Page 1967 - Week 06 - Thursday, 9 June 2016
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Recommendation 11—again, this goes back to the clarity of roles—is that the ACT government provide clearer demarcation of the roles of Housing ACT and the Community Services Directorate in managing the total facilities management contract.
Recommendation 12, not only is Spotless the total facilities management contractor, but it is also one of the providers of the maintenance as well as other subcontractors. This recommendation is to ensure there is clarity in how this is done—not suggesting anything untoward, but whether the easy jobs are given to somebody and the harder jobs are given to somebody else. The recommendation is that the government review the policies and procedures of the contractor—in this case Spotless—of their allocation of work to subcontractors or itself, including the criteria for the allocation of work and how this meets its obligations to the government. We want to make sure it is all working very well to the benefit of all. The government needs to get a good return for the taxpayers’ money it spends; Spotless clearly needs to make a living out of this, and the subcontractors also need to make a living out of it. But those who live in the houses need to have certainty that they are getting good quality repairs done when they are required.
Recommendation 13 looks at the oversight role. A joint consultative committee looks at the total facilities management contract, and we are recommending that it be extended to include consideration of all the final reports of targeted audits as opposed to those designated as high risk only. We think it is appropriate to get a view across the entire spectrum of the work being done through the audits that are conducted. It is not just the high-risk ones that need to be done—I think everyone will have an interest in anything that is high risk—we have to get the day to day done as well.
In recommendation 14 the committee recommends the government table by the first sitting day in 2016 the follow-up review of the Spotless call centre which was expected to be finalised in early 2010—we do not believe it has been made public—together with details on the progress with regard to the implementation of identified recommendations. Following an Auditor-General’s report, I believe in 2008, on housing management there was a promise to review the call centre. It apparently was done, but as a committee we do not seem to have seen it. We would like to see what happened with that as well as how the implementation of the recommendations has gone.
Recommendation 15 suggests that, if possible, the ACT Ombudsman give consideration to detailing in future annual reports a breakdown of complaints concerning public housing issues as received by the Ombudsman’s office for that period. Often they are just lumped into one lump, which makes it difficult to work out what they exactly are and whether they are in a specific area.
The final recommendation, recommendation 16, is for the development and implementation of a centralised, comprehensive asset register of all ACT public housing assets. If you are going to manage it, you need to know what you have got, where it is and what condition it is in. Without the centralised register, the committee would suggest that it would be a much more difficult job to do than if you had the register in place.
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