Dudley to spend £362m on decent homes – without losing control

The local authority will spend £362m bringing its 24,543 homes up to the 2010 standard, after a majority of tenants opted to keep the council as its landlord.

The council announced last Friday that it had completed a year-long consultation in which 6000 of its tenants were asked for their views in face-to-face meetings.

The council said the process showed that 65% of tenants wanted the local authority to continue managing their homes.

Members of the council’s cabinet were asked to approve the recommendation that the council retained direct management of the stock at a meeting on Wednesday as Housing Today went to press.

In addition to funding decent homes work, the £362m will pay for cyclical repairs and adaptations to homes until 2011. The council said it had not calculated what proportion would be spent meeting the standard.

The council’s capital resources, which includes sales of council homes and land through the right to buy, will generate £194m of the funding, with the remaining £168m being generated by revenue resources, including rents.

However the council has conceded that if it keeps control of the stock, it will not be able to meet all of the demands made by tenants during the consultation.

This recommendation is a clear endorsement of the council’s housing service and the challenge now is for us to meet the decent homes standard

Michael Evans, cabinet member for housing

“Meeting many of the priorities that tenants told the council about over the past year, like large-scale environmental regeneration of estates for example, will not be possible”, a council spokesman said.

The spokesman added that the council would be able to meet the decent homes target without accessing extra government funds because few of its homes fell below the standard.

“We have relatively low standards of non-decency because of the programme we have in place to look after the homes,” he said.

He added that, as of 1 April 2004, 27% of Dudley’s stock did not meet the decent homes standard.

The final decision has to be approved by the full council in April and the ODPM in July.

Councillor Michael Evans, Dudley’s cabinet member for housing, said: “This recommendation is a clear endorsement of the council’s housing service and the challenge now is for us to meet the decent homes standard while continuing to improve the service we offer to tenants.”