Key priority two: Quality homes, safe and strong communities
We will make best use of our existing housing stock, deliver more homes and increase the number available for social rent. We will ensure these homes are matched to local housing needs to reduce homelessness and rough sleeping.
We will ensure that all Cheltenham Borough Council homes are high quality and safe, aiming to set the standard by which all local housing providers and private landlords should follow.
As one team, we will create a new integrated offer alongside partners to build positive connections with all our communities, make people feel safer and improve our neighbourhoods, public spaces and town centre.
What we will do over the next three years
Our aims:
Everyone should expect to live in a decent and safe home and, for our tenants and leaseholders, we will ensure we deliver this through our housing improvement programme and our housing investment plan.
Our housing improvement programme will deliver on our mission for housing services; “Together with our tenants we provide safe, secure and well-maintained homes that help everyone reach their potential”, ensure we meet our obligations as a social housing landlord and achieve the five consumer standards introduced by the Regulator for Social Housing. These standards are the:
- Safety and Quality Standard: we must provide safe and good-quality homes for our tenants and good quality landlord services.
- Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard: we must be open with tenants and treat them with fairness and respect.
- Tenancy Standard: we must ensure a fair allocation and letting of homes and manage our tenancies well.
- Neighbourhood and Community Standard: we must engage with partners, which may include the Police, voluntary sector and charities, so that our tenants can live in safe and well-maintained neighbourhoods and feel safe in their homes.
- Competence and Conduct Standard: all our social housing staff should have the skills, knowledge and experience to provide tenants with a quality and respectful service.
The Council currently owns over 5,000 residential properties which are mix of social rented, leasehold and shared ownership homes. We know we need to have a full understanding of all our properties, and are undertaking a comprehensive stock condition survey programme, so we can make improvements where needed and provide the standard of housing our tenants and leaseholders deserve.
We also know that more affordable homes are needed for local people. To help meet this need we will continue delivery of our housing investment plan and develop a housing asset management strategy to ensure the homes we provide meet future needs. As part of this we will aim to achieve an average of 35% affordable housing from all qualifying residential development brought forward across the borough.
We will ensure that our partnership working to deliver the neighbourhood and community standard brings benefits for everyone who lives in Cheltenham, so that all our residents can live in safe neighbourhoods, feel safe in their homes and feel safe to enjoy everything Cheltenham has to offer. We will also set standards through the Cheltenham, Gloucester and Tewkesbury Strategic and Local Plan to ensure quality homes, safe and strong communities are delivered into the future.
Our actions:
- By the end of year 1 of this plan we aim to put all the requirements in place to be C2 compliant under the housing regulator’s consumer standards ratings
- By the end of year 1 of this plan we will complete a stock condition survey of all our residential properties.
- In year 2 of this plan, we will complete development of our first housing asset management strategy.
- By the end of year 3 of this plan all senior housing staff will achieve a relevant housing qualification.
- By the end of this plan, we will complete our housing improvement programme and aim to have all the requirements in place to achieve a C1 rating.
- Over the next three years we will continue our housing investment plan and will deliver a net gain in the number of council properties available for rent, ensuring new homes reflect local needs.
Over the course of this plan, we will develop a Cheltenham, Gloucester and Tewkesbury Strategic and Local Plan in line with the published local development scheme timetable.- Over the course of this plan, we will work with other parties including developers, government departments and agencies (eg Homes England) to achieve our aim of delivering an average of at least 35% affordable housing from qualifying residential development in the borough.
- We will retain our Purple Flag status for managing our evening and nighttime economy.
Supporting key performance indicators:
- Tenant and leaseholder satisfaction
- Housing complaints
- Percentage of council homes meeting the decent homes standard
- Number of households on the housing waiting list
- Main homelessness duty accepted
- Affordable homes delivered as a percentage of all qualifying residential development in the borough
- Level of antisocial behaviour