Estates and Neighbourhood Services

1. Estates and Neighbourhood Services Leasehold Improvement Forum 6th March 2019 Peter Purdie Head of Estates and Neighbourhood Services

2. Leasehold Improvement Forum • Estate Caretaking and Internal Cleaning • Restructure of Caretaking Service completed in 2017 with a reduction in staff numbers and improved efficiency. • Internal cleaning and caretaking delivered by a mix of static and mobile teams. • 4 mobile teams created with three Estate Services Operatives in each van • Caretaking team also delivering cleaning service to supported housing schemes. • From December 2018 a new mobile team of three Estate Services Operatives created to provide internal cleaning and inspection of street conversions. Roll out started in N4 and is progressing across the borough. • Increasing the size of the service helps to spread the cost of overheads. • Sought to absorb cost pressures from the automatic enrolment into the pension scheme and from above inflation increases for Estate Services Operatives as a result of their lower rate of pay. • Considering if we want to establish an additional mobile team as currently no spare resources to deliver a deep cleaning programme.

3. Leasehold Improvement Forum • Estate Caretaking and Communal Repairs Reporting • Estate Services Operatives report communal repairs through a repairs application on their mobile phones to the HfH contact centre. • Improvements to the repairs reporting system and use of Service connect now mean that Estate Services Operatives will get notified of all the communal repairs that have been raised in their patch • They are also notified of the appointment dates for the repairs and when the job has been completed. • They are then asked to confirm that the job has been completed and to rate how satisfied they are with the quality of the repair. • If not satisfied the repairs service will revisit to remedy without an additional order being required. • We will be able to generate reports showing the satisfaction with communal repairs. • This will also result in less duplicate jobs, ensure jobs are done to a good standard and only charged if properly completed.

4. Leasehold Improvement Forum • Estate Caretaking and Fire Safety - post Grenfell Tower • Estate Services Operatives carry out a weekly check for fire safety hazards and report these to their managers using a paper based system. • New mobile phones for our Estate Services Operatives being rolled out to allow them to use an HfH specific fire safety inspection application • The app advises them when to carry out the inspection and what to inspect. It records the results of the inspection and supporting photographs and sends a report for follow up action. • Later this month we will be presenting this to other housing providers as an example of best practice in this area. • We are also introducing what is called a “Tort based” clear communal areas policy across the borough. • We write to inform residents of the policy and put up signage. We can then immediately remove and dispose of any items left in communal areas. • Pilots have been successful in delivering clear communal areas. The first phase of the roll out is now taking place in the North Tottenham Area. • The combination of the new app for reporting and the immediate removal of items from communal areas will deliver a safer environment for all our residents.

5. Leasehold Improvement Forum • Monitoring the standards of cleaning and upkeep on our estates • As well as the Leasehold Satisfaction Improvement Plan, we are also currently engaged in an exercise to re-assess the grading of all our estates in order to have a more holistic picture of the condition of the estate. This will allow us to consider assigning additional resources to the estate. • Current grading shows performance at around 97% pass grades against the B standards in the HouseMark Cleaning Standards Photo guide. • Gradings for the blocks and a copy of the guide are on the website. • Project Manager in post from mid-January 2019 for six months. • We are looking at the customer satisfaction data, contacting a sample of dissatisfied residents to better understand why they are dissatisfied. • Are we monitoring, checking and reporting on the right issues that are important to residents and do the results reflect the residents perceptions of service and standards – for example decorative condition? • Are the standards set at the level we would want? • Looking at how we can use the HouseMark mobile phone app so that residents are able to carry out monitoring. This would require development by HouseMark.

6. Leasehold Improvement Forum • Contacting Estate Services • You can phone the contact centre on 0208 489 5611 • You can e mail your estate services team leader • Firstname.secondname@homesforharingey.org • The name of your Estate Services Team Leader can be found on the HfH website or your estate noticeboard • Speak to your caretaker / estate services operative. • Neighbourhood Services and small estate improvement budget • Four Neighbourhood Improvement Officer posts plus a Neighbourhood Improvement Team Leader • Neighbourhood Improvement Team deliver yearly Estate Walkabouts and deliver the small estate Improvement works for general needs and supported housing- currently £750k a year. • Its been suggested we have more evening estate walkabouts. These have been trialled in the past, but the take up has been poor. The team are always prepared to meet residents out-of-hours if required. This is offered on all estate inspection invitations. In addition, there is also a web portal for residents to raises issues directly with the team.

7. Leasehold Improvement Forum • Changes to External Cleaning service • External litter picking, sweeping and dump removal is carried out by Haringey Veolia • Before 2107 the external cleaning service was provided by barrow sweepers who also litter picked and swept highways footpaths with a once a week service, having been reduced from a twice weekly service. • Following concerns about the standards of external cleaning a twice weekly Veolia service was introduced in January 2017 with operatives working from caged vehicles. These are dedicated teams who only cover HfH managed estates with a dedicated Veolia manager have a dedicated manager. • Having teams working from caged vehicles means that most dumped items can be removed straight away when the crew visits • Monitoring showed that this resulted in improved performance and resident satisfaction with many dumps proactively removed and good standards of sweeping and litter picking.

8. Leasehold Improvement Forum • Parks service • The Council Parks service carry out the garden maintenance on our estates, including grass cutting, shrub and tree maintenance. • This is a service area which is often affected by the weather and growing conditions making it difficult to have fixed days for service delivery eg grass cutting. We are exploring IT solutions with parks colleagues to deliver a web based system that captures any changes to the schedules that can be accessed by both staff and residents. • One area of concern that is frequently raised is the number of weeds in shrub beds over the growing season. We have agreed the use of a new residual herbicide that gets sprayed on the surface and then kills off weeds as they grow through the surface. This would replace the current product which can only be sprayed on weeds once they have grown. • Parks maintenance is currently an integrated service where the staff and managers who maintain our estates also look after the Council Parks. • We are exploring the possibility of establishing a dedicated team and manager for delivering the service on HfH managed estates. This could enable a more flexible service and one point of contact to deal with any service concerns