Agenda item

Report of the Divisional Director of Housing

An officer introduced the report which provided an update to the Forum on a pilot project being undertaken by Harrow Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) to visit tenants and leaseholders to establish their awareness of the implications of the forthcoming welfare reform changes and to establish what sort of support and guidance should be made available.  The officer made comments including the following:

·                     as direct payments were ending, one of the most important questions which was asked was whether respondents had a transactional bank account;

·                     in addition, questions were asked about whether there were any incentives which would encourage a tenant or leaseholder to sign up to pay by direct debit, were there any other payment methods which would help people manage their budgets, whether budget training was required and if respondents had any current financial concerns;

·                     the CAB had been given the details of 600 households in the borough, which included 500 tenants and 100 leaseholders.  The contacts were identified using random selection and also various criteria, including those who would not be affected by the benefit cap, leaseholders with historic debts, leaseholders likely to face major works bills within the next 2 years and  tenants who were known to be in receipt of full housing benefit;

·                     an additional 346 households which were likely to be affected by the bedroom tax had been identified for inclusion in the pilot project;

·                     monthly progress reports had been provided by the CAB and the graphs included at Appendix 1 to the report showed the results following 285 interviews in the period ending December 2012;

·                     to date, no leaseholders had submitted a response or accepted an interview;

·                     the key findings were that two thirds of those visited had advised that they were aware of the changes and that two thirds were concerned about how it would affect them.  90% of respondents had indicated that they had a transactional bank back account and 50% of those visited would welcome discount incentives to encourage payment by direct debit.  97% had indicated that they would like direct payment of rent to continue;

·                     in addition, 81% of those interviewed had stated that they would not like to receive any help with budgeting and 79% responded that they did not have money issues;

·                     the majority of the interviewees to date had been older people and the CAB would now be targeting younger people for the interviews;

·                     it had been agreed that the pilot would be extended until the end of February 2013 to allow the CAB to prioritise their work on the fuel poverty project.

Members of the Forum asked a number of questions which the officers responded to as follows:

·                     CAB had been paid approximately £40,000 for the project from the Housing Revenue Account (HRA) and a service level agreement (SLA) had been set.  It was accepted that a response rate of one per day was low but at the beginning of the project there had been staff availability issues;

·                     the progress on the project had been delayed as the climate change work on fuel poverty had been a priority;

·                     the Council was aware of who occupied which property but knew little about their personal circumstances.  There was ongoing work to address tenancy fraud. 

A Councillor Member of the Forum requested that information on the SLA, performance data and how the delays had been compensated for be sent to the Councillors and to anyone else who was interested.

RESOLVED:  That the report and the comments of the Forum be noted.