O'er Hill and Vale

Dale & Valley Homes is the ALMO established by Wear Valley District Council to manage its housing stock and release the vital funding, unavailable to the council itself, which will allow the homes to meet the Decent Homes Standard.

The round five ALMO went live in April 2006, following consultation with tenants which resulted in a ‘yes’ vote to the establishment of an ALMO, and following a successful inspection which resulted in a two-star rating for the new organisation in January, an initial sum of £5million funding was released, allowing the organisation to begin its decent homes work in earnest. Add this to the further £22million promised by government assuming Dale & Valley performs well, and £14million which the council itself has freed up for investment from the Major Repairs Allowance, and a significant £41million investment should bring dramatic improvements to the council’s circa 4,500 properties.

Dale & Valley has made its first, although not sole, priority the replacement of ageing doors and windows. It has extended an existing council contract with Windowman UK to achieve this end. Of course, not all of the homes it manages require replacements, which on the one hand makes the project easier. On the other hand, however, a number of the properties sit in conservation areas within the picturesque Wear Dales.

Elsewhere, Dale & Valley through the council has recently entered into a partnership with Dunelm Property Services to carry out all the refurbishment work to its homes outside of the existing windows and doors contract, from replacement kitchens and bathrooms to rewiring. This contract will account for over £30million of the total refurbishment budget, and also sees local firm Dunelm committed to offering training and employment to local labour, and taking advantage of the local supply chain so that the economic benefits of the investment benefit local communities as well as homes.

The council has perhaps fared better than many authorities, with just under 30 per cent of its properties classed as non-decent, a fact which Dale & Valley chief executive Peter Chaffer puts down to shrewd investment by the council in the past: “To keep it down at that level, the council has been careful about where it has targeted available investment. Although it had limited funding available to it, what it’s done it’s done properly in relation to prioritising where it’s spent its money. Of course, there are also properties that may fall into non-decency between now and the end of our programme in 2012, so we need to keep an eye on that too.”

With the vastly increased funds available to the new ALMO, Chaffer will clearly be keen to carry on the council’s good work, and obviously the new funding was a key factor in driving the tenants’ support for transfer to an ALMO. Conversely, says Chaffer, the council’s performance had also inspired residents to want to remain with the council, hence the ‘halfway house’ option of selecting an ALMO for their homes’ future rather than a full-blown transfer to an RSL.

Dale & Valley is a relatively late starter in the ALMO game, having come into being through the penultimate round of ALMO transfers, and Chaffer and his team will doubtless be watching the developments at some of their older siblings with interest. ALMOs exist, of course, theoretically at least, purely as a vehicle to deliver Decent Homes Standard, and the exact nature of their future beyond the original 2010 deadline, more recently extended to 2012, remains something of a mystery. Chaffer, however, is convinced that the model has a future well beyond its initial stated purpose: “Looking at the government papers that are coming out at the moment, I’m sure there’s a future for ALMOs because of how successful they’ve been,” he says. “The first round ones will doubtless lead the way in terms of what the later ones will do in future. I think some are likely to become self-funding through the housing Revenue Account, some may well venture into stock transfer, and others may begin to delve into development work, as we’re already seeing,

“Ultimately, we’ll all have to look into expanding the stock we manage – we operate in a perverse business environment where the main business actually decreases over time through Right to Buy, so reversing that trend will be key to the future of all ALMOs.”

Further uncertainty surrounding the future of Dale & Valley could arise from the local government reorganisation in the Northeast which will see Wear Valley and seven other authorities combine to form the new County Durham Unitary Authority. Again, Chaffer is calm about the possible implications of merging the authorities, each with potentially different approaches to social housing provision: “Our approach is to ensure that we progress from being a twostar to a three-star organisation,” he says. “Our future safety rests quite simply on improving services and being a topclass provider.”

It’s certainly a simple enough approach, but the most direct route can often be the most effective. The doors and windows contract, for example, is set to bring improvements to more than half of our customers’ homes within the first 18 months of the ALMO life. Chaffer explains that this was the reasoning behind separating this contract from the main Decent Homes work – in order for the maximum number of residents to see the maximum improvements to their homes in the minimum time, and such commitment to the quality of service can only be a benefit to residents themselves.