The reports, the Housing Revenue Account Medium Term Financial Strategy (MTFS) and the Housing Transformation Programme Update, set out how the council will need to make further changes to the way it delivers housing services.
The council is already focused on making its services more efficient and has, for example, reduced the number of days it takes to carry out any necessary repairs and health and safety works to council homes.
The time taken to re-let a standard property to a new tenant has been cut from 34 days last year, to 26 days in the first quarter of this financial year and the council has plans to improve this further.
If councillors approve proposals in the reports the programme could be extended to include:
- Carrying out a review of management and staffing levels;
- Reviewing expenditure in respect of day to day repairs and repairs undertaken when properties are handed back to the council;
- Reviewing expenditure on disabled adaptations;
- Reviewing the planned maintenance programme to council homes;
- Assessing options for sharing housing services with other councils.
The reports propose making provision for £1million of savings from the council’s housing service for 2017-2018 with up to a further £1million in 2018-19.
The council’s financial strategy allows for a small programme of new council homes to be built using Right to Buy receipts from council house sales, with £32million available for new builds between 2017 and 2019.
Agreement to a devolution deal would see an additional £70 million handed to the council by government which would be used to build much needed council homes.
The proposals are being made against a backdrop of some uncertainty in national housing policy with the government yet to confirm its requirements of councils on the sale of high value assets and rent levels for households earning more than £31k per year.
Last year, the government told councils to cut housing rents by 1% annually for four years and 2017-18 will be the second year of reductions, subject to any further instructions from government. The effect of this on the council over the four years will be to reduce income from rents by £14.88m by 2019-20.
Cllr Kevin Price, Executive Councillor for Housing, said: “Given the pressures on the council’s finances it’s important that we find ways of becoming even more efficient.
“This means looking at how we do things now and seeing whether there are different ways of providing services that help us to target those people who are in greatest need of our help.
“We will build as many council homes as we can but the big numbers that the city urgently needs will only come if a devolution deal can be agreed with government – something that requires agreement by a number of councils as well as Whitehall.
“We need to be able to adapt quickly to changes in national housing policy that could affect our budgets further and taking the right steps now will put us in a better position to do that.
“Our priority remains minimising and mitigating the impact of any changes in our services on tenants, particularly the most vulnerable people.”
Council tenants would be consulted on any changes that directly affect them. A further financial report is set to be presented to Housing Scrutiny Committee in January.
Cllr Price will decide whether to approve the recommendations in both reports at Housing Scrutiny Committee on 22 September.
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