Agenda item

This report provides Audit Committee with details of the progress made by Housing Services in progressing the recommendations made by the audit conducted by Mazars, the Council's independent internal auditors, that was undertaken on Voids and Follow Up of Lettings and received a Limited Assurance rating.

The report also provides a summary of the work that has been undertaken to improve our position and approach to voids, including the key risks that are being managed by the service.

Mr Neehara Wijeyesekera, Assistant Director Housing Management, Ms Rachel Sharpe, Director of Housing and Mr Scott Kay, AD Repairs and Compliance introduced the report.

The meeting heard:

·         It was important to track the ‘key-to-key’ process. This was when somebody wanted to terminate a tenancy or leave their property to the point where somebody else gets the keys and moves in. There were a lot of different services involved in this. The Council was trying to break down each bit of the process and look at how each bit worked. To terminate a tenancy, an in-person appointment would need to be made at the customer service centre and there were two forms to fill in. This was before the Council could look at the property to work out what work needed to be done. The intention of the strategic group was to sort out what should be the sensible time targets for each part of the process. The Council had been measuring voids in terms of total numbers at any one time rather than time processes.

·         The last part of the process was the point at which the property was ready to be let, go onto the choice based letting system (or allocated by another method) before being signed up by a new tenant.

·         The Council had looked at average timescales and the focus in recent years had been on the number of voids needed to be reduced. The review being undertaken would set out the steps individually. The numbers at present would take into account the whole process, but it would also take into account all of the voids, some of which had taken a long time because they were in programs such as regeneration programs or required major works. The Council wanted to be able to report on voids that were genuine turnaround voids as opposed to skewing figures from voids that would be put into a holding pattern for regeneration schemes.

·         A query was raised that it was not clear how many voids there were, how long it took for an evaluation. It was also not clear how many people were on the waiting list. Generally, more information was required. In response, the meeting heard that a paper would be circulated and the queries could be raised at the next Committee.

·         There were some difficulties in coming up with reliable data. There was reference to some changes needed on the NEC system. Voids were being tracked. There were 403 voids, but that was not all the voids. Only a certain number of properties were counted. The Council was committed to try and make an improvement with the issue.

·         The new build properties were becoming available and this was a positive for the Council. In 2024/25, 451 new build properties were signed up. Up to the end of January, there were another 151 new build properties signed up. Around about 40% to 50% of all new build properties had an impact on the stock from where people who had an offer in a policy decision that was made probably 10 years ago before development plans were being put forward. This was to allow those tenants who were living in certain conditions to be able to move. The impact of this meant that there more properties becoming available adding to the amount not-completed. The properties also needed to be matched and keep pace with the 500 properties per year from the normal stock, but also the additional stock (around 40% of the numbers of the existing stock).

·         The Council reacted to a situation enhanced by the Neighbourhoods Move Scheme and had been managing the situation since. Numbers had gone down over the years and the Council put various supply chain partners in place, but these were short term contracts which had to keep renewing. Cabinet in the future would see a request to go out to procurement for a long-term partnering contractor for voids who could help the Council supplement this. The intention was to deal with voids through in-house teams to keep the core numbers down. Progress would see the Council plan ahead and follow the development pipeline. Having a flexible supply chain partner on a long-term contract was ideal and this was the plan to help cope with demand.

·         People moving into new properties came from a variety of circumstances. There was a lot of dependence on where people were in terms of their priority need at the time. The number of applications from neighbourhood move schemes and the level of the applications meet the priority requirements was quite a complex set of layers in a holistic process. In the long term, having a bigger stock would be better for the borough. The borough needed affordable housing.

·         Recording systems were not set up the way the Council needed it to be. The staff were having to do things in a manual way, taking longer and keeping files on local drives or on spreadsheets. Therefore, it was more difficult to get hold of data. The Council wanted to improve the system so that the reporting could be improved along with the transparency of data and the visibility of what void sat where.

·         Improvement in systems had a dependency on the Council’s IT team. It was one of a large number of projects for improving systems in housing. The Council was trying to prioritise the system project improvements with IT to make sure the right resources were in place. The use of spreadsheets was not ideal as the Council needed access to data in a more immediate manner such as knowing how many voids were waiting to be allocated.

·         Most organisations would use a system such as ‘NEC’. Upgrades were being implemented into the system to make sure it was up-to-date. It was a large system with multiple different elements to it.

·         The system needed to be able to work under all criteria and be designed appropriately so that the controls, the audits, the functions, the different types of property, different types of reasoning as to why a property becomes void could then be managed better. The system review would need to be corrected over the next couple of months.

·         The policy was ready, but would not be presented until the summer of 2026. This had gone through the residents’ voice board and a continuous improvement group.

·         The project had already been commissioned and the project management was in place.

·         Digital support was already in place to make sure no mistakes were made.

·         There was the re-procurement work along with the improvement works on the system as it stands. It was not clear when this would be completed.

·         Many procurements were planned over the next couple of years and there was a particular focus on Housing and Adult Social Care. A different process was in place in terms of digital governance and how projects got established. Resource allocation had been very clearly identified for every project budget. They were closely monitored with a series of internal governance steps. This was to ensure that the Council was specifying the requirements from a digital and service perspective. How digital projects was procured was very different to how adult social care services were procured. This was recognised under the new framework which had been in place for 18 months.

·         In relation to voids, it was likely that the data was correct, but the system was unable to provide the reports it needed. There were minor day-to-day voids, major voids, sheltered voids, temporary accommodation voids, PSL voids, voids for Homes for Haringey and voids for HCBS. Some of those were not even managed directly by the housing service. Within the key to key process, there were various stages along the way. IT was working with the team to map out the process to deliver it in the best way, before systemising the process.

·         The team had been reorganised so that the right management structure was in place and. Both the structure and the resources appeared to be right in relation to coping with demand.

The Audit Committee RESOLVED:

That the report be noted.