Issue - meetings

To consider the report of the Director of Service Delivery, (copy enclosed).

The Committee considered the report of the Director of Service Delivery providing a summary of the allocation and outcomes of the Council’s Disabled Facilities Grant (DFG) programme for the previous year and an indication of the key activities planned for the current financial year.

It was noted that income from fees for the previous year was £40,600 and contributions from housing associations amounted to more than £17,000, creating a supplementary receipt of nearly £60,000 making the service almost financially self-supporting.

Appendix 1 to the report provided a record of customer satisfaction for the last financial year and showed that for all aspects monitored scores were above 90%. 

The Director of Service Delivery advised that reference to paragraph 3.4 in recommendation (ii) should refer to paragraph 3.5.

Councillor R G Boyce declared an interest in this item of business, as a Member of a local housing association.

Councillor A S Fluker proposed that the recommendations in the report be agreed.

During the debate a number of comments and questions were raised by Members and responded to by Officers.  Where information requested was not available the Director of Service Delivery agreed to respond directly to Members, this information included:

·                 clarification that the Council was not directly responsible for providing home from hospital schemes and the contribution required;

·                 Officers agreed that there was some duplication in terms of the assessments required for a person returning from hospital and would seek further clarification on this;

·                 providing information about other services, what information was being expected by the public;

·                 the size of the sample size used for the customer satisfaction survey;

·                 adaptations made to homes and how the Council reviewed specifications to ensure the right adaptations were being provided, including value for money;

·                 clarification of the definition of Community Led Housing;

At this point Councillor Fluker withdrew his earlier proposition and proposed that the report be deferred.  This was duly seconded.  Following further discussion the Chairman put the proposal from Councillor Fluker to the vote.  Upon there being an equality of votes the Chairman used his casting voting against the proposition for deferral. 

Councillor H M Bass proposed that Members noted the key achievements from the previous year and the proposals detailed in paragraph 3.5 of the report should be brought back to the next meeting of this Committee.  This was duly seconded and agreed.

RESOLVED

(i)             that the key achievements from the previous year be noted;

(ii)            that the proposals as detailed below be brought back to the next meeting of this Committee:

(i)             Approval to fund an apprentice surveyor – helping manage succession planning, improving capacity and resilience to meet longer term demands on the service;

(ii)           Agreement to use some additional funding to contribute towards the cost of a ‘home from hospital’ scheme, linked with Community Led Housing, helping local housing associations provide dedicated facilities to help local people leave hospital sooner, move closer to family and undertake a programme of reablement;

(iii)         Explore the potential to create a local home improvement  ...  view the full minutes text for item 372