The complexity and significance of the national housing crises alongside the London wide additional pressures associated with the characteristics of the capital’s housing landscape have an amplified impact on Tower Hamlets due to the unique demographics of the Borough.

The Council’s Housing Options Service is facing unprecedented levels of increasing demand and levels of complexity in homelessness cases. This is the underlying driver constraining the services’ ability to discharge our statutory duties effectively. Housing is a primary corporate priority for the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The Council’s commitment to ensuring accessible high-quality customer centric public services drives our ambition to exceed, rather than simply meet the minimum levels of statutory housing duties.

The exponential increase in volumes of homelessness cases in Q4 to the last financial year drives an immediate call to action. Over the years, there has been reconfiguring of resources, which has seen resources moved from the front end of the service into management positions. This – alongside the growing demand on the service – has had a negative impact on the service’s ability to adapt to these demands and deliver. We do not have the luxury of waiting for longer term transformation to materialise - we need to act now, or we will not resource the bigger changes effectively.

The cost to all local authorities of meeting their obligations to those experiencing homelessness has increased exponentially recently. Higher levels of investment have been made by Tower Hamlets. However, the additional investment made has been driven by substantial increases in 3rd party costs of temporary accommodation for a higher number of people. The consequent burden and pressures faced by internal staff teams to support the substantial increase in demand now needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency.

Although there has been heavy investment, the lack of a suitable structuring of the service fit to deal with the changing external service landscape and demands – coupled with the omission of a comprehensive service review, redesign and new delivery plan – has compounded these issues.

This paper seeks significant additional investment to the resources available to the service, to address its fundamental structural issues driven by lack of a cogent and adapted service design and delivery plan and missing front-line resources that have been offset by an increase in management positions. This has led to a drop in service-satisfaction for residents and inability to meet exponentially increasing demand. The investment will help to strengthen and support the invaluable work being undertaken by our skilled and professional staff teams in our current operations, and to complete a full service review and redesign underpinned by a robust delivery plan.

This report sets out a recommendation to immediately invest in additional resources for frontline services to:

·         Develop capacity on the frontline to provide an empathetic and dignified response to every service user seeking support.

·         Address the pressures within the service caused by increasing demands including high caseloads and backlogs.

·         Alleviate pressures on the workforce and build capacity for staff to access additional support and development.

·         Implement expanded face to face service hours to provide those in need with wider access to the service including later opening hours on weekdays and on a Saturday morning.

·         Secure improvements to the council’s telephony services providing benefits to the wider organisations.

The Mayor noted and agreed the reasons for urgency as set out in the report. Councillor Jahed Choudhury, Chair of Overview and Scrutiny Committee, informed attendees that he had received the reasons for the urgency and he agreed that the decision was urgent and that he felt it was reasonable for the Mayor to consider the report at this Cabinet meeting.

DECISION

1.    Approve the immediate release £1.93m additional revenue allocation from the council’s budgeted service contingency general fund provision for improvements to the Housing Options homelessness services as summarised in section 3.5 and detailed in Appendix 1 to the report.

2.    Agree that the service improvements will include:

·         Development of capacity on the frontline to provide an empathetic and dignified response to every service user seeking support by identifying gaps, shortages and whether there are capacity and skills issues.

·         A full and complete service review and redesign, with immediate reorganisation to be initiated.

·         Cultural and structural changes, to prevent staff churn and ensure that the newly recruited frontline workers are retained within the organisation.

·         Review of the structural composition of the service to identify key issues that may be affecting service delivery.

·         Review senior management arrangements and the performance across the service to understand the relationship with frontline workers, both outward[1]facing and in the back office.

·         Establish a service review, with a view to creating a revised and refreshed service delivery plan to address key areas of cultural concerns and staffing shortages in the service.

3.    Establish a special taskforce designed to give focused and prioritised attention to overseeing the recruitment and restructuring of the service. This will include the Corporate Directors for Resources and Housing and Regeneration (or representative), a representative from the Mayor’s Office, representatives from the Council’s recognised Trade Unions and delegates from the service.

4.    Note the allocation of this additional funding in the current year will be built into the Medium-Term financial planning for future years and is not forecast to compromise the council's sustainable financial position across the current medium.

5.    Note contingency sums for the current year have been set aside within the approved budget for exactly such specific purpose. Our MTFS was approved by members with explicit reference to demand-based risks relating to temporary accommodation. Further information and assurance are set out in the Chief Financial Officer’s comments at section 6 of this report.

6.    Note all impact on staffing will be compliant with the council’s stated principles of focussing investment in front line services, protecting the lowest paid and avoiding compulsory redundancy situations wherever possible.

7.    Note the specific equalities considerations as set out in Paragraph 4 of the report.

Action by

CORPORATE DIRECTOR HOUSING AND REGENERATION (P. PATTERSON)

Director Housing (K. Swift)