I was pleased to see your West Midlands Regional Focus and the recognition of the importance of genuine partnership working across organisations and across local authority boundaries.

Such boundaries are meaningless in the dynamics of our housing markets. The housing and regeneration community in the West Midlands is well on its way to getting its act together to shape and deliver regional priorities to create balanced housing markets and successful communities, with the developing regional housing strategy.

It was a pity that in one of your graphics, you incorrectly highlighted Walsall’s strategic housing service as being “no star/poor”. This was out of date information, as we have received an Audit Commission assessment of “one star/fair, with promising prospects for improvement”, which was published on its website on 4 November.

We still have more improvements to make, but our recent re-inspection recognised the growing strength of our partnership working with RSLs in the borough, our private sector and housing advice services, our outward focus and our active involvement with partners across the sub-region in developing the prospective Black Country & Telford Housing Market Renewal Area.

Jason MacGilp, assistant director Community Regeneration & Housing Walsall MBC

Source

Housing Today