Issue - meetings

The Board received an update on Halton Housing Trust’s (HHT) support for the needs of Halton’s older customers from Jonathan Horsfall from Halton Housing.

HHT provide a range of housing options with appropriate levels of support to enable customers to maintain an independent and healthy lifestyle within their own home.

It was reported that HHT manage and maintain 7500 homes predominantly within the Borough of Halton.  Most were for social rent, with 220 for shared ownership.  The report described the services provided by them to their tenants and the types of housing available specifically for older customers.  The report also gave profile information of the ages of customers; the types of accommodation they lived in; the numbers of older customers assisted over the past 6 months; and details of the work and support provided by the Halton Housing Independent Living Team. 

The development of extra care schemes (Barkla Fields, Naughton Fields and Hazelhurst) were welcomed.  These provided customers with care and support services, personal care and domestic services, emergency alarms and 24-hour help lines, as well as communal facilities such as lounges and bistros.  Information on the newest example of this, Hazelhurst, was appended to the report.

The Board thanked Mr Horsfall for his attendance and he provided the following additional information in response to Members questions:

·         Hazelhurst in Sandymoor was now open and residents had begun to move in;

·         Transport links were discussed; these were getting better as the area developed;

·         Applications for homes in Hazelhurst and other properties were made through the Trust’s Property Pool Plus (PPP) service;

·         Customers placed bids on properties using the PPP service, which placed them in a category, with Band A (homeless) being the highest.  The winning bidder was then allocated the property based on need;

·         There was less demand in Band A from older people;

·         IT support was available to those residents who were unable to use PPP to submit their application and it was possible to arrange for ‘auto bids’ to be set up;

·         The service did not arrange swaps as such, but mutual exchanges were allowed between tenants in agreement with each other;

·         The market was very buoyant for shared ownership properties, so those properties within Hazelhurst were expected to sell; and

·         Right to Buy still existed for rented homes only.

RESOLVED:  That the report is noted.