Plans to invest more than £250 million in ageing council housing in Swindon will be debated on Wednesday (February 12).
A new housing asset management strategy will be up for discussion by the council’s cabinet to look at proposals to invest between £38m and £66m in each of the next five financial years for maintenance and major refurbishment work in its properties. The figures represent an increase of more than 78 per cent compared to previous years.
The council owns and manages 10,383 homes, including 31 sheltered housing schemes and four supported housing schemes. This includes heritage properties owned by the council in Swindon’s Railway Village and six high-rise blocks.
Cllr Janine Howarth, Swindon Borough Council’s cabinet member for housing, said: “Every tenant has a right to a decent and safe home, but as this first ever Council asset management strategy calls out, for too long there has been a lack of proactive investment in the maintenance and improvement of council-owned homes.
“Our tenants deserve better and we are determined to begin to put that right. This asset management strategy makes clear that some of our properties are not in an acceptable condition and sets out how we’re looking to address this over the next five years.
“We have a long-term plan to prioritise known faults and issues in some of our homes in both the historic Railway Village as well as our six high-rise blocks which have suffered from historical underinvestment over the years.
“It commits the council to investing £250m in our social housing over the next five years, supporting the delivery of our housing improvement plan. This is a 78 per cent increase in planned investment compared to the previous five years.”
Image: Swindon Railway Village by Marathon, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
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