Agenda and draft minutes

Councillor Corkery declared an interest as he is a Portsmouth City Council tenant.

Purpose

To update the Cabinet Member on the delivery of the housing maintenance capital programme, the spend against the approved budget and to highlight any future issues.

Meredydd Hughes, Assistant Director (Buildings), introduced the report and highlighted the following points:

·         Some projects which have been approved for spend this year may span two to three years due to their scale and complexity.

·         HNB Building Services will prepare the capital programme for March 2023 which is flexible to allow for in-year pressures. The fire damage at Grafton Street and Chedworth Crescent are examples of in-year pressures.

·         There are two in-house asbestos surveyors but Building Services are looking to expand this resource to enable faster turnaround for surveys.

·         HNB Building Services are currently doing a significant amount of work on voids and looking at additional resources to speed up the turnover of empty properties.

·         As well as cost increases due to inflation, Building Services have to consider the effects of Brexit, demand arising from the pandemic, war in Ukraine, the cost of living crisis and fuel prices at record levels when estimating costs for the next capital programme in March 2023. Fuel costs affect the price of materials like steel and ceramics which need heat for their manufacture. There is increased demand for these materials, many of which come from Spain and Italy, and there are delays in delivery.

·         Covid is still affecting the workforce, leading to delays in availability of labour.

·         Contractors are very risk averse so HNB Building services may have to work more closely with them at early stages of design and have longer tender lead-in periods. There may be fluctuation clauses to mitigate against inflationary costs in the building process.

·         Although the council's core group contractors have improved their pay and conditions including paying the Real Living Wage, other organisations pay more for short-term work. However, it seems home DIY projects that increased during the pandemic have started to slow so it is hoped smaller contractors will return to the marketplace.

·         Quarterly meetings with housing associations show they have exactly the same problems. As a collective officers keep a close eye on the situation and see how they can share and resource materials.

In response to questions from the Residents' Consortium representatives, Mr Hughes agreed it was important to keep residents informed of how work was progressing and to advise them of any delays, as if expected work is not done they will be dissatisfied. Regular communication helps and Mr Hughes had recently advised Councillor Corkery about some projects in his ward. Some projects do take a long time to get on site due to size and complexity but residents' comments have been taken on board.

Regarding concerns as to how rising prices might affect big projects, Mr Hughes explained that project costs were "baked in" which means that part of the capital programme funding is earmarked and allocated; it is committed against a particular project.

In response to questions from members about developers using inflation as an excuse to raise costs, Mr Hughes explained that all contracts in the capital programme are fixed price so contractors tender for the work and say they will  ...  view the full minutes text for item 26.