'Vital' homelessness and social housing services are to be taken back ‘in-house’ by Rochdale council.
Homelessness prevention and the Home Choice service - which allocates social housing in the borough - are currently provided by Rochdale Boroughwide Housing (RBH). But these key functions will transfer to the local authority next month in a bid to allow for ‘more joined up services, delivered by one team within one organisation’.
Bosses say it will allow for their better integration within the wider council remit, including adult care and children’s services. The arrangement does not affect other RBH services and the mutual - the borough’s largest social housing provider - will retain ownership and management responsibilities for its homes.
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Councillor Danny Meredith, cabinet member for housing at Rochdale council, said the national picture and legislation around housing had changed ‘considerably’ over recent years. And he believes it was vital the authority responded in order to ‘continue to deliver the best service for our residents’.
He said: “It will be a positive improvement, it’s about working with everyone to prevent homelessness. It’s about working with people in the voluntary, community and charity sector, working with people in the private sector and all services across the council.
“It’s about bringing all of them together to provide a better service to prevent homelessness and to reduce that pressure on housing right now at the same time. Overall it will be a better service for the people of Rochdale.”
Coun Meredith said GDPR and data protection laws had made it difficult for RBH to work together effectively. And while he has been fiercely critical of RBH in the past he says that has nothing to do with the ‘mutual agreement’ over services returning to the council.
“It’s not really a criticism of RBH they just couldn’t offer it the way we wanted it to be offered,” he said.
“It was more to do with the sharing of information and trying to work together. We know we are better off bringing this back in-house." Plans are in the pipeline for a face-to-face service in Rochdale away from the council’s main Number One Riverside base.
“People don’t feel comfortable coming into the council offices sometimes because they might have an issue with council tax or things like that,” Coun Meredith said. “There are lots of things we want to bring together so we can offer extra support to people so we can actually prevent homelessness.”
The switch-over will take effect from April 1. There will be no immediate change to how anybody registers or applies for social housing or how they contact the homelessness team.
All existing registrations and applications will automatically transfer to the council and the transfer will not affect people’s priority status. RBH employees who currently deliver these services will be moved over to the council from the beginning of the month.
More information can be found here: https://www.rbh.org.uk/news/rbh-news/an-update-on-the-homechoice-and-homelessness-services/
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