country, and had gone from a poor rating to an excellent three star rating in just two years.   Wychavon District Council were very similar to South Kesteven with a similar urban and rural spread and were also a member of our audit group.

A visit to Wychavon had been arranged and members and officers had had an excellent day.   The Housing Improvement Programme Facilitator then showed members a short video which had been made by Wychavon District Council on best practice which showed the Chief Executive and the Portfolio Holder discussing what changes they made with their focus moving from a bricks and mortar service to a customer focused service with a pragmatic approach.  They had a one-stop shop in which partners including the police worked in the same place, were able to share information and had a joined up working culture.

Kath Smith was then introduced to the Panel. She was the Revenues & Housing Services Manager at Wychavon and had been one of the key players in changing Wychavon’s strategic housing management.  The Chairman welcomed Ms Smith to the meeting.

In a presentation to the Panel Kath Smith outlined how the strategic housing service at Wychavon had changed.  She indicated that it was not the poor CPA report that they received which had prompted the change but they had done it for their customers.

Areas that were highlighted within the presentation were:

·              Strong Leadership

·              Financing Change 

·              Empowering the team

·              Improving Key data

·              Consultation

·              Effective Plans

·              Partnership

·              Service Improvements

·              Help for the Homeless

·              Helping the Private Sector

·              Development of New Affordable Housing

·              Promoting what they did

She said that having a very proactive portfolio holder had been a great help and the political will of members to drive the service and improvements was necessary for success.  By empowering the team which at the being had been depressed and disheartened by the CPA report had brought a complete culture change.   All officers had been encouraged to make suggestions or innovations for improvements be they small or large and the responsibility for making the decisions had been given to the officers.  They could fail once but not twice.

The improvement to key data, specifically IT programmes had been a major development and the use of text messaging had saved the authority a tremendous amount of money as people were more likely to reply to a text where as letters would be put directly in the bin.  The merging of revenue services with housing had also benefited their customers.  The area of consultation was important and the forums for the disabled and private landlords had been very successful.  A visit with the Overview and Scrutiny members had been arranged to go out with the grant officer in order that members could see what a day in the life of a grant officer meant which helped them see where money was spent and who it was spent on.  Benchmarking and exit surveys also gave you information to see who was doing what better or worse and the views of people who had been in Bed & Breakfast accommodation had they been treated with respect was the standard acceptable. 

Having effective plans and strong partnerships were essential, especially partnerships with the RSL’s.    Other areas highlighted were seeing that the customers had access to the correct funds available and the Council used those funds/schemes that were available to them.   Having a grants policy that targeted resources to those most in need and new forms of adaptations work such as the use of portacabin/pod structures which once no longer needed could be moved to a different location. 

Proactive enforcement to target the worst cases, Wychavon tried not to use enforcement but preferred where necessary to talk to people and offer them the support that they required, often this negated the need for enforcement.

Improvement to communication between internal departments had helped with the development of new affordable housing and the co-ordinating of “round the table” meetings.   By promoting what they did with council wide-staff briefings everyone was aware of what was happening and by having a press release fortnightly the general public were also kept informed.

Ms Smith concluded by saying that unless changes brought about an improvement for the customer there was no point in carrying out the changes.  The whole culture of Wychavon DC had changed and this was down to the political will of the Council the strong leadership and investment that had taken place together with the customer focus and the supportive partners.  They challenged what they did and learnt from criticism and others with new ideas and solutions.  They were people focused, worked as a team and offered a service that people wanted.

A few questions and comments were made about homelessness, the change of Wychavon’s culture, the costs involved in the change and text messaging to which Ms Smith replied.  The Chairman and members of the panel thanked Ms Smith for attending the meeting and for an excellent presentation.  The Corporate Director of Regulatory Services informed the Panel that Ms Smith had agreed to be the Council’s critical friend and would be back in six to nine months time to review the progress that the council had made.

Members then discussed the strategic housing improvement plan update that had been circulated.  The document was self explanatory and highlighted the milestones that had been reached to date.  The Corporate Director of Regulatory Services informed the panel that the partnership agreement with the RSL’s, which had been circulated, was part of the action plan.  

Comments were then made about the confusion that exists between what was meant by strategic housing services and the large scale voluntary transfer LSVT.  The Corporate Director Regulatory Services said that work was currently being undertaken to make the differences between the two topics clear to both the public and the media.