Examination of Witnesses (Questions 300
- 319)
TUESDAY 18 JANUARY 2005
MR VIC
SMITH, MS
HELEN MARSON,
MS CAROLYN
PALMER-FAGAN
AND MS
REVINDER JOHAL
Q300 Mr Prentice: I want to come
on to the question about how much choice tenants have about where
they can move to, but sticking with the ballot for the moment,
we know the numbers and percentages, and two-to-one and all that:
did you do any geographical breakdown of how people were voting
in particular areas, because again, just looking at the independent
commission, it talks about some areas having very poor-quality
stock, very unpopular, high turnover of occupants, and even goes
on to talk about diverse ethnic communities being in danger of
becoming concentrated in distinct areas. I just wondered whether
you got that result from the ballot and you had analysed it to
see if people in the worst areas were voting in a particular way.
Ms Marson: We did do some analysis
of the results. I do not have that detail in front of me, you
will appreciate, but what I do know about the areas where the
vote was highest is that they do not correlate with those areas
that you are referring to.
Q301 Mr Prentice: Not the worst.
Ms Marson: No, in general terms
the highest vote for stock transfer was in the north of the City,
where that would not be the case.
Q302 Mr Prentice: That is interesting.
Ms Marson: That is at a district
level. I have not got information about how it rolls out on smaller
neighbourhoods—but, no, I do not believe that that is the
case.
Q303 Mr Prentice: You told us that
perhaps the likely outcome would be partial transfer in this district
or community-based scheme that you were talking about earlier.
Is a partial transfer not the worst of all worlds, because you
would still have the housing department here at Birmingham City
Council; things would be duplicated. Would it not be more expensive
to go down that road?
Ms Marson: What I was saying was
that I expect the outcome to be a mixture of solutions. I think
there will be some neighbourhoods where they may well express
a preference for partial transfer, but equally there will be some
that suggest ALMO or retention with the Council. I am just saying
that I think it will be a mixed outcome across the City. If it
is a partial transfer, there will not be duplication because the
housing ownership and management will transfer to a new service
provider.
Q304 Mr Prentice: If you transfer
lock stock and barrel, then you do not need a housing department
or a director of housing, because the whole shooting match would
go over to another provider; but with this partial transfer, you
still have to have the infrastructure here in the City Council
to manage the remaining properties. It just seems likely that
this would be costly.
Ms Marson: If there were a total
transfer, as indeed was proposed back in 2002, then we would not
have kept the housing department to do anything other than do
the strategic housing function. The landlord service, the service
of collecting the rent and providing the repairs and maintenance
services would have transferred with the stock. The staff may
have transferred, and the contractors that provide our maintenance
services—their contracts would have transferred to the new
organisation as well. There would not have been duplication; it
is just that the services and the staff would have followed the
stock.
Q305 Mr Prentice: Under the present
set-up how easy is it for a tenant to transfer from the south
of the City to a better area in the north of the City, for example?
Ms Marson: There are no restrictions
on tenants expressing a choice as to where they move to. The factors
that will determine whether they are successful in achieving that
are an assessment of their housing need—because we operate
a needs-based allocation procedure and assess those with the highest
need—and availability; so it is supply and demand.
Q306 Mr Prentice: It is just the
old point basis.
Ms Marson: It is like a points
system, yes.
Q307 Mr Prentice: Have you looked
at some of the alternative systems put forward by the London Borough
of Newham for example? We had the housing people in front of us
a few months ago, and they operate this choice-based system. Have
you had a look at that, and does that have any merit?
Ms Marson: Yes, it does have merit.
We have two pilot choice-based letting schemes in Birmingham.
Ms Palmer-Fagan: We have been
exploring choice-based lettings.
Q308 Mr Prentice: You had a little
pilot system.
Ms Palmer-Fagan: Yes. Vic is quite
right; it is on hold at the moment because our priority is obviously
inspection, and we have obviously got our homes option appraisal
to do. We are trying to do so many things at the same time with
all of these priorities, and obviously some things had to go before
other things, so when we get through, obviously in the next stages
of inspection in our homes options appraisal we will look at the
other things that get placed behind that.
Q309 Mr Prentice: I should imagine
that with all this, the ballot and everything else, that the tenants
in Birmingham are pretty clued-up about options. Is there any
pressure from tenants' organisations to go a little bit further
than mere pilots and to take on board choice-based letting systems?
Ms Palmer-Fagan: I think there
is a pressure from tenants to take on a variety of things that
can be demonstrated up and down the country in various different
organisations that happened to be good practice that works well
and so forth. Again, it is about the balance of resources and
whether or not this one size or that size will fit into Birmingham's
model and way of doing things. If you use our district as an example
in talking about choice and where it will go, we have quite a
large geographical area, and at the moment there are echoes because
there are two steering groups for CBHOs in our district, and at
the moment they are indicating that they want to go in different
directions. Some do want the transfer, some want partial transfer;
some want to retain; some want to try in little neighbourhoods
tenant management organisations and so forth. At the moment the
murmurings are that there could potentially be quite a lot of
outcomes.
Q310 Mr Prentice: Did you give them
a steer at all, because you are a housing professional; or is
your role purely reactive, and you just watch and listen to what
the tenants have to say to you?
Ms Palmer-Fagan: At the very onset
it would be a slight steer. What comes after that—as you
rightly said, tenants are getting more and more clued-up. They
know about choice and they know what they want and what they want
their homes to be and who to be running their homes; and then
obviously it is what comes after that.
Ms Marson: Our role is to provide
them with the facts on the options and what each of them involve.
We have to look, particularly around positive retention of the
Council, the best ways to use the investment made available for
council housing by the Council. It is about giving people an informed
choice, but also—
Q311 Mr Prentice: These are quite
difficult issues to get your mind around—private finance
initiative and so on—arm's length organisations. Goodness
me, you could run seminars on that.
Ms Johal: I am the CBHO development
officer of a community-based housing organisation, and I specifically
work in the Hodge Hill district, which was chosen as one of the
pathfinder areas. You are right, that these initiatives are a
mouthful just saying them, let alone explaining them to tenants
and people like Vic. In Hodge Hill we were chosen as a pathfinder
area very early on in the process and we have been working with
tenants now for 12-18 months, looking at various options with
them around how to choose to go forward. We have had monthly meetings.
We have two steering groups in the area, concentrated around the
Shard End area and also the Hodge Hill area. It is through those
monthly meetings and the information that we give to tenants that
we have managed to dissect what an ALMO is, what the stages are—and
through newsletters and various mechanisms.
Q312 Mr Prentice: Who are the people
who get involved in this?
Ms Johal: It is people like Vic.
Within the district we have a number of housing liaison boards,
and they are groups that have been up and running for about 10
years. When Hodge Hill was announced as a pathfinder area, we
set up two CBHO groups, and it was mainly those people from the
HLBs who were already active tenants who came forward to sit on
those steering groups. As a part of that, a further consultation
has drawn in other people who would not necessarily have been
involved in consultations previously.
Q313 Mr Prentice: This is fascinating
stuff. Are these people flexing their muscles now? Carolyn told
us that they help select cleaning contracts, and they help to
select senior staff. Are they making decisions that perhaps freak
you out a bit?
Ms Palmer-Fagan: No. For me it
is not difficult because I came from being a tenant, and I made
a decision that if you are going to make real decisions and make
an organisation move, you need to get inside and be a catalyst
in order to bring people on board to make important decisions.
They are quite happy that whoever they have got there, whoever
is the contractor that is delivering their estate cleaning service,
they have a contribution in the end result. If they have a director
for housing that is leading housing down whatever path or journey,
they had an input into that and a say in the outcome as to who
that person is. If we are going to embrace real democracy, this
is what democracy is about. Whatever world we reap behind that,
it is because we wanted to do that. We find the solutions and
problem-solving to anything that comes behind that, but first
and foremost I am quite happy and would never make a move without
knowing that tenants are genuinely part of the decision-making
process.
Q314 Mr Prentice: I understand that,
but have the activists you have told us about been co-opted into
the system so that if the City Council talks about constraints—"we
would like to put in new kitchens and bathrooms, but the City
Council has financial difficulties"—do they go along
with that or do they say "no, the City Council will just
have to go back and find some more money" and make demands?
Ms Marson: Different tenants have
different opinions, and it is very much down to individuals. I
think it would be wrong to generalise in that sort of way because
some tenants will have ideologies around local authority service
provision, in the same way as politicians or officers might; but
other tenants are open to other suggestions.
Q315 Mr Prentice: Are many of the
activists (my shorthand) in Defend Council Housing, which is a
campaign organisation?
Ms Marson: I could not possibly
quantify it. There are obviously people.
Ms Palmer-Fagan: Yes, and using
Shard End as an example, this week I could be at a meeting that
has been very difficult because it is on the side of Defend Council
Housing. At the meeting last night they were saying, "after
meeting Keith Hill and the Minister there is only one road we
have got to go down at the moment if we want all these aspirational
things." People are made aware of what Defend Council Housing
is about and can make an informed choice to be there. It can change
day by day. It is just like how any other human-being will think
day-by-day. One day they will like something and the next day
they might not like something. That is the reality of working
with tenants on the district. We have to be flexible enough to
move with that while still seeing the task ahead.
Q316 Chairman: In relation to involvement
in contracts, do they see all the contract specifications and
the figures?
Ms Marson: Generally speaking
the approach is that—we have recently done some maintenance
contracts that tenants have been involved in, and the process
there was, for example, that we agree an evaluation model to begin
with, which might be 50% price and 50% quality, so the price makes
up 50% of the scores. Officers see the prices and evaluate them.
Then on the quality element there is normally, particularly where
it is a technical specification like a gas contract, if we delegate
that to tenants we would have to have our appropriate technical
officers who do an evaluation of the proportion of the quality
element and then there is a proportion that is for tenants to
score. Normally, that is based on the tenant interface of the
service, so the quality of customer service, an interview and
presentation to the tenants' panel. They are part of an overall
evaluation process.
Q317 Chairman: So it is not possible
for tenants to say, "I want this contractor; it may cost
more but the quality will be higher" because you have in
a sense scored that in before you start.
Ms Marson: No, because the result
is the outcome of the overall evaluation. It would be possible,
for example, for a contractor to win the award of the contract,
even though they were not the cheapest, if for example their price
was higher but so was their quality markedly higher than others.
Ms Palmer-Fagan: An example of
that is that before I came to this job, there was a cleaning contract
for the district. The tenants did not want one provider and in
the end they went for three providers, and one was not necessarily
the cheapest either but they felt that the provider was right
for their area because the specification that was provided met
the needs.
Q318 Mr Heyes: I want to focus on
the impact of this process on the staff, the housing professionals
and all those who support them. You have lived through a very
long period of uncertainty. You have showed that you are doing
a good job to get your star rating up, which is absolutely essential.
It is not at all clear where you are going to go, but you have
to make decisions quickly and resolve issues, and it seems to
me that it is a recipe for making it almost impossible to lead
and motivate the staff, and keep people delivering a good job.
You have got to show that you are doing a good job in almost impossible
circumstances, so talk to us about that aspect.
Ms Marson: Your assessment is
absolutely correct, that going back even to the early 1990s and
what was then competitive tendering for services, effectively
staff bidding for their own work, and then into proposals for
stock transfer, and now into option appraisal—it is constantly
a climate of change. I guess that is probably true in all organisations,
be they commercial or public sector these days. That does pose
its challenges to try and keep the morale of staff absolutely
focused on service delivery and high quality, when there are inbuilt
in that uncertainties and insecurities. That does pose us some
difficulties.
Ms Palmer-Fagan: Some of the things
we have been doing in the district recently has been about keeping
them on board, and the positive aspects of this, because ultimately,
whatever comes out of it, if we have a satisfied tenant and resident
at the end of the day, that is part of our job done, because we
are dealing with a happier customer. It is about keeping them
briefed and on board, telling them why we do things, and it is
about transparency. Unfortunately, the team I have is not a huge
team but it is quite sizable, being 160 staff. It is about getting
out there and living and breathing and taking on board their issues
and concerns, and trying to resolve them as well as keeping the
focus on getting that one star, as you have quite rightly said,
and what it means when we do get it. That is an aspiration target
for us as well, and an achievable one; and I think people can
see that if we can get that, that is the next rung up the ladder.
It is those sorts of things that keep us going.
Mr Smith: I want to say how well
the staff are doing. I would not say how happy they are!
Q319 Chairman: Go on!
Ms Palmer-Fagan: We are happy.
Mr Smith: They are a lot better
and a lot happier than they were this time last year. In our area
they seem to have settled down to their work very well. In fact,
I have a report here, the end of year report. Unfortunately I
have not brought last year's with me but they have done very well
and they have done what the steering group asked them to do. In
some places they have passed what the steering group asked them
to do quite early in the year. It just shows you the two sets
of people, although they are on opposite sides of the wall, can
work together if the job is put to them properly and people are
ready to explain everything. They can get together and work together.
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