My report to council

Posted By: Doreen Brophy-Lee
Date Posted: 07/10/2008

Thank you Mr Mayor for the opportunity to report to the Council the latest developments on various matters relating to the Housing Portfolio.

This is my first full Council meeting as the Portfolio Holder for Housing. Since taking on this role I have spent a lot of time reading background papers and discussing current issues with my Head of Service. I have also been out and about in the borough looking at first hand at some of the areas where our services operate. I am also meeting staff within the service and visiting some of our partner organisations to look at how they are supporting the council in meeting its key objectives.

Rochdale Boroughwide Housing Performance Monitoring

I am very keen in my new role to ensure that the council’s relationship with RBH continues to improve and that the services provided by RBH continue to support the council’s key objectives. I have recently reviewed RBHs performance figures and their service improvement plans for the future and am satisfied that as a council we continue to get excellent performance from RBH and that their service improvement plan will bring benefits to both of us. Obviously there are areas of performance that need improving and I am very keen to see these areas addressed over the year.

Langley estate

I visited Langley estate and was very pleased with the progress being made to turn this once badly run down estate around. As well as the new building going on there is a real feel amongst communities that at last things are finally changing for the better on Langley.

One thing that is very clear to me is that we shouldn’t now start to relax and think that we have done the job because there is still an awful lot to do. I hope that colleagues can put political differences aside over the coming months in order to make the right decisions for both the community on Langley and the future communities that we want to attract onto that estate.

Vulnerable people

In my new role I intend to work closely with other councillors to ensure that our services for vulnerable people continue to improve at an accelerated rate. We have already committed extra resources into Supporting People and have developed a very solid improvement plan, in which, I will be keeping a very close eye on progress. I have realised that this is a massive job as it is trying to address some of the deep seated problems that we have inherited from the past.

Credit crunch

This is a particularly difficult time for me to inherit the Strategic Housing role when nationally events are having a huge impact on the housing market. Although we are not yet seeing any major adverse effects in terms of increased repossessions of homes in the borough I am very wary of the fact that over the coming months we may see this occurring. I will be very interested to ensure that the excellent work that we have done through our homeless service to prevent people losing their homes is continued and is able to respond to this threat.

Building new homes in our towns across the borough is still a high priority, especially affordable rented housing. Clearly there are going to be some difficult times ahead if house builders stop developing their sites. Despite these concerns we are still optimistic at working with our development partners in the housing market renewal areas, we will continue to see new housing development and our housing association partners are committed to a programme of affordable homes across the borough.

Housing conference

I intend through Strategic Housing to hold a housing conference in October 2008 to showcase some of our achievements and also to open up a wider discussion on some of the important housing issues that I have touched upon in this report. I hope that members who are interested in these issues will take the time to attend the conference which will be advertised soon.