Issue - meetings

As detailed in the recommendation.

Councillor Hughes introduced the report which provided an operational update following the publication of a recent Audit Wales report on Housing Rent Income.  The Audit Wales review had acknowledged the proactive measures already taken by the Council in supporting tenants and stabilising rent collections during a period of unprecedented change, especially with the rollout of Universal Credit (UC) and the recent impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

            The Chief Officer (Housing and Assets) explained that the review had concluded that Council had, by March 2020, successfully stopped the increase in Council tenant rent arrears.  In summary, the Audit Wales report set out two recommendations to collect additional performance measures to better understand the overall income and rent arrears performance and to build on the improvements already made.  The two additional indicators being proposed were:

·         Total rent collected during the year from both former and current tenants; and the amount written off during the financial year in unpaid rents; and

·         The collection of more comprehensive datasets including strengthening integrated tenant engagement arrangements to better understand the needs and experiences of tenants and to inform future housing service delivery

The Housing Service continued to develop strategies to increase collections and in respect of the collection of former tenant arrears, the service had recently deployed an additional software module specifically targeted at former tenant arrears.  The software deployed existing analytical and predictive technologies using the Mobysoft ‘Rent Sense” solution to quickly identify former tenants who were at risk of not making repayments on time.  The deployment of new software, along with enhanced reporting tools, would enable officers to make further improvements in the collection process and to also provide additional reporting information to Cabinet and to Scrutiny Committee on former tenant arrears, as well as better visual information on write off levels.

In addition to that, and in respect of the collation of data to capture tenants’ feedback and to better understand the needs of tenants, the housing service was proposing to send out a detailed questionnaire to solicit customer feedback which would assist and support future models of service delivery.

RESOLVED:

That the proposals for improvement be adopted.