Agenda item

Report of Jonathan Cowie, Chief Executive, CityWest Homes.

Tracey Lees, CEO of Wandle and former CEO of Barnet Homes has been invited to the meeting as an expert witness.

6.1     The Committee received a Powerpoint presentation from Jonathan Cowie, Chief Executive, CityWest Homes (CWH) and Martin Edgerton, Executive Director, Customer Services, CityWest Homes on CityWest Homes Transformation Plan.

          The presentation set out:

·         the wider context for CWH transformation agenda

·         some of the key challenges faced

·         the outcomes the transformation will deliver

·         the vision, how the new approach will work

·         a high level timeline for delivery

6.2     The committee heard from witness Tracey Lees, CEO of Wandle and former CEO of Barnet Homes, who had been invited to the meeting to provide a peer perspective on the proposals.  Ms Lees provided a brief summary of her career background.  She advised that she had worked for more than 30 years in social housing for a number of local authorities, registered providers and ALMOS including the City Council where she had been an operations manager for 10 years prior to the authority establishing CWH.  She was currently the CEO of Wandle, a Housing Association operating in South London.

6.3     At the chairman’s invitation Ms Lees provided her initial thoughts on the proposed transformation plan.  She considered that some aspects of the plan that was being proposed, is addressing issues that felt quite dated.  She expressed surprise that Westminster still had such a high provision of local estate offices which were expensive to maintain.  She explained that in Barnet, outside the core estates where residential blocks were scattered it did not make sense to have local offices.  She considered that CWH should review the on-going provision of local estate offices.  No other local authority that she was aware of had as extensive an offer.  She stated that while it was important to have some core standards of service, beyond this CWH could and should differentiate service levels according to different occupier requirements.  She stated that a high level of leaseholders who have not been Council tenants do not have the same requirements as social housing tenants.  She suggested that providing the same services differently could enable the Council to redirect the money saved elsewhere such as to providing health or employment projects.  She was also surprised that there had not previously been a higher demand for self-service from residents.

6.4     The Committee then considered the proposals and in the ensuing discussion raised a range of questions with the officers present.

6.5     Members reported that some residents express surprise at the satisfaction levels reported as these do not correlate with their experience of services. 

The committee asked how CWH would tackle such perceptions.  Mr Cowie stated that while 20% of residents were highly satisfied with CWH it would be complacent to consider this to be good.  He stated that to change perceptions it would be important to understand the 80% of resident’s who didn’t respond and address any systemic root cause of dissatisfaction.  He advised that CWH was about to receive the results of satisfaction metrics from 5000 residents using a new approach via the Institute of Customer Services.  This would provide CWH with a better understanding of what residents think and would help the organisation to realign culturally.  This would also allow Westminster and CWH to compare satisfaction directly with the best public and private sector organisations in the UK.  Mr Edgerton advised that the transformation programme included plans for more real-time analysis and information on performance where residents would be asked for feedback which should assist CWH to obtain a clearer picture of how the organisation is performing.

6.6     The Committee asked about the way that complaints would be dealt with as part of the new vision.  Mr Cowie stated that although statistically CWH received a low number of complaints he recognised that it had been poor at handling those that it did receive.  He advised that in the last 4 months satisfaction with complaint handling had improved from 63% to 77%.  He stated that he wished to see this figure rise to above 50%.  One measure of how well complaints were dealt with was whether many were escalated to the ombudsman.  He advised that the cause of complaints around major works often related to the performance of contractors.  He recognised that the contracting out of major works had in the past had not always been well managed.  The contracts often included a high degree of subcontracting and contractors did not necessarily have the same strategic alignment as CWH and the City Council.  He advised that over the next 12 months £500 million of contracts were to be tendered and the aim would be to address such issues.  Part of this would include more joined up working and rationalising the level of subcontracting on major works.

6.7     Officers were referred to the fact that while CWH provide some comparatively high service standards these came at a high cost.  The Committee asked about the balance between having such standards and the requirement to provide value for money.  Mr Cowie advised that CWH was refreshing and transforming how it engages with residents through the new resident engagement boards.  CWH would establish what is most important to residents and then look at how these can be prioritised.  This would help establish minimum standards of service and help to drive more consistency.  Mr Edgerton commented that during engagement on service standards residents had been pragmatic and accepted reasonable trade-offs.  Any money saved could then be re-channelled into other priorities. 

6.8     Members expressed concern about the possible closure of estate offices which would likely meet with negative reactions from local residents.  Mr Cowie recognised that there will always be some people who will need to have direct contact with the organisation.  He explained that the transformation programme would review how a local presence can be provided while providing value for money.  He advised that CWH are developing the options for review by November alongside work on how it can better use its spaces and opportunities to develop hubs.  Concurrently, the City Council is undertaking a review of its operational property portfolio of over 300 buildings and CWH is participating in this to see where opportunities may exist.  Any plans to re-shape how the services are to be delivered via the estate offices would involve an extensive review with resident’s via the new resident council and area panels.

RESOLVED:

1.       The committee considered that the transformation programme had on the whole a great deal to recommend itself.  Members noted that the CWH Executive Team was keen to modernise services, deliver greater efficiency and reduce cost.  It considered the programme of change to be ambitious providing more performance measurements on issues of importance to tenants and tailoring services to customer requirements while reducing costs to leaseholders and delivering more housing. 

2.       The committee was keen to see greater joint working with Westminster services as well as other public sector bodies within the target operating model, not just a in relation to infrastructure, but also procurement in order to take advantage of the increased benefits provided by scale.

3.       With regards to potential risks, the committee noted the intention to further develop its digital and self-service offer.  It considered that CWH needs to consider how it will provide on-going assistance to those residents who rely on direct access to services and who will be unable to interact with the organisation digitally.  It also considered that as CWH does not have a baseline for all data there is a risk that some measurements will not be included as part of the target operating model.