Shropshire Council commits to continue to invest in its council houses

Shropshire Council is committed to investing in its council houses, ensuring that they remain affordable and somewhere people want to live.

To achieve this, and due to a compulsory change by Government, all of the council’s 4,231 homes will become self-financing by April 2012.  This means that the council’s current landlord services will, in future, act like a business unit.  This will enable it to manage its own ring-fenced finances and have the freedom to work with partners to procure services, while continuing to be under the direct control of the council.

As part of this there will be a one-off allocation of debt to the new business unit of £84.3 million which is allocated by the Government. However, this will be carefully managed so that the service can start to be shaped to better meet the needs of its tenants, and enable more money to be regularly invested in creating homes which meet, and aspire to exceed, the Government’s Decent Homes Standard.

Details of this change, including a business plan addressing how the service will meet the challenges ahead, will go out to consultation after they have been discussed by the council’s Cabinet on 11 May 2011.

Councillor Malcolm Price, Shropshire Council’s Cabinet member for housing, said: “We are committed to providing excellent value for money for our tenants and continuing to create places where people want to live.

“Under self-financing we will have the ability to shape our service so that we can more easily invest in the things that matter to our tenants, such as regenerating our current homes and estates and building new, more energy-efficient homes.  We’ll also explore ways in which we can better work with our community-based partners to help us deliver much needed services.”