Meeting documents

To consider the attached report.

Contact Officer:  Will Rysdale (01296) 585561

The Committee received a presentation from Mr Matthew Applegate, Chief Executive of the Vale of Aylesbury Housing Trust (VAHT), updating Members on VAHT’s operations over the past 12 months. The presentation also outlined the strategic direction for the next year.

VAHT managed and supported 7,481 properties (with an additional 405 lettings occurring each year) with 21,249 residents, which equated to 1:9 resident in Aylesbury Vale.  The Trust had an annual turnover of £45m (which had doubled over the last 10 years) and employed 245 staff.

VAHT’s Customer Contact Centre received 81,911 calls in the last year and had then carried out 22,195 repairs.

Tenant feedback of VAHT’s performance was as follows:

·                    91.8% were satisfied with the service (the highest ever recorded by VAHT).

·                    91.4% were satisfied that the service was value for money (i.e. satisfied with their level of rent).

·                    89.3% were satisfied with their neighbourhood.

·                    87.2% were satisfied with the quality of their home

38 formal complaints (lowest ever) had been received in the last year, compared to 67 in the previous year.

As explained is previous annual updates, VAHT has received a ‘Net Promoter Score’ of 38% (27% last year) which was a rating of ‘How likely would residents be to recommend VAHT to family and friends?’.  This put VAHT in the top of the top quartile of comparable Housing Associations.

The presentation also covered:

·                    Governance and financial viability, including on the independent Tenant Scrutiny Panel which reported to the Board, made recommendations for improvement and carried out their own enquiries.

·                    Operational performance

o      Rent Arrears – remained low at 1.18% of total income (excluding housing benefits.

o      Repairs – 95% were completes at first visit.  99.6% of emergency repairs were done within 4 hours, with the turnaround time for all repairs being 13 days.

o      Voids – average turnaround time was 13 days.  There were currently 49 void properties (39 normal and 10 strategic, i.e. held back for families/people with particular circumstances).

·                    new and affordable homes completed.

·                    a breakdown of expenditure and the indicative development programme for 2017-2020.

·                    how VAHT was managing the impact of Welfare Reform.

Members were informed that one challenges faced over the last year had been handling the 400 reported cases of anti-social behaviour.  The majority of these had been low level but some instances had involved drug related activity, domestic violence and serious noise nuisance.  97% of cases had been resolved and 14 properties had been recovered due to serious behaviour, criminal activity or other forms of abuse.  12 Civil Injunctions had been obtained during 2016/17 to tackle anti-social behaviour, and this had been found to be effective as the courts took breaches of Civil Injunctions seriously.

VAHT had also undertaken preventative activity to tackle anti-social behaviour before it became a recurring problem.  These had included a fly tip awareness event at Wycliffe End and Walton Court Centre, and ‘Coffee with Cops’ which had involved police informing local residents about what they did within the community.  Diversionary fitness activities had also been organised and funding provided for a Friday Night Project for 11-18 year olds to divert them away from anti-social behaviour.  The project participants had been referred due to school exclusion or truancy, and had also been referred via Youth Offending Services.  This project had led to mentor programmes that taught interview skills and encouraged participants to go back to school.  The Thames Valley Housing Association had also shown an interest in assisting in the project due to the positive effects it had brought.

Members also heard more about the Corporate Strategy for 2017-20 which intended to maintain the social purpose of VAHT by the commitment to build strong communities, led by a number of themes:-

Theme 1 – Effective and efficient business

Theme 2 – Flexible, accessible services

Theme 3 – Communities and assets

Theme 4 – Housing supply

Alongside this, VAHT’s strategy was to grow, deliver a better service and be bolder in delivering a commercial service in future.  Members sought further information and were informed:-

(i)            that information on reporting anti-social behaviour was available on VAHT’s website for residents

(ii)           VAHT was involved in the consultation phase of the Local Plan regarding housing need.

(iii)          that the Trust differed to other housing associations due to their community cohesion proactivity and their relationships with local groups such as AHAG

(iv)         that VAHT had interests in a small number of dwellings outside Aylesbury Vale but any profits generated were returned back to the Vale.

(v)          that the intention behind being ‘Bolder’ was about being innovative in residential feedback for future services.  VAHT had focussed on improving their existing services and now wanted to shift their work culture.

(vi)         that there was the possibility to work with other housing associations that do not have VAHT’s values. VAHT could also consider selling their successful anti-social behaviour plans to other housing associations.

(vii)        that increasing the customer KPI scores would have incurred disproportionate costs. It was deemed better to focus on streamlining existing services and reinvesting.

(viii)       garage site conversion still existed with some projects ongoing

(ix)         the Rural Exception Policy had been difficult for VAHT to become involved in as other organisations were often approached first

(x)          the KPI for repairs was 15 days from report and the current average was 13 days

(xi)         AVDC had allocated £400,000 towards housing adaptation costs. Once housing was converted for disability, efforts were made to keep these for disabled tenants

RESOLVED –

(1)          That the VAHT’s Chief Executive be thanked for the Housing Trust’s work in the community and attending the meeting to brief Members with the update.

(2)          The contents of the report and update be noted.