Leeds City Council has successfully adapted and implemented a landlord grant application process by proactively engaging with and supporting local housing associations, leading to a positive shift in their willingness to participate and deliver Disabled Facilities Grants (DFGs).
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so first of all
um we've got Coral from Leeds City Council
Council
who I think um Coral you first heard
about this when I presented it at the uh
the road shows last last Autumn and I do
remember kind of the Leeds table where
we're kind of shaking the heads and and
a bit concerned at the time but I think
things seems to have changed since so
perhaps you could give us an overview of
um of what's happened um and how you're
starting to use landlord grants
um for me it started following the the
road show
um in Leeds where you kindly showed us
that Journey that you've just put up um
in your slideshow
um and I thought this you know let me
try and do something about this we I
noticed that our in our influx and
referrals had gone up by 35 40
um and obviously one of the benefits
that Paul's mentioned is about
um housing associations doing their own
Grant so that does alleviate the work
from the um the Housing Authority so I
thought I'd see what I could do
um now what I'm talking about is lead
specific everybody is different in
different local authorities but we we do
have a work with 21 housing associations
and they all work differently some of them
them
um I support percentage of them have a
do a contribution some of them carry out
the work themselves some of them don't
it's all very mixed um and when I think
about where I started with this it's
probably going back to covid when myself
and another colleague reached out to
local author to housing associations to reconnect
reconnect
um with them to improve relationships
and we met with them
um about the process prior to the
landlord application being mentioned
um but I think by having those
conversations reconnecting with the
staff within the housing associations it
put us in a good stead to actually
approach them about landlord applications
applications
um so after the road show I thought I'm
going to see what I could do so I sent
out a quite a uh presuming email to all
our housing associations saying that
leads are going to change to level
applications as from the 1st of April
this year
now this stirred a lot of emails and
phone calls to me which was good because
they were reaching out to me and asking
me about this process
um so it started those conversations
straight away and I know Rachel Russell
actually got involved with um a Housing
Association directly about my email
um so I set up meetings with them
um and to be honest with you I was quite
surprised with the initial ones that
made contact with me because of my email
they'd already been starting thinking
about how they how could they do this
what can they do differently and looking
into the possibility of taking over the
work themselves and delivering dfgs and
they'd already come up with some options
so it was quite positive and I thought
it was going to be it wasn't going to be
as positive
um moving forward
um the main concern that they had
obviously I used the the slide that Paul um
um
bought up there the main concern they
had was about the OT around the
assessment side so they were saying they
don't have OTS within the housing
associations and that was their main
concern not about delivering the work or
anything like that so we we agreed that
obviously we have um we use social care
to do our assessments and we would
continue with that approach so it was
adapting the foundation's journey
um to Leeds and also our housing
associations and once I said to them
that you know the assessments would
still be done through social care and
they didn't have to have that element
within the Housing Association they sort
of grieved a bit about the whole process
um so that was a good sign
um so then I set up meetings with them
uh the ones that were obviously open not
everyone reached out to me
um out of the 21 there was a quite a few
that did and I set up meetings and it
was a case of
talking through the process with them
making sure letting them know that it's
not a case that we're just gonna give
them that the the landlord application
and they have to go off and do it and
hand hold them if we need to but just
making sure they knew that we were there
as a housing associate um housing um
authority to help them and the main
objective through both all of our
conversations would be we wanted to make
sure that their tenant didn't notice
anything different in that Service
delivery of the DFG and that was quite
clear that both of us um wanted to you
know achieve that objective
so I did assist them in regards to
information that they would need to know
about how to do things and obviously a
bigger low your bigger housing
associations do have their own contractors
contractors
um the little one the little ones don't
so it's a case of helping them in how
they can develop that area
um one things that I information I did
send through to them was we do have
standard specifications for bathing so
assisting them in knowing what we did at
the local Authority
um under DFG helped them to go out to
Tender to procure their own contracts as
if they wanted to take that route
it also gave them the volume of work
that we did I mean they they should have
known that because they approved their
own grants but when you look at figures
um the amount of work it seemed to
um relieve them a bit that it wasn't as
a bigger task as what they initially thought
thought
um I also sent through
um set prices because within Leeds we do
have a set price for bathing so it gave
them an inkling of what was value for
money for them tendering uh from going
out to their in-house contractors to
carry out the work so there was that
um value for money element put in there
already and then we just talked through
the process
um we set up service level agreements
um which we have tweaked depending on
the Housing Association
um so they know what their
responsibility is as a landlord for a
DFG Grant and then they know what we
would do under statutory duty of
approving the grant um
um
one thing we did have in our back pocket
and I know
um some local authorities don't with
a few housing associations we do get contributions
