Hackney Council staff set strike dates over ‘Deliveroo-style’ housing service

Ombudsman’s ire: Hackney Council has been criticised for missing multiple opportunities over housing failures. Photograph: Google. For use for all LDRS publications

Hackney Council officers are poised to strike next week over the risk of scores of redundancies and concerns over the borough’s housing department being turned into a “Deliveroo-style” service.

Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS), a Unison spokesperson said Hackney Council’s housing officers are set to walk out on Tuesday 19 and Wednesday 20 August, with three further days slated for the following week.

Tenancy Services staff voted for industrial action following the council’s revelation that 89 out of 100 jobs in the department were technically at risk under a proposed housing shake-up, whereby current employees would have to apply for updated roles in a restructured team.

Tenancy staff deal with casework, housing correspondence, anti-social behaviour (ASB) and more.

The Town Hall said frontline repairs and maintenance services would not be affected by the strikes.

Insisting that they did not want to cause disruption, the union’s spokesperson said there was still time to avert the strike if the council came back to the negotiating table with something “concrete” – but this was needed “sooner rather than later”.

It added that while a meeting between the council and the unions is scheduled, this is not due to take place until Wednesday, when planned walkouts will already be underway.

Union members are reportedly concerned with the council’s plans to scrap the role of dedicated housing officers allocated to a specific patch and replace them with a “Deliveroo-style” service with “whoever was free on the day” to deal with cases.

The union said this would hurt the council’s relationships with residents.

Officers are also worried about the impact of workload and compulsory redundancies under the draft policy, which the union said had been “rushed through”.

Unison added that staff performance was not being held to a fair standard since officers were still waiting on “vital tools” like the long-awaited replacement IT system the council confirmed it had purchased two years ago.

Watchdog’s verdict ‘should have been line in the sand’

Proposals to shake-up the housing department came as the social housing watchdog issued a damning report on the council in May, and later described Hackney as an “outlier” when it came to housing failures.

Ombudsman Richard Blakeway said the Town Hall’s unjustifiable “positivity” around repairs, maintenance and complaints led to “multiple missed opportunities” to address fundamental failures.

“The report should have been a line in the sand. We need the right tools, but the first thing they’ve done is rush to the restructuring, as if staff were the problem,” the Unison spokesperson said.

Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, Hackney’s group director for climate, homes and economy, Rickardo Hyatt, said: “We fully accept the ombudsman’s feedback, which has informed our new improvement plan to repair homes faster, make the service more efficient, and boost training and development opportunities for staff so that they have the tools they need to do their job.”

Group director for climate, homes and economy, Rickardo Hyatt. Photograph: Greater London Authority

Mr Hyatt added that the council wanted to make the service accountable to residents at every level, which was why it had set up an independent panel made up of experts and tenant “to help guide the council’s efforts to improve the management of its housing stock and services.”

The director added that the council had worked with both staff and the union during the 79-day consultation period and this would help inform the structure of the housing service.