To present to the Committee the progress on outstanding actions identified by the Committee along with general updates on other issues that fall within the responsibilities of the Committee.

It had been decided by the Chairman of the Committee to allow the Chief Executive and Corporate Governance, Performance & Procurement Manager to address the Committee on the Table of Outstanding Issues (report A.3) prior to consideration of the remaining agenda items.

 

Members heard that the Table of Outstanding Issues had been reviewed and updated since it had been last considered by the Committee in June 2025.

There had been three main ongoing elements to this report as follows:

 

1)    Updates against general items raised by the Committee – Appendix A

 

2)    Updates against the 2024/25 Annual Governance Statement Action Plan – Appendix B

 

3)    Updates against recommendations made by the External Auditor – Appendix C

 

In terms of items 1 and 3 above, there had been no significant issues to raise, with actions having remained in progress or further details set out within the report (A.3). 

 

It was reported that, in respect of the 2024/25 Annual Governance Statement Action Plan, although that remained subject to the Committee’s final approval later in the year once the work of the External Auditor had been completed, for timely and practical reasons the version that had been published at the end of June 2025 alongside the Unaudited Statement of Accounts presented the most up to date position for the Committee’s consideration.  Similarly to last year, that approach had enabled the actions and associated updates to be considered as early as possible within the Committee’s annual work programme.  Appendix B therefore included outstanding items from last year’s Annual Governance Statement alongside new items for the current year.  There had been no significant issues to highlight at the present time with actions and activities having remained on-going.

 

Local Audit Reform

 

Within previous reports, timely updates to the various audit reforms announced by the Government had been included with a summary as follows:

 

• Simplification and Streamlining: The reforms had aimed to simplify financial reportingrequirements and streamline the audit process to make it more efficient;
• Increased Capacity: Efforts would be made to increase the capacity of the audit sector, reducing reliance on a small number of auditors;
• Funding Support: Up to £49 million in funding would be provided to help local authorities clear audit backlogs and cover additional costs;
• New Local Audit Office: A new Local Audit Office would be established to coordinate functions currently spread across multiple organizations, such as the National Audit Office and the Financial Reporting Council; and
• Transparency and Accountability: The reforms had been designed to restore public trust in how councils managed and reported their finances, to ensure better value for taxpayers.

 

The various associated activities had remained ongoing, with a number of matters set out within the Government’s recently announced English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill 2025, which included the following:

 

• The establishment of the Local Audit Office to oversee the local audit system in England with its main objectives  to secure the effective operation of the system of audit with a view to meeting the needs of users of the audited accounts – the key focus / activities had been that audits under the Act had been carried out to a high standard, and that there had been a suitable range of persons able and willing to carry out such audits.
• Establishing and maintaining a register of individuals and firms who had been (by virtue of their registration) entitled to carry out audits in accordance with the Act.
• Overseeing the eligibility and regulation of registered providers.
• The appointment of Auditors.
• Audit Fees.
• Preparation of the Code of Audit Practice.
• Mandating the requirement to establish Audit Committees, which must have included at least one independent member.

 

It was highlighted to Members that the above formed part of a broader "Plan for Change" to bring long-term stability to the local audit system. Although practical implications had remained under review with further updates planned to be presented to the Committee later in the year, the Council had already undertaken timely steps as necessary, such as those associated with the appointment of an Independent Person.

 

The East of England Local Government Association (EELGA) Housing Review

 

Members were aware that, at the Audit Committee’s meeting on 25 April 2024, the Committee had been informed of the changes happening within the Local Government Social Housing arena and that Local Housing Authorities with retained housing stock, from 1 April 2024, became part of the regulated social housing regime with a requirement to comply with a new set of Consumer standards.

 

Members heard that this report had built upon the previous report to provide the Committee with a ‘progress’ update following the continuing work to improve the management of this Council’s housing stock and work carried out to achieve compliance with the Consumer Standards.

 

Members had recalled that, as part of the regulatory process, the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) had introduced new consumer standards and 12 Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs).

 

The four Consumer Standards that social housing landlords would be assessed against were:

 

·         The Safety and Quality Standard which required landlords to provide safe and good-quality homes for their tenants, along with good-quality landlord services.

·         The Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard which required landlords to be open with tenants and treat them with fairness and respect so they could access services, raise concerns, when necessary, influence decision making and hold their landlord to account.

·         The Neighbourhood and Community Standard which required landlords to engage with other relevant parties so that tenants could live in safe and well-maintained neighbourhoods and feel safe in their homes.

·         The Tenancy Standard which set requirements for the fair allocation and letting of homes, as well as requirements for how tenancies had been managed by landlords.

 

Tendring District Council had been collating evidence and reporting on the new consumer standards since April 2024.  The results of TSM’s had been reported on an annual basis to the regulator as well as to Cabinet and the Tenants’ Panel.

 

At the Cabinet’s meeting on 27June 2025 a report on the outturn performance against the RSH’s Tenant Satisfaction Measures for 2024/25 had been presented.  The report outlined the detail behind the data collection and the methodology used during consultation with the Council’s tenants. 

 

The Council’s Outturn Performance Report against the TSMs had indicated a general improvement in performance and tenant satisfaction with the proportion of respondents who reported that they had been satisfied with the overall service from their landlord increasing from 80.1% in 2023/24 to 81.3% in 2024/25.

 

It was reported that satisfaction with repairs (both overall satisfaction with repairs and satisfaction with the time taken to complete a repair), had decreased. The reasons for this would be explored in more detail with the members of the Tenants Panel. Conversely, the proportion of non-emergency and emergency repairs completed within the Council’s target timescale had increased.

 

It was noted that the number of complaints, both at Stage 1 and 2, that were responded to within the Housing Ombudsman’s Compliant Handling Code timescales had improved significantly when compared to the 2023/24 figures.

 

It was highlighted to Members that the Council had requested support from the East of England LGA (EELGA) to identify areas for improvement and to develop an action plan to drive improvements.

 

As part of that process a Housing Board, chaired by the Portfolio Holder for Housing & Planning, had been set up to monitor performance against the consumer standards.  The board met monthly. 

 

The previous report had identified areas that had been included as part of the evaluation, and an update had been provided in each of those areas.

 

Strategy

 

The Committee was reminded that a significant amount of work had been undertaken to review existing policies as well bring forward new policies that had been needed to deliver sustainable social housing.  To date over 30 policies had been reviewed and approved.

 

Additional Housing policies had been in the pipeline to be reviewed and delivered within the following twelve months, the new Housing Strategy 2026 – 2030 would go to Cabinet on September 26 for approval to go to consultation.

 

Staff Culture

Work continued to engage staff with the new requirements; regular meetings continued to be held by the Corporate Director with housing managers to discuss the progress being made to meet the regulatory requirements.  Those discussions had then been fed back to the various teams via their respective team meetings.  Housing Managers attended the Housing Board and had full involvement in the performance management process.

 

Data Management

 

This had still been an area for concern, and whilst a significant amount of work had been carried out with new software purchased and installed, there had still been gaps in the collation of the data.  To this end, the Housing Service had been working with the IT Service to create a register of all the data and where it had been held.  Once this piece of work had been completed and further work would be carried out to then collate all the data to a central reporting tool that would aid the Housing Service to easily gather data to respond and report on the regulatory standards.

 

It was reported that a contract had been placed to carry out the remainder of the stock condition surveys, and the expectation had been that the Council would have completed 75% of those surveys by the end of that financial year, with the final 25% completed in the following financial year. 

 

A new Data Compliance Officer post had been created and filled.  This post would ensure that data had been collected, collated and appropriately analysed.

 

Strategic Partnership Working

 

It was explained to the Committee that the Council continued to have several effective partnerships addressing housing related issues. Managers had been actively engaged in those partnerships and had been well regarded by other agencies. Partnership working had been delivering tangible benefits to Tendring in terms of joint working, funding, and engaging with the wider community.

 

In the light of Local Government Reorganisation (LGR), the Corporate Director had been engaging with other local authorities to discuss Housing Issues and the implication of LGR moving forward. 

 

Housing Budgets

 

The Budgets continued to be well managed.  The Portfolio Holder for Housing & Planning had met regularly with the Corporate Director and Finance officers to discuss budgets, as well as annually to review the 30-year business plan. 

 

There had still been concerns about the historical impact of below inflation rent rises and there had been pressures on all budgets which would need to be factored in and managed for the future through the identification of savings, redirection of resources and securing external funding.   The Government had confirmed a 10-year rent settlement that permitted Social Landlords to increase rents by CPI+1% every year for 10 years from April 2026 with the intention of providing “greater long-term certainty”.

 

For the HRA revenue budget the most significant pressures had still arisen from the increasing costs of day-to-day repairs. In the HRA capital budget pressures would come from the requirements to meet the Decent Homes Standard, safety standards and better insulation of homes.

 

Within the General Fund the cost of temporary accommodation had been a significant pressure.  A Homelessness and Temporary Accommodation Board had been set up, chaired by the Portfolio Holder for Housing & Planning, to explore ways in which the Council could prevent homelessness as well as reduce the overall cost of temporary accommodation.  The Board met every two weeks.  

 

Complaints

 

It was reported that both the Ombudsman and the Regulator of Social Housing continued to strongly emphasise complaints as an indicator of how well social landlords listened to and responded to the concerns of their residents. The Council had taken this seriously and there had been a significant improvement in the response to complaints, as shown in the TSM’s. 

 

Ref Measure	2023 / 2024 Performance	2024 / 2025 Performance
Proportion of: Stage one complaints; and Stage two complaints responded to within the Housing Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code timescales	73.9%   61.5%	93.6%   91.7%

 

The Council had recently introduced and adopted a Corporate and Housing Complaints Policy that had been approved at the Cabinet’s meeting on 25 July 2025, that had come into effect on 1 September 2025.  This enabled all complaints to be handled more consistently and in line with national codes.  The importance of the updated policy had been communicated to staff via a recent Senior Managers’ Forum, All Staff Briefings and other associated training sessions.

 

Disrepair claims continued to be a concern.  However, improved record keeping and a robust approach supported by Legal Services had allowed this issue to be kept under control.  Engagement with the Tenants’ Panel continued as the Council sought their support to encourage tenants to engage directly with the Council rather than with legal firms. 

 

Tenant Engagement

 

It was reported that the team had continued to work with tenants, via the Tenants’ Panel to ensure that there had been good dialogue and challenge from the tenants as to how they supported them.

 

The team had also reinstated a Tenants’ newsletter and had been actively looking at other ways to engage with tenants.  There had been a ‘recruitment’ drive to increase the number of tenants on the panel that had been successful.  Numbers had increased sufficiently to a point that the Tenants’ Panel had been setting up sub-groups to provide greater focus on key areas, such as repairs, complaints and tenant engagement.  The Chair of the Tenants’ Panel had also been a member of the Housing Board. Alternative methods of tenant engagement had also been trialled.

 

Housing Management

 

It was highlighted to Members that the Council currently had several vacancies, however, the Council had advertised and had been in the process of interviewing to fill those vacant posts.  The new tenancy management support posts had now been fully engaged with undertaking tenant engagement work, include tenancy checks, estate walk abouts and drop-in sessions for tenants in various locations within the District. 

 

Repairs and Maintenance

 

It was reported that condition surveys continued to be carried out and with the intention that 75% of all the housing stock would be surveyed within this financial year.

 

A dedicated housing asset management plan that could inform the HRA 30-year business plan had been written and approved. A revised repairs policy had been adopted and had introduced a reduced number of categories, clear response times, and looked to strike a balance between landlord and tenant responsibilities, whilst having clear targets for performance.

 

Many of the issues raised here had been addressed within the Data Management section of this report, and as stated a Housing Asset Management Plan had been produced and had been followed.

 

The team continued to develop, and several of the items raised in the last report had been covered in the report (A.3).  The continuation of the stock condition work would allow for more detailed information to inform the 30-year business plan as well as the annual capital and repairs schedules. 

 

There had been ongoing issues with the Term Maintenance contractor, and this had been reflected in the TSM’s mentioned earlier in this report.  The Corporate Director had met with the Contractor to discuss their performance and how it would be improved. An improvement plan had been submitted by the contractor, and this had been reviewed by the Repairs team.

 

Housing Solutions and Homelessness

 

The Committee heard that the service had been well thought of within the Council and was described as caring and supportive. An increasing volume of referrals (caseloads of 50-70 and 7 new cases a week), linked to the cost-of -living crisis and a lack of affordable housing for those in need had been impacting on the morale and stress levels of staff working in this service area. There was a need for greater management support to address the pressures staff were under. An additional senior officer post had been created, and that person had been in post since July 2025. The officer provided additional support to the team and advice on day-to-day caseload management.

 

There had still been relatively high numbers in temporary accommodation but few of those had had an ‘accepted’ decision. The balance between homelessness prevention work and use of temporary accommodation had been reviewed. Linked to this had been greater clarity on how the budget for the Homeless Prevention Grant could be and had been spent. It had now been a requirement of MHCLG that at least 49% of this grant had been spent on homelessness prevention work. An appraisal of the value for money and standards of temporary accommodation had also been undertaken.

 

The team had been working closely with private sector landlords to source more affordable self-contained accommodation, with work done so far, generating high quality accommodation that had been more affordable for the Council.

 

Overseeing all the above had been a new Homelessness and Temporary Accommodation working group, chaired by the Portfolio Holder for Housing and Planning.

 

It was reported that there had been a number of supported housing schemes in Tendring meeting the needs of a variety of client groups. Partners cited a lack of supported accommodation for single people with more complex needs and challenging behaviours who might not be suitable for existing shared accommodation. A Housing First Scheme had been included in the homelessness action plan but had not yet been considered. The Council could also consider developing small sites for temporary modular homes for single people, which had been becoming recognised as very successful in other areas. Access to floating support did not appear to have a clear and consistent pathway.

 

Supported housing provision remained an area for future review, something that had been considered across Essex through a new Supported Housing Board in light of the Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Act 2023.

 

Conclusion

 

The review of the housing service had been a positive step in understanding the current policy and practice within the service. It provided an overview to help identify what had been working well and where further work was needed.  Following on from this exercise, an accurate ‘position’ had been identified, and an action plan developed to build upon the positive areas identified as well as to be able to address those areas that fell short of the requirements of the new regulatory standards.  Regular meetings had been conducted to monitor the progress and the impact of the action plan.

 

The action plan had enabled the Housing Service to take a significant step forward to meet the requirements of the new Regulatory regime.

 

The periodic review of the Council’s housing function had been included as a standing item on the Audit Committee’s annual work programme and consideration would be given to the options to present this on a timely and on-going basis in future years whilst ensuring the relevant assurances had still been provided to the Committee.  Although the outcome from any formal inspection would always be presented to the Audit Committee, it had currently been proposed to provide future / general updates to the Committee based on the outturn performance against the regulator of Social Housing’s satisfaction measures (TSM’s) each year and other relevant information.

 

Proposed approach to the planned review of the Corporate Risk Management Framework/Register

 

Members were reminded that, in accordance with the Committee’s work programme, it had been planned to present the regular Corporate Risk Update to this meeting of the Committee. However, it had been proposed to take a pragmatic approach to accommodate the various existing commitments that formed part of the planned wider review of risk, as set out within the AGS, including the associated training requested by the Committee.

 

With this in mind, it had been proposed to organise a ‘working’ session with members of the Committee outside of the formal programme of meetings, that would aim to encompass a training session alongside the planned review previously discussed. The outcome from the proposed session could therefore be considered formally, if necessary, at the subsequent scheduled meeting of the Committee in February 2026.

 

Although this presented a slight delay in formally updating the Committee regarding the Council’s current risk register and associated arrangements, it had been important to highlight that various underlying risk management activities remained on-going within existing governance arrangements, which in turn had also been complemented by additional activities such as:

 

•           The review of Departmental risks as part of the Directorate / Service Planning Process along with Management Team recently reinforcing the importance of risk management at an operational and corporate level.

•           The monthly reporting of associated risks at the Regeneration and Capital Delivery Board.

•           The establishment of the Senior Officer Project Board as highlighted with the AGS, with Management Team identifying a number of key risks / projects for them to review as part of their early work programme. 

•           A broader review undertaken during Management Team’s regular project and performance meetings.

 

Subject to the Committee’s approval of the recommendations above, Officers would make the necessary arrangements in due course.

 

RIPA – Regulatory Investigatory Powers Act 2000

 

The Committee had been informed that the Authority had not conducted any RIPA activity in the last quarter, and it had been rare that it would be required to do so.

 

Whistleblowing

 

The Committee had also been informed that the Authority had received two notifications of Whistleblowing, which had currently been in the informal/investigatory stage.  A further update would be provided to the Audit Committee at a future meeting if required.

 

 

It was moved by Councillor Sudra, seconded by Councillor Fairley and RESOLVED that the Committee:

 

a)         notes the progress against the actions set out in Appendices A, B and C;

 

b)         notes the outcome of the periodic review of the Council’s housing function; and

 

c)         having considered the proposed approach to the review of Risk Management, as set out within this report, requests Officers to undertake the necessary arrangements for a facilitated session in October / November.