Agenda item

Objective: To provide the Committee with key compliance performance data.

The Head of Regulatory Compliance addressed the committee and highlighted the following:

-       She introduced the Committee to Jay Whewell and Nicky Ricketts, who are the new property compliance manager and fire safety manager respectively. The housing team has been through a significant amount of change, particularly within the compliance team. The team has grown from two to seven and there is now a dedicated team for fire safety. Currently reviewing potential management of areas that have previously been managed by other teams within the business.

-       The data in the report covers the period up to the end of April. Since the report was published the May compliance report has been run and the following changes have occurred:

o   As of the end of April there were six overdue gas services, one of these has now been completed, and the five that are remaining are all sat within the legal process due to access issues.

o   Of the six high-risk fire actions that were reported overdue, three have now been completed.The two outstanding legacy fire door actions have now been fitted and certification has been received. There is now a dedicated fire door inspector within the team who will be inspecting these doors to ensure that they are fitted correctly, and contractors are working to a high standard. This will add an extra layer of assurance.

o   As of the end of April, the report said that there were 83 overdue fire actions. Whilst this sounds worrying, it is not as bad as it first appears. The team have identified where the problems are which allows them to address them. They also have an understanding of where issues are generated by the computer systems used. For example, one of the systems only reports issues as ‘in date’ or ‘overdue’, so does not reflect where work is in progress. The data and information is currently being analysed to identify what is in progress and what is preventing actions from being completed. The team are working hard to close these actions using a priority risk-based approach. The new fire safety manager will also be reviewing the fire risk assessment action schedule, the fire door inspections and fire safety as a whole.

The committee’s discussion raised the following points:

-       The way fire actions (whether urgent, high-risk, medium-risk or low-risk) are reported from the system means that they are reported as ‘not applicable’ rather than compliant or non-compliant. Where actions are overdue, they are technically non-compliant. In other areas where there are links to TSMs the scorecard report links to compliance, whereas in this case it is additional information inputted from another report. The fire actions are reported in more detail to the committee in line with good practice, but the assessment itself follows requirements that include a compliant or non-compliant judgement.

-       Whilst the council is prohibited by the covenants of leases from requiring boiler, electric, or gas servicing certification from leaseholders, they do encourage leaseholders to carry out these checks. Literature is being issued to leaseholders (although this is not legally enforceable), and discounted gas servicing checks are offered by the council contractor. Where leaseholders are subletting properties, they do have the same requirements as private landlords to provide up-to-date gas and electric certificates. The leasehold team are also in the process of checking whether or not the health and safety legislation overrides the covenants in the leases. Information will also be provided via the annual billing correspondence to leaseholder.

-       A high-risk fire action relating to a combustible item requiring removal from a bin store area was noted. The officer explained that this related to a scooter that was not owned by any resident. Substantive checks were required to make sure it had not been stolen. Now these have been completed removal will be arranged.