23 August 2023
NFA members doing (much) #MoreThanHousing
EACH year, NFA members put together show boards that celebrate key achievements, and which go on display at our annual conference. They capture the breathtaking range of work that council housing management companies turn their hands to – so much more than ‘just housing’.
Today – Barnet Homes, Stockport Homes Group and South Essex Homes celebrating their work on new build, cost-of-living support for customers, and domestic abuse preventions and support for survivors.
The housing shortage is hitting those who want or need to rent particularly hard – and nowhere harder than in London, where NFA member Barnet Homes is doing what it can to push back.
… striving to leverage every resource and every available plot of land …
While the Right to Buy policy is putting home ownership within reach of some tenants, it is also shrinking the options of those hoping to find a home they can afford to rent.
Pressure on housing is particularly acute in London, and the London Borough of Barnet’s ALMO Barnet Homes – part of the council-owned Barnet Group – has been striving to leverage every resource and every available plot of land to buck the trend and create new council homes.
This board tells the story of how they’ve finished 90 new homes and started 250 more, scouring the grant landscape and Section 106 pots for seed money. The team have also carefully constructed partnership agreements with private developers to maximise the use of council-owned land and keep assets in community ownership.
The Stockport Homes group is a multi-award winning organisation wholly owned by Stockport Council and it offers a wide portfolio of services to both council home customers and the wider community.
Channelling cost-of-living support through housing services makes it possible to deliver highly targeted help to those who need it most.
This board celebrates the measurable difference Stockport Homes staff have made in the lives of their customers – energy savings, home welfare checks, counselling, homelessness prevention, training on use of the internet and digital devices.
In the cost-of-living crisis, coming hard on the heels of the pandemic lockdown, these ‘wraparound’ services have never been more vital or more needed. This help is delivered or co-ordinated through the housing service; housing staff who have daily contact with local communities are ideally placed to identify those who are most vulnerable and who will benefit most.
This makes it much easier to target services at those who need them, or to signpost customers quickly towards the help they want.
South Essex Homes is rightly proud of its recent DAHA accreditation award.
It is vital that those who need this help know where to turn – and can ask for help safely.
DAHA – the Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance – supports UK housing providers to improve their response to domestic abuse, and the approach they encourage is nationally recognised as best practice by policymakers and legislators. Its accreditation is widely recognised as the gold standard – and is one of the toughest frameworks in the sector.
South Essex Homes’ decided to seek accreditation in June 2021; this board describes the 20-month journey to successful completion in February 2023 that involved looking at every aspect of their service offer, and asking whether tenants living with domestic abuse were being offered the best possible support.
The aim is to help survivors either find a safe home or rebuild their sense of safety in their current home, and making sure the help they are offered through their landlord is consistent and co-ordinates support from a range of agencies.
It is vital that those who need this help know where to turn – and can ask for help safely. So, for instance, significant changes were made to the South Essex Homes website to signpost sources of help clearly, and to create a ‘leave page quickly’ button that added an extra level of safety for readers.
Community workshops, posters, articles in the customer newsletter – the team has used every possible opportunity to raise awareness among the wider community and among staff of the likely signs that someone is in difficulty, and where and how help can be had from the landlord and other agencies.