Decision details

(i)  To adopt the Housing Asset Management Strategy (HAMS) as the tool upon which property investment decisions are to be based, for the Council’s housing portfolio.

(ii)  To delegate authority to the Executive Director Communities Culture and Homes following consultation with the relevant Cabinet Member to make any minor changes to the strategy during its life span.

(iii)  To delegate authority to the Executive Director Communities, Culture and Homes following consultation with the relevant Cabinet Member to take all necessary actions to give effect to the above recommendations.

The Council’s ability to continue to deliver efficient services for tenants, generate income revenue, and provide a solid platform for improvement depends on its ability to make the most of its property assets. This can only be achieved by ensuring prudent strategic financial decisions, based on income from assets and the expenditure required to look after them.

The primary objective of the HAMS is to ensure that the Council’s social housing portfolio is managed with financial prudency, balanced with ensuring that the Council continues to meet all its statutory obligations as a Local Authority Landlord and, ensure the provision of good quality homes for tenants to live in.

Poorly maintained properties lead to high reactive maintenance costs, reactive repairs valued more than £1,000 should be part of a planned and proactive capital improvement work programme.  Lack of investment leads to high rental income loss, as organisations spend time carrying out ‘catch up’ maintenance while the property is empty. 

Social Housing Providers benchmarked within the Housemark performance metrics, can relet an empty property with little or no repairs required, within 10 days.  These are organisations that exercise proactive capital investment programmes, and therefore do not need to spend time within empty properties, undertaking ‘catch up’ maintenance.

The Council should adopt a ‘spend to save’ approach to capital investment decisions within the domestic portfolio.  The HAMS sets out the preferred approach to the Council’s asset management delivery and outlines key actions to improve service and operational delivery, while adapting to issues that affect all social housing providers. 

The Environmental & Sustainability appendix sets out the steps that the Council will take to meet its housing Net Zero by 2040 aspirations.  The strategy sets out the approach to planned capital investment for works to improve the energy efficiency of the Council’s social housing, thereby also tackling fuel poverty.

The following option was considered:

Continue the existing ‘reactive’ approach to capital investment in the portfolio, with unpredictable delivery capabilities.  This option was rejected as it is inconsistent with paragraph 1 & 2 of this report and our duty as a landlord to plan over the longer term.