Issue - meetings

Note:              Councillor M. Snee left the Chamber at 6.52pm for the following item of business.

The Committee heard from the Homes, Health and Wellbeing Team Manager regarding the West Lindsey Tenancy Strategy. It was explained that the Localism Act 2011 brought in the requirement for all Local Authorities, regardless of whether they were stock holding, to produce a Tenancy Strategy. The main purpose of the Tenancy Strategy was to make best use of existing housing stock with mechanisms such as flexible tenancies, succession rights and affordable rented tenures. The strategy set out West Lindsey District Council’s preferred approach to managing existing housing stock. The legislation clearly stated that Registered Providers (RPs) should “have regard” to the Local Authority Strategies when developing their own Tenancy Policies. Even though the Strategy had no statutory weight, it could help to guide the work of Registered Providers and achieve consistency across the sector.

It was explained that in 2013, West Lindsey, in partnership with City of Lincoln and North Kesteven, produced a joint tenancy strategy for Central Lincolnshire. This aligned the authorities across the housing market area in one strategy although the approaches set out within this strategy were different for each district. The existing Strategy expired in 2018. After further discussions with North Kesteven District Council and City of Lincoln Council it was decided that West Lindsey would produce a strategy for only West Lindsey. This was in part due to the other authorities needing to take a different approach as stock holding authorities.

In order to develop the new strategy, a review of the existing strategy was undertaken to understand the requirements of the strategy going forward. Alongside this, a review of the Registered Providers Tenancy Policies was also undertaken. This was to assist with determining which parts of the previous strategy had been embedded but also to evaluate whether all RP’s were operating in a similar way so consistency was in place across the sector.

In response to a concern raised that tenants could be moved out of properties in order to manage housing need in the district, it was explained that the idea was to open conversations with tenants as to their housing needs and offer accommodation to suit them as their circumstances may change. For example, what had been a suitable property initially may not remain suitable years down the line as the tenant aged. It was not designed to give free reign to move tenants between properties, rather to allow for tenants to highlight changing needs and for their tenancy needs to be considered.

It was enquired as to why there had been a delay between the expiration of the previous strategy and the consideration of the current one. Members heard that, although the date had expired it remained a valid strategy and, as there was no statutory weight to the strategy, there was minimal risk associated with it. Additionally, there had been no new RP’s working in the area since 2018 and the Council’s stance had  ...  view the full minutes text for item 54