The Building Blocks for Sandwell Homes
While the focus of the Decent Homes Investment Programme is on properties occupied by tenants and leaseholders, there have been strong links built with other agencies working to improve housing and community sustainability in Sandwell, to make as wide an impact as possible improving the living conditions of their customers.
When drawing together the investment programme Sandwell looked beyond simply bricks and mortar condition and incorporated issues that impacted on the wider community, to ensure it delivered services to the most vulnerable tenants within Sandwell. Sandwell Neighbourhood Intelligence Partnership (SNIP) produce data, which measures a number of deprivation indicators across 6 “domains” access to services, crime, economic activity and income, education, health and, of course, housing conditions.
From inception of their investment plans, they have sought the opinion and input of residents to ensure they retain strong customer focus in the services being delivered. They have also widely published the five-year investment plan, including a searchable database on the company website, to enable all tenants to clearly identify when their area is due for investment.
Customer involvement began with development of the investment plans and continued through the procurement process, including tenant and leaseholder involvement in the selection of construction partners. All stakeholders continue to be involved with regular meetings focussing on customer care, progress and delivery. The Investment Division have recently been audited by Sandwell’s Tenant Inspection Team who have added more insight into how improvements can be targeted and achieved.
Sandwell embarked on the investment programme with finances from Major Repairs Allowance, as ALMO funding would only be available towards the second half of the 2005/06, should Sandwell Homes successfully achieve a 2 star rating. This meant the construction partners gearing up for an initial annual budget of £12m with a potential additional £8m in the second six months, which the partnership was able to achieve.
Key to this success was the procurement process undertaken and in particular the innovative supply chain management arrangement in which all partners benefit. The construction partners pooled supply resources to optimise buying power and reduce conflict producing real benefits across the partnership, not least of which is continuity of supply.
Alongside the investment in housing, there is an allocation of £15m environmental budget to address issues that affect local communities such as anti social behaviour, crime and the fear of crime as well as undertaking improvements to the appearance of estates.
Across all tenures in Sandwell, fuel poverty is a major issue with many residents spending in excess of 10% of income providing light and heat in their homes. Sandwell Homes and NPower are working together providing support and finance to Warm Zone Limited, an organisation set up by Government in 2000 to help develop new approaches to fuel poverty. Through this collaboration they have been able to provide heating, insulation and energy efficiency measures for the tenants outside of the current years investment programme.
The Decent Homes Programme being undertaken by Sandwell Homes is also closely aligned with the Birmingham/Sandwell Housing Market Renewal Area (HMRA), a pathfinder scheme set up to tackle low housing demand and housing abandonment.
HMRA is investing £44m across Smethwick and West Bromwich Towns over the 2006-08 period. HMRA interventions include provision of new housing to replace redundant and dilapidated properties, 25% of the new development will be designated as social housing managed by local RSL organisations. Sandwell Homes worked closely with HMR to reshape the investment programme to focus early investment in these areas of the borough to bring about whole area regeneration.
Sandwell Homes is constantly looking to improve its service delivery and is committed to reducing the impact on the wider environment. This means they will continue to review specifications to reflect improvements in energy efficiency, but are also looking at waste management, innovations in building products and renewable energy sources.
All examples of innovative ways in which this ALMO is developing better communities not just today, but for the future.
