Richmond Council calls on housing associations to improve existing social housing stock

Richmond Council has called on housing associations to address disrepair in social housing by refining ongoing practices around managing repairs and investing in upgrades.

During a meeting of the full Council, Lead member for housing, Councillor Jim Millard, voiced the Council’s commitment to ensuring the needs of existing social housing residents are met by the four major housing associations.

In response to a question on how the Council can assure residents it considers investment in existing homes as important as developing new homes, Cllr Millard, Lead Member for Housing and Vice-Chair of the Adult Social Services, Health and Housing Committee said: “This council believes investing in the homes of existing social housing residents is just as important as creating new social housing. We say that we should now only give Richmond housing grants for new developments to housing associations who engage with our 5-point Richmond Social Housing Improvement Plan.”

The Council’s Richmond Social Housing Improvement Plan outlines the following:

1. Investing in existing homes – tackling disrepair, damp and mould
2. Investing in improving repairs services
3. Investing in strong communities – improving communal areas with a zero-tolerance approach to disrepair, tackling antisocial behaviour
4. Putting residents’ voices at the heart of decision-making
5. Investing in sustainability – retrofitting for environmental performance and tackling fuel poverty

Cllr Millard went on to say: “The four main housing associations in the borough now report to the Adult Social Care, Health and Housing committee annually and a standard report template has been developed to assist these housing associations in reporting their key performance metrics, service delivery and workstreams, including how they are maintaining their housing stock and the new Tenant Satisfaction Measures, to enable these to be scrutinised by Committee.

“I will now ask the committee to take steps to add to that scrutiny consideration of housing associations’ performance in relation to the Richmond Social Housing Improvement Plan and for that to inform committee decisions on whether to award development grant for future projects, assuring residents that Richmond Council grant support for development of new genuinely affordable homes in the borough is directly connected to driving investment in existing homes.”