Cabinet received a report of the Head of Housing.  Revised recommendations were circulated at the meeting.

Councillor Johnson introduced the report and explained that the present contract would expire in August. Whilst housing was looking at renewing the contract, the framework was envisaging more work would be needed.  Therefore it made sense to have more than one provider. 

The Head of Housing explained the context with regards to the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 (HRA) that it was anticipated there would be an increased volumes of reviews. Presently homeless applicants had the ability to request a review of up to two types of local authority decision made on their application. Under the HRA they could now review up to 13 types of local authority decision. The current independent reviewer was good but they were lacking capacity. 

The Mayor commented that the council was required in legislation to have an independent person to carry out the reviews. The number of appeals would increase therefore it was important to have a robust system in place.  The Mayor requested that the Deputy Managing Director ensure that Portfolio Holders were kept up to date with developments in this area.

Cabinet agreed the revisions to the recommendations.

RESOLVED –

That Cabinet:

1.     Agrees to the establishment of a framework agreement as referred to in paragraph 4.2 below and any subsequent framework process undertaken to enable the Council to appoint suppliers to undertake homelessness reviews and other related work;

2.     Delegates to the Head of Housing the authority to select and appoint the suppliers to the Framework panel;

3.     Delegates approval of the specific terms of any framework agreement and associated contract documentation to the Head of Housing, in consultation with Legal Services;

4.     Delegates under Article 3 of the Local Authorities (Contracting Out of Allocation of Housing and Homelessness Function) Order 1996 the function of undertaking homelessness reviews under section 202 of the Housing Act 1996 and related homelessness reviews work to the selected framework panel providers on behalf of the Council.