Posted 20.10.20
Kirklees Council: Further reading
Kirklees Council's Cabinet has approved plans to transfer the management and maintenance of the borough's council housing back to the local authority.
The decision follows a major engagement exercise with tenants and lays the foundations for improvements to homes and neighbourhoods for over 22,000 residents.
Since 2002, council housing in Kirklees has been managed and maintained by Kirklees Neighbourhood Housing (KNH). Over the past year, the council and KNH have been looking at options for the future management of council housing that can deliver the best possible services.
An independent report by the Local Government Association, published in November 2019, recommended that the council's ambitions would be better delivered through a new model of housing management.
In June 2020, Cabinet agreed in principle that a single, council-run, service would meet its ambitions. By bringing housing management and maintenance services in-house, the council believes it could be more accountable to tenants and ensure that local priorities could be delivered more effectively.
Since then, over 2,000 Kirklees residents have taken part in the engagement exercise during which the council put its proposal for bringing the service into the local authority. Most people who gave a view on the council's proposal supported it.
Tenants also told the council about their hopes and priorities for the future. The council has pledged to use resident feedback to build the new service.
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