Blasted for 'importing labour'

By Elgan Hearn, Local Democracy Reporter

The joint venture responsible for maintaining and repairing our council houses and buildings has been blasted for importing labour to carry out local jobs.

Heart of Wales Property Service (HOWPS), a joint venture between Powys County Council and Keir Facilities Services Ltd, looks after 5,400 homes and 630 properties and has admitted it has failed to deliver on its first year and is asking councillors and tax payers to judge them on their second year.

At the Powys County Council Learning Skill and Economy Meeting, HOWPS chairman Phil Oads and head of service, Richard Hersey, were quizzed by councillors over a myriad of issues.

These included questions on changes to their call centre, voids (getting empty properties ready for new tenants) school maintenance and not using enough local companies as sub-contractors or part of the supply chain.

Cllr Graham Breeze, while being encouraged with their future plans, said: “So far you’ve said that not enough people were employed in the call centre, it was not fit for the task.

“You have had to appoint a manager to deal with a Voids situation which is very concerning.

“You’ve accepted the problems reported by schools on job numbers. You’ve recognised that not enough local contractors were being used, hopefully you will address that.

“You’ve presented an annual report that makes for grim reading from what I can see. And I’ve read it over and over.

“Taking into account the large number of board changes, would it be fair to say that HOWPS completely underestimated the size of the task in Powys?

“Or does Powys need to question the authority’s role in the setting up of the company?”

HOWPS chairman, Phil Oads replied: “The reality is when we took over the transfer of the workforce, we did not underestimate anything except probably the skill set of those who were transferred over.

“From our point of view in any TUPE transfer we can’t have any meaningful dialogue with the staff being transferred. It’s only at that point did we underestimate. There were some roles that just did not exist, in terms of front line managers that we thought were there.

“We didn’t underestimate the size of the county but it is a contributing factor.

“I don’t think anyone could have done it better, there would be no greens on there (key performance indicators) or positive stories. I accept we are not where we want to be. I would say judge us on year two not on year one.”

The issue of the lack Powys’ businesses in the supply chain and employed as sub-contractors was raised.

Cllr Gwynfor Thomas, said that the 44 per-cent figure for local sub-contractors being used was “not a good statistic”.

He said: “I can only judge by what I see in my ward (Llansantffraid) I see people from Stafford or South Wales working on housing stock, which I find difficult to accept.

“When we’re talking about spending the Powys pound, I believe this makes it unproductive or financially non-viable.

“I can’t see how you can be competitive when they travel such distances. I acknowledge you want to make it better, I like to see the statistic there next year so we can judge.”

Mr Oads replied: “There is greater supply chain engagement within the year two business strategy. Local contractors had not gone through our approval process, which meant we did use people from over the border. A lot of the activity is specialist.

“You can’t always get what you want in Powys. We want to use local suppliers but they have to be the right ones.”

The Joint Venture started in July 2017 after 109 workers were transferred to the company.

During the next year, HOWPS say that they will focus on trying to do most of the work themselves, becoming less reliant on sub-contractors. They also aim to recruit seven apprentices.

During the past year they have:

·      completed 17,640 housing repairs

·      completed 8,880 corporate and farms repairs

·      completed 400 voids repairs

·      completed 736 emergency call outs