Decisions

A decision was made to procure an offsite processing solution to enable the service to process the large increase of new claims for Council Tax Reduction and changes to these and Housing Benefit claims. A direct award was made to Civica following soft market testing and a successful tender bid, as this was the quickest solution and represented best value for money and will be funded by existing budgets and/or additional burden funding by DWP/MHCLG.

Following the outbreak of COVID 19 there has been increased demand on council’s Benefits Service with applications and changes to its Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction schemes. This assists low income families with financial assistance towards their rent and/or Council Tax liabilities.
As a result, a short to medium solution was sought to provide greater resource resilience to assess these claims, in addition to the council’s usual recruitment options.

The addendum to the Private Housing Enforcement Policy is additional guidance for enforcing officers who will have regard to current government and public health guidance to ensure a pragmatic approach to enforcement whilst maintaining social distancing and isolation measures.

The addendum to the Private Housing Enforcement Policy is additional guidance to be read in conjunction with the Private Housing Enforcement Policy 2016 (revised 2017) for enforcing officers who will have regard to current government and public health guidance to ensure a pragmatic approach to enforcement whilst maintaining social distancing and isolation measures.
Link to Private Housing Enforcement Policy 2016 (revised 2017): https://www.bristol.gov.uk/documents/20182/34852/Private+Housing+Enfocement+Policy+2016/d0e5d52b-5bd0-4fd8-b44a-06d8703f38e2

Bristol City Council is in the process of re-profiling it's children’s homes in favour of a new model of smaller homes able to better meet the needs of children in our care, and situated in communities across the city. It is important that each one has its own homely aesthetic and is furnished like a modern family home avoiding institutional styles.
For the remaining homes we pursued an open tender, with a view to procuring a single supplier framework for each lot required. By pursing this option we allow ourselves more flexibility and future proof the contract in any event that over the course of the scheme the number of anticipated homes are either not realised or become delayed prohibiting delivery.

Following a competitive tendering process the evaluation results recommend that the framework agreement be awarded to the highest scoring supplier for each lot. The successful supplier is the same for all four lots tendered.
The following opportunities exist by appointing a single supplier framework for the remainder of the scheme:
• Having one supplier framework including all furniture lots gives economies of scale and the same level of quality throughout all homes.
• By establishing pricing during the competition it gave the best pricing solution that is fixed for the three year period of the framework
• Of suppliers evaluated, the supplier appointed can provide all items to high quality in a variety of different styles and colours as well as delivering the family style aesthetic we need.
• The Council will be entering into a framework agreement with the successful supplier and will call-off requirements as each home becomes available. This provides a more flexible approach when taking into account property and construction industries experiencing unexpected delays, which then poses a risk that new homes are delayed or not achieved. A framework mitigates that risk if the volumes considered didn’t actually materialise or even if volumes increased. By procuring this requirement through a framework the Council has made no guarantee of any minimum quantities or any quantities to be purchased at all.

The Mayor of Bristol has set out the objective of delivering 2000 new homes per year, of which 800 should be affordable, by 2020. In response to this the Council allocated £57m for the Council to provide grants to registered providers and other eligible organisations for affordable homes for rent or supplementary grants: to promote Zero Carbon affordable homes, adopt modular housing and incentivise the building of wheelchair user bungalows. This is the twenty –first round of grant funding by the Council under the delegated authority scheme agreed by Cabinet on 2nd April 2019.
The supplementary grant will enable United Communities Housing Association to redesign the scheme and install ground source heat pumps to serve a total of 67 affordable homes units at Luckwell Road and Lynwood Road Bristol BS3 3HH.

Approves the supplementary grant, in accordance with the criteria detailed in the Affordable Housing Funding Policy, to United Communities of £526,620 to enable heat pumps to be installed to serve 67 affordable homes from the Affordable Housing Funding Budget made under the delegated authority for grant payments (including those in excess of £0.5m) to support the delivery of housing approved by Cabinet on 7th March 2017. Please note attached Financial report.