Housing Association embracing social media!

Digital Media Communications Agency, The Mill Group, has helped a housing association’s tenants to carry out everyday household repairs.

The company have created a series of 13 short online films which demonstrate to tenants, how to carry out simple repairs. It has been predicted that York Housing Association, can save up to £1,000 a month through the use of the ‘Fix It’ campaign, as it will hopefully see a major decrease in the amount of telephone calls and repairs callouts. This ‘online repairs clinic’ was created for York Housing Association, which found its call centre was taking too many calls on non-essential repairs.

“Housing associations can’t afford to keep going out to fix a blocked sink, or other small jobs that are the tenant’s responsibility to do themselves. They can go out do the repair and lose money, or do it and charge it back, costing the tenant,” said David Fawcett, Mill Group’s marketing director.

“Offering an easy way to help the tenant to do it themselves makes it ‘win-win’ for everyone, just what we wanted to achieve with the Fix It! series. This unique service is now in over 500,000 homes, which will grow to over a million over the next few months.

“We will develop it as time goes on to include extra types of repairs. More and more housing associations are realising there is some serious money to be saved through this kind of initiative, even small organisations can save £500 – £1,000 a month.”

Kate Spencer, York Housing Association operations director, said the association’s main goal with the films was to help tenants, but they had also cut costs by offering ‘Fix It’, as there had previously been occasions when they had carried out repairs that the tenants should really have done themselves.

She said: “If a tenant calls to say their electricity isn’t working we now point them to the repairs clinic on the website, which shows them just what to do. We see it as a valuable enhancement of the service we provide to tenants, but it also saves us money as we are freed up from getting involved in things that are not our responsibility.”

The films cover a variety of topics including safety tips, simple plumbing advice, dealing with pests and coping with power failure.

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Sourced from: Housing Excellence

NEWS UPDATE: Ujima fraud suspects plead not guilty | Ministers push for green home tax breaks

Kenneth Kerr, Alan Boswell and Gregory Simon Causer attended court yesterday morning in relation with suspected fraud of £3.5million at failed housing association Ujima. All three men have pleaded not guilty to the accusations involving the housing association which collapsed in 2008.

The three will stand trial on 23^rd January 2012. A further case management hearing was also set this morning for 23^rd June 2011.

Rose Avwunu, 53, is being accused of two counts of money laundering and will appear at Isleworth Crown Court on 4^th July 2011. Her co-defendant in the case, which relates to an alleged £208,000 fraud at Ujima, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison after being convicted of seven counts of money laundering.

Police are still trying to trace Ms Avwunu’s husband George, who absconded from bail shortly after being arrested in connection with the fraud.

Green Home Tax Breaks

Greg Barker, Minister of State, has reported that The Department of Energy and Climate Change is lobbying for tax incentives to encourage green building and retrofit projects.

The Minister stated that incentives for retrofitting were ‘absolutely a priority’ for DECC in the run up to the Budget, but that no decisions had been made on this. ‘The chancellor has got to make those decisions,’ he said yesterday, whilst speaking at the Ecobuild conference.

It has been reported that George Osborne is considering a stamp duty rebate for householders who join the government’s green deal programme, which provides private sector loans to finance energy efficiency improvements in domestic properties.

Mr Barker also said he was ‘actively involved’ in talks with the Treasury about simplifying the carbon reduction commitment, which caps the amount of carbon organisations, including local authorities and larger housing associations, can emit using a system of permits.

He stated that the CRC was ‘a straight unapologetic tax take’, but said that the system which he inherited from Labour was far too complex for the industry.

The Energy Bill contains provisions for councils to force private landlords to use the green deal to improve their stock, however there is no legislation for owner occupiers.

Source: Inside Housing, 2011

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Children’s charity’s concern over housing provision for child offenders

Figures released today have shown that providing child offenders with safe and suitable accommodation upon their release from custody save up to £70,000 per child over three years.

Children’s charity Barnardo’s have warned that gaps in the Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke’s plans could lead to failure.

Barnardo’s have stated that children as young as 13 who get caught in a cycle of homelessness and re-offending can cost the Government as much as £116,094 over three years, but up to £67,000 per child could be saved if they were given the support they needed.

Figures showed that a total of 4,147 referrals were made to Barnardo’s to help young people in custody in 2009/2010, with their housing needs being a key concern.

Annie Marie Carrie, Barnardo’s chief executive, said: “These children can be all too easy to ignore, but our report shows that we do so at great cost to their young lives and society.

“Young people who offend are among the most vulnerable; a quarter have special educational needs and almost a fifth have depression, yet children as young as 13 are sent back to families who can’t cope and end up without a safe place to live.

“The Government is on the verge of a self-styled ‘rehabilitation revolution’ – but there are gaps in the Ministry of Justice’s plans which must be filled to ensure we do right by these children and society by bringing down crime levels.”

“We don’t say this lightly, we are all too aware of the cuts being made across the UK in an effort to fight the effects on the economic crisis we are in, but surely, if ever there is a case for return on investment this is it.”

A Government spokesman said: “There are already a range of statutory obligations on the part of local authorities to provide safe accommodation and related support for those unable to live in the family home or with relatives. This includes young people leaving custody.

“The Ministry of Justice has outlined a range of proposals in the ‘Breaking the Cycle’ Green Paper, which we are currently consulting on, to further incentivise local authorities to achieve reductions in youth offending.”

He added that the Government recognises that young people leaving custody are some of the most vulnerable young people in society and that “the effective resettlement and support of these young people is critical to breaking the cycle of offending”.

NEWS: New £1million development for disable people

A new £1million project will see the development of eight homes for people with severe physical disabilities.

The development is the first of it’s kind carried out by Stafford and Rural Homes, who are working in partnership with Housing Plus and Staffordshire County Council.

The chief executive of Stafford and Rural Homes, Karen Armitage, said: “SARH works hard to give people in the borough an independent life and this project will make a real difference to many people living with disabilities.

“We hope this successful partnership will enable us to look at assisting customers to live independently in other parts of Stafford as we continue to provide accommodation that is high quality for people with very differing housing needs in the future.”

The homes will cater for the specialist care provision by offering a communal and 24 hour care facilities on site, as well as residents’ lounge, kitchen and garden. The NHS has also contributed to funding for the specialist care required at the homes.

Matthew Ellis, Staffordshire County Council cabinet member for adults and wellbeing, said: “The development will enable each person to live as part of their local community and, with support, to have opportunities and take part in activities that have not previously been available to them.

“Some of the people have complex needs and have lived in NHS accommodation for many years. While that managed their medical conditions, it is no longer considered an appropriate way of meeting the personal needs that everyone has.”

Thomas Vale construction is working on the project, based on architectural designs by Ken Scaddon.

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Housing News: Level of house hunters at a six month high

Research has found that the amount of people looking for a new house reached a six month high in January 2011. The average number of house hunters registering with estate agents reached 252, an increase from 227 in December, however this was still 13% lower than the figure in January 2010.

January also saw a slight increase in the amount of homes for sale with the average estate agent seeing 69 properties on their books, 5 more than in the previous month.

Experts have put the increase down to the festive season and a backlog from the freezing weather we experienced throughout December.

The increase in potential buyers and sellers has resulted in an increase in actual sales, with the average estate agents selling six properties throughout January, up two from December.

The president of the NAEA, Michael Jones, said: “It is encouraging to see activity levels begin to increase following the downturn we saw in December where bad weather and the Christmas festivities kept many house-hunters away.

“However, when compared with our report from this time last year, the market is still showing signs of consumer reluctance. Macro-economic issues such as the VAT rise and interest rate pressures continue to put many people off searching for property.

“What we need to see now is the Financial Services Authority using its newly gained powers of oversight to ease mortgage lending restrictions that are preventing so many first-time buyers from entering the housing market.”

The percentage of sales to first time buyers did fall by 1% in January, to 24% compared with the 25% in December.

Figures released by the Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG) showed house prices rose in December by 0.5%, which meant an overall increase in the average home price – 3.8% higher than the beginning of 2010.

London residents have seen the strongest gains in house prices with a rise of 6.9%

However, Howard Archer, chief UK and European economist at HIS Global Insight, has predicted that the rest of 2011 will not see such rises: “The CLG data do not materially change our view that house prices will continue to trend down gradually in 2011 after losing ground overall in the latter months of 2010.

“Specifically, we suspect that house prices will fall by around 5% in 2011 and end up losing around 10% from the peak levels seen in the first half of 2010.”