Agenda item

Rob Mills, Director of Customer Experience (South), gave a presentation updating Members in respect of Accent Housing provision in Surrey Heath. 

Accent had provided homes and services since 1966 and had a national portfolio of 20,000 properties. Accent provided homes as well as tailored services to help throughout residents’ journeys.

During the 2018/2019 financial year, Accent had provided homes for 287 households last year across the South Region including 24 independent living (sheltered) units in Surrey Heath. Accent provided homes to those on the Council’s Joint Housing register and worked with those in particular who were homeless, needed to move for medical reasons or were living in overcrowded or poor accommodation. 

Accent had built positive relationships with the Council’s Housing Needs and Housing Benefits teams, as well as the Citizens Advice Bureau and several charities. Accent worked with the bodies to identify those in need of Discretionary Housing Payment, improve movement in the existing Housing stock and create local letting plans on new developments. In addition Accent had been working with public sector and charitable bodies to soften the negative effects of recent benefit reform which had burdened many tenants with debt.

Accent had continuously invested in its housing stock and spent a total of £1.7 million upgrading its existing properties within the last year. Moreover, as an ongoing project, the association had acquired and developed a number of garage sites to produce extra affordable dwellings. Accent had also been working proactively to work on joint ventures with local authorities to seize new site opportunities such as on Sullivan Road just off the A30.

Accent was working to restructure and develop its services to customers. This included the renting ready programme; which was provided in conjunction with Crisis, the Hope Hub and the Council. The programme offered additional support to those with little experience of independent living. In addition the new service offer included new communication options and the creation of new ‘Customer Partner’, roles. It was envisaged that the new customer partners had the ability to act as an individual point of communication for customers; as well as acting as a caseworker for tenancies and keeping an overview of the management of standards, safety and anti-social behaviour issues.

Arising from the Committee’s questions and comments the following points were noted:

·         Tenant affordable housing units could sometimes be typified by limited floor space, overdevelopment of sites and a lack of amenity space. Whilst this could be attributed to some Accent schemes such as Bagshot Green, all Accent’s housing units met the nationally described space standards. In addition as development sites in Surrey Heath were expensive to acquire, there was a balance to be struck between sizeable units and the economic viability of schemes.

·         There had been problems in respect of the reporting of maintenance issues in Accent properties and the associated repair process. Whilst it was maintained that a large proportion of the problems stemmed from Accent South’s previous maintenance contractor- the MD group-, it was recognised that call-answer times of an average of 2.5 minutes by the group’s maintenance call centre in Shipley were unacceptable. Members were recommended to encourage constituents to report maintenance problems via Accent’s online residents’ portal in order to allow efficient reporting and the ability to easily track the stages of the repair. Despite this there was praise that the call centre was open 7 days a week for the reporting of maintenance issues.

·         There was recognition that greater communication sometimes needed to be conducted with incoming accent tenants in respect to the condition of the relevant property. During a tenant turnaround carpets had been variably ripped out; sometimes leaving new tenants with bare floors and the need seek funding for carpets from charitable bodies.

·         There was sometimes a need to make a judgement on the economic cost to benefit ratio, when considering renovations. It was underlined that constant income from rent was crucial to sustain Accent’s service model. Where properties, such as at Ballard Court, were failing to attract tenants, there was a necessity to upgrade the decoration and flooring in order to attract tenants and collect rent.

·         Accent were willing to support the Council’s commitment to house up to ten Syrian Refugee families by 2020 and had already homed 2 refugee families within their properties in Surrey Heath. In addition the organisation was working with the Council’s Housing Services Manager to engage with private landlords to partially fulfill the commitment through the private sector. 

·         Accent’s tenancy sustainability service was best placed to help tenants who had encountered debt problems following national welfare reform and it was recognised that better publicity of the availability of the service was key.

·         Funds would be devolved downwards to allow the new named ‘Customer Partners’ to make decisions on individual tenants’ circumstances. It was envisaged the new Customer Partner service would curtail the “one stop away” perspective, which Accent’s services had grown. In addition there would be a total of 9 Customer Partners per 450-500 properties.

·         Whilst there were arguments for people deemed as particularly vulnerable not to be given tenancies in the rural areas of the borough and as neighbours to others considered deemed particularly vulnerable, it was underlined that tenants apply for housing at their own prerogative via the joint housing register.

·         Accent were working closely with the police and Council in order to tackle Anti-Social Behaviour problems at Accent sites. Previously injunctions, mediation and repossession have been used proportionally in conjunction with the police.

The Committee thanked Mr Mills for his informative update.