A Housing Improvement Action Plan will help council tenants have a louder voice in how the service is run and give councillors more oversight into how the service works and improves.
The plan, which was approved by Cabinet on Wednesday 18 February, follows the Local Government Association’s Social Housing Peer Challenge and an external review of its 30‑year Housing Revenue Account (HRA) Business Plan took place at the end of last year.
The review recognised the dedication of housing staff, the progress already being made through our improvement programme, and the renewed focus on putting tenants at the heart of decision‑making but highlighted the need to strengthen governance, assurance and scrutiny as well as clarifying and making more consistent the roles of councillors, tenants and officers.
The Housing Improvement Action Plan sets out to address those concerns. It recommends creating an independently chaired Housing Improvement Board and which will include local tenants and housing experts, to monitor council housing standards and improvements in the borough which will regularly report to councillors on Cabinet and the Place Overview and Scrutiny Committee.
The plan will help ensure the council meets the Regulator of Social Housing’s four new Consumer Standards for social landlords: Safety and Quality, Transparency and Accountability, and Neighbourhood and Community, and Tenancy.
Cllr Mark Hooper, Cabinet member for Health and Well-being and Social Housing, said: “This Action Plan serves as our roadmap for change and most importantly, it give tenants, independent experts and elected members a powerful voice to make sure that milestones and assurance measures are met so that we can track progress and delivery of the improvements we want to bring to our residents.”