Agenda and minutes

Regeneration Investment and Housing

Invitees

-          Councillor Jane Mudd – Leader of the Council and Cabinet Member for Economic Growth and Investment

-          Tracey Brooks – Head of Regeneration Investment and Housing

-          Ben Hanks – Housing and Assets Manager

-          Mike Lewis – Culture and Continuing Learning Manager

The Leader of the Council presented an overview of the report. It was advised that Covid had issues on the service delivery and targets however, wanted like to make clear the outstanding performance of the service area redeployment in the emergency response. There are a number of pressures experienced, most notably the pressure on Housing Services given the impact of the Coronavirus regulations introduced by Welsh Government for homelessness and rough sleeping.

Whilst the service area have been able to accommodate rough sleepers, the impact of lockdown been significant on existing accommodation situations, such as an increase in presentations for support. This is understandable, as the lockdown did place pressures on families, individuals and the community.

The Leader advised of the impact of performance within the Planning department, in terms of timeframes of decision making as officers were unable to undertake site visits.

The Leader then thanked thank all officers in organisation for going above and beyond the requirements of their normal working day to deliver services to the city.

The Head of Regeneration Investment and Housing then expanded on what the Leader had advised the committee. A number of services had to stop such closing libraries, the Disabled Facilities Grant stopped and construction sites close so progress on on projects such as the Market Arcade had to stop. However, staff stepped up to deliver some of those critical services. The Hub Teams provided out of hours childcare for key workers and also weekend and summer holiday cover to allow key workers to carry on working.

The service area also administered the food parcel scheme on behalf of Welsh Government and those residents who were shielding. The team telephoned over 5,000 residents to see whether they needed any assistance and if they needed a food parcel. Over 600 weekly food parcel were delivered as a result of those phone calls. The Head of Service wished to point out the massive achievement of the service area being able to provide 15 units of fully supported, emergency accommodation in just 7 days.

The Business Support team had provided advice and support for over 5000 businesses over the lockdown period, as well as administering the grant funding alongside Business Rates colleagues. Millions of pounds worth of funding were given to businesses, which made a difference to keep on surviving. The Head of Service advised some of this work is not always reflected in service plan however, it is important to emphasise the work doing outside of the actions. There are also a number of red indicators in the performance indicators in which the report gives explanations why.

Members asked the following -

·         Members discussed Action Point 1 on page 14 of the report -  ...  view the full minutes text for item 3.

Invitees

-          Neil Barnett – Governance Officer

The officer presented the Forward Work Programme, and informed the Committee of the topics due to be discussed at the next committee meeting:

18^th January 2021/22

-          Draft Budget Proposals