Agenda item

(Report of the Portfolio Holder for Housing, Homelessness and planning/Assistant Director, Partnerships)

The Chair welcome the Portfolio Holder for Housing and Planning and the Safer Communities and Homes Manager to update the Committee on actions within the Tamworth Borough Council Housing Strategy to 30 June 2024 which directly impact on health and wellbeing of Tamworth communities.

The Portfolio Holder introduced the report highlighting that this was a bi-annual report as requested by the Committee in January. A new contractor had been appointed to undertake work on the new strategy for 2025 – 2030 before handing over to the Safer Communities and Homes Manager who provided a summary of the five priorities.

The Committee made the following comments/observations and asked the following questions:

1.     Acknowledged the Council is taking a comprehensive approach to fuel poverty and congratulated them on this.

2.     Whether any of the priorities are more important? And if they are all equal, how is progress monitored and if progress is not as expected, how this is addressed?

It was confirmed that all of the priorities were equal.

For internal services there are monthly performance monitoring processes in place. Some areas are delivered by third parties, however in these cases there are quarterly performance meetings to check expected progress and if this in not on track, they are given the opportunity to get back on track, but if that is not achievable funding can be clawed back and they look at reallocating the service.

Community Home Solutions (CHS) who are commissioned as HEAT(Home Energy Advice Tamworth) who are now delivering the service previously delivered by Beat The Cold are met on a monthly basis due to being new to the contract.