Agenda item

To follow

The Panel received a report which provided an update in Legal Disrepair cases. The report set out the current status of legal disrepair claims, as well as the work being undertaken to meet the strategic objective of reducing open case levels to a business-as-usual scenario. The report was introduced by Scott Kay, Assistant Director for Repairs and Compliance, as set out in the addendum report pack at pages 17-26. Richard Purvis, Senior Disrepair Manager was present for this item, along with the Interim Director for Housing and Cllr Sarah Williams, Cabinet Member for Housing and Planning.  The following arose as part of the discussion of this item:

1. The Panel sought clarification around how long officers anticipated it would be before maintenance was of a standard that the number of claims would be significantly reduced. In response, officers stated that the report set out a trajectory of caseloads at paragraph 4.11. The Panel was advised that, in essence, the length of time would depend on how much the Major Works programme was scaled up, as well as the number of claims that the Council received.
2. The Panel queried the extent to which an increase in the number of damp and mould cases was anticipated following the introduction of Awaab’s Law. In response, officers advised that the organisation did see a bit of spike following the introduction of the legislation, but that the increase was not as large as it might have been. It was suggested that the change had been widely publicised in the media in the run up to it being enacted. Officers set out that they were comfortable that the Council had adequate resources in place to deal with claims at the level they are at present. The service was also working to increase supply chains in order to deal with any future spike in claims as-and-when that might happen.
3. The Panel raised concerns around a failure to deal with regular repairs and these ending up being escalated into legal disrepair claims. In response, officers acknowledged that there had been some issues with the volume of calls into the call centre and the ability to handle all of those calls. In response to this, additional routes for reporting repairs directly through to the repairs team had been established, to sit alongside the call centre. It was commented that improvements to customer satisfaction scores had started to happen. The Corporate Director advised that additional resources had been put into customer services and that there was ongoing transformation work to improve digital contact with the Council.
4. The Panel queried the report’s assertion that part of the solution was that sector reform was needed, in order to prevent the incentive for volume-based litigation firms. The Chair suggested that the claims were a problem only if they were legitimate claims. In response, officers agreed that claims needed to be valid, but cautioned that the legal standard was very low. The Panel was advised that even in cases that could be defended through the legal process, the claim still had to be treated as a disrepair claim - which took up additional resources to resolve that claim. Officers clarified that the salient point was that the resolution process under the protocol was not very cost effective. The legal costs in defending these claims were high, especially given the low legal standard. Furthermore, repairs were delayed by the legal process, which often made the repair more expensive to resolve. 
5. The Panel welcomed the progress that had been made overall on the issue of legal disrepair.  The Panel advocated that the Council should be doing all it could to clear the backlog and to pre-empt cases from going to court in the first place given the costs involved, rather than challenging claims and effectively seeking to prevent people from claiming their rightful compensation. The Panel commented that the Council’s expectation should be that there are zero cases of legal disrepair. 
6. The Chair requested that in future, graphs in reports show the figures on the axes rather than just the trend. (Action: Officers to note).

RESOLVED

Noted.