200 applicants for one home in housing crisis
A BOROUGH’S homes boss has said the company is doing ‘all it can’ to support its tenants despite the pressures it is facing.
Stockport Homes boss Helen McHale is the chief executive of the company which manages housing on behalf of the council as an arms length management organisation (ALMO), and for private landlords.
Demand for accommodation in Stockport is high and thousands of people are currently on the housing register, with around 200 applications for each available property.
The company manages more than 12,000 properties, at a time when Stockport MP Navendu Mishra has described the housing situation in the borough as a ‘crisis.’
Ms McHale led the team that established Stockport Homes in 2005 and, since then, the company has grown into Stockport’s biggest landlord.
“The outstripping of demand compared to supply is massive,” she told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS). “If I was to say to you that on average we get 200 bids per property that is advertised, it means less turnover of our stock, less properties, more people are wanting them, and that leaves a shortfall. It’s really difficult.
“We have some very committed staff and we’ll continue to do all we can. We do lots to encourage mutual exchanges, it’s one way people can swap their homes.
“We’re also trying to encourage people who were on their own in a three bedroom house to give that up so we can move a family in and give them support and money to do so, those are the limited ways that we can release accommodation.” Stockport Homes has been criticised by some of its tenants in recent months over the standard of its accommodation and the speed at which repairs are completed.
Last year, the LDRS visited a Stockport Homes site on the Lancashire Hill estate and found a number of problems including broken doors and fly-tipping around the area.
At the time, Stockport Homes said it was working with local councillors to make improvements to the site for residents who live there.
The company says it has also put its resources into dealing with ‘a backlog’ of repairs created since Covid, with thousands of jobs being completed each month.
But the country’s spike in inflation has added further pressure.
Ms McHale added: “We look at the complaints, we deal with them and we really try to make things better.
“The issue we’ve got is that until Covid we were on top of our repairs, then during Covid lots of people didn’t report them or they didn’t want a new house, so you create a backlog.
“Then you get massive inflation, so the cost for everything’s gone up, we’ve put in massive extra resources to clear that backlog. In January we finished about 2,000 more repairs this year than last year, so that’s what we’re dealing with. All these pressures are coming together but it’s an absolute priority for us in terms of how we manage that and get our people to do it. Our satisfaction levels are in the 90 per cent range – 10pc is a lot of dissatisfied people – but we do get a lot of compliments about our repairs.
“I’d hate for anyone to think that we didn’t care, it’s really important to us.”