Agenda item

In February 2008 the Board agreed in principle to the development of a joint funding agreement between Halton Borough Council and the Registered Social Landlords for the provision of housing adaptations. This was in recognition of a number of factors, which were outlined within the report.

The Board also agreed that up to £295,000 unspent Disabled Facilities Grant resources for 2007/2008 be used to support Registered Social Landlords to deal with the backlog of housing adaptations.

In the Capital allocations for 2008 a further £200,000 was agreed by the Council for partnership working with the Registered Social Landlords. The actual under spend on Disabled Facilities Grants in 2007/2008 was £ 267,000 providing a total of £ 467,000 to fund partnership working with the Registered Social Landlords.

Currently the outstanding adaptation work for the Registered Social Landlord’s properties was valued at an estimated £1.5m. The Council’s investment, when matched equally under this agreement by the Registered Social Landlords, would represent a total investment of £934,000 and should make a significant impact on the backlog of outstanding work.  In the interim RSLs would continue to invest in adaptations work and Halton Housing Trust were committed to investing the same amount of funding as agreed in the transfer document.

An alternative to the development of a partnership agreement would have been to expand the housing adaptation service provided by HBC to manage the backlog of outstanding RSL adaptation work. This option would not, however, have the advantage of the RSLs providing match funding for the work to be undertaken.

The report detailed three options for the allocation of this partnership funding between the Registered Social Landlords. Option 3 was the preferred option. On the basis of this option funding would be allocated as follows:

Since February 2008 work had been undertaken to develop an Agreement in partnership with a small number of the Registered Social Landlords who own the majority of the RSL housing stock in Halton.  A separate agreement would be established with each individual RSL. A draft copy of the Agreement was attached to the report as Appendix 1.

Once Partnership funding had been allocated to the Registered Social Landlords the Agreement required the RSL’s to matchfund all adaptation work on a 50/50 basis. Furthermore, the Agreement included:

·              Underlying principles for adaptation work;

·              Criteria for adaptations;

·              A process for the use of the Partnership funding including details of roles and responsibilities, monitoring and decision making arrangements;

·              Expenditure monitoring arrangements that will be subject to HBC auditing processes;

·              A statement of expectation once the allocation of funding has been committed that RSLs continue to invest in adaptations;

·              Service user feedback requirements;

·              A complaints/arbitration process;

·              An expectation that Registered Social Landlords encourage their tenants to use the Partnership route for the completion of adaptation work.