News

Last week we held a dinner with Jon Rouse who has just taken up his new role at the Department of Health as Director General for Social Care, Local Government and Care Partnerships. It is good news that there is someone at DOH who has an in depth understanding of housing. Jon was interested in, and prepared to listen to, real examples of how, for example, welfare reform is impacting on mental health and to challenge on issues such as caring for people with dementia in local communities.

As part of its programme of work on the UK labour market and welfare reform, Policy Exchange is conducting research on how welfare provision and employment support can be better coordinated and financed at a local level. They are looking specifically at programmes that are intended to help individuals, families and communities to enter, or move closer to finding, work.

Over the last few months representatives of Smarterbuys have been speaking to members and with charitable and voluntary organisations to review how successful Smarterbuys has been in helping members' tenants buy household essentials. During these conversations, an interesting point to emerge was that there is a belief that you have to be a social tenant to use the website.

Through the work the NHC have been doing around welfare reform and measuring the impact across the North, it is evident that housing providers and local authorities are all at very different stages in preparing for and responding to the changes as welfare reform unfolds.

The Northern Housing Consortium produces a weekly Political Briefing, which comprises Parliamentary Review, Parliamentary Briefing and a Media and Think-Tank Briefing.

We are interested in hearing from members as to the way they measure the completion of repairs right first time. We'd be grateful if you could assist us by answering a couple of questions

The NHCs annual Grounds Maintenance and Landscaping Conference was held on 1st May at York Racecourse and a range of expert speakers explored the drivers for different models of provision. There was much debate on the ability of externally procured services to deliver value and quality, whilst housing providers are also exploring the possibility of social enterprise models or looking at cost sharing approaches.

The world of Yammer continues to be a brilliant place for social housing professionals to share best practice and learn what's really going on in the sector from their colleagues across the country. NHC have established two particularly key discussion groups which are free to join.