City West wins award for how it dealt with Irlam explosion

City West Housing Trust’s efforts in the aftermath of the Irlam explosion have been recognised with an industry award.

The trust won the Tenant Participation Advisory Service’s (TPAS) Team of the Year title for the north region for the way it managed the incident in November last year.

City West Housing Trust’s chief Executive, Tim Doyle, said: “Our thoughts throughout the incident, and still to this day, are very much with those people who suffered as a result of the explosion.

“I’m delighted to say the lady who was badly injured in the explosion, Marie Burns, is due to leave hospital very shortly.

“Although you never want an incident like this to happen, once it occurred we had to manage it and we did this extremely well. It was a very demanding few days which saw a tremendous amount of effort and skill from many people.

“I am especially grateful to my staff who worked around the clock – their commitment was phenomenal with some refusing to go home and telling managers they would have to be sacked in order to stop them working.

He continued: “This award is for them and also our tenants and the wider Irlam community that played such an important part in the recovery process. Without their support it would have made a very difficult job much harder.”

City West’s approach saw a mass evacuation of hundreds of tenants with many needing temporary accommodation for several days and a huge multi-partner recovery operation required.

The day of the explosion saw staff arranging welfare and accommodation issues, providing food, blankets and hot drinks and trauma counselling for those who needed it.

Work was carried out to make sure pets were safe in kennels and catteries and the police and a security firm was organised to ensure vacated houses were not burgled.

More than 200 households spent the first night in either local hotels or with family and friends and City West staff were present at each hotel, while the housing office stayed open all night and took a huge number of enquiries.

Over 100 households went back to their homes just two days after the explosion.

Two and a half months after the incident:

• 172 families have returned to their original properties and are now settled
• 10 have been permanently re-housed
• 11 have been temporarily re-housed
• 5 are staying with family/friends long term
• 2 families have accepted properties and are now awaiting a move in date

City West now goes into the national TPAS final in July where it will compete for the overall title against other regional winners from central and southern England.