Decision details

In August 2022, the Council referred itself to the Regulator for Social Housing in respect of a potential breach of the Home Standard. Since then, significant work has been undertaken at speed in order to identify, understand and rectify the underlying issues in accordance with a detailed ‘Path to Compliance Action Plan’.

In addition, in December 2022, the Council committed to undertake a full stock condition survey of its entire housing stock. This was primarily to understand the extent of any issues concerning damp and mould, which has been a focus of all landlords nationally following the tragic death of Awaab Ishak in Rochdale. This work commenced in January 2023, and although it is not anticipated to conclude until early 2023/24, interim findings have now allowed officers to begin to project the cost implications to the Housing Revenue Account (HRA) of dealing with the sizeable number of category 1 and 2 hazards (i.e. the most serious types) which have been identified.

The pace of all of this work has been such that the full financial implications were not fully developed at the time of setting the Housing Revenue Account (HRA) budget for 2023/24. As such, the revenue budget which was approved by Council is no longer sufficient to support the level of service which the Council’s tenants deserve and require.

Cabinet is therefore recommended to approve additional one-off revenue expenditure of up to £1 million during 2023/24, to be funded by a reduction in revenue contributions to capital.

RESOLVED to:

i.                 Approve additional one-off HRA revenue expenditure of up to £1 million in 2023/24, as set out at Appendix A;

ii.                Note that this additional expenditure will be financed by replacing up to £1 million of planned revenue contributions to capital with currently uncommitted capital receipts (under the principle already set out in the Capital Programme 2023/24 that capital receipts be used before revenue contributions where possible); and

iii.             in the event that the capital receipt from the Walden Place redevelopment is not received by 31 March 2024, approve a temporary increase in HRA internal borrowing of up to £1 million until such time as the receipt arrives, at which point the borrowing will be repaid.