New quality standard to improve council housing (From This is The West Country)

New quality standard to improve council housing

10:27am Monday 3rd September 2012 in Cornwall

Cornwall Housing Ltd says it has set a new housing quality standard designed to improve the council housing stock across Cornwall.

The Cornish Housing Standard has been created jointly by tenants and officers from Cornwall Housing and will be Cornwall Council ’s new benchmark for the quality of its houses, which it says raises the bar above the level originally set by the Government ’s Decent Homes Standard in 2001.

The new standard will apply both to the Council’s existing council housing stock of 10,700 homes, as well as to the new homes Cornwall Housing plans to develop in the coming years.

 Adrian Pengelly, director of assets at Cornwall Housing said: “Cornwall Housing is committed to providing top quality social houses. We’ve committed to providing our tenants housing with improved standards of heating, insulation and security, and with facilities that are up to date and fire safe.

"To achieve this, we’ve set ourselves a five year target to bring all our existing housing stock up to the higher standards. This means a massive step forward for our tenants, leading to improvements in the health and wellbeing of our communities.”

Mark Kaczmarek, Cornwall Council’s cabinet member for housing and planning, said: “Better homes means better lifestyles and improved community cohesion – and I’m committed to that. This is why Cornwall Council has adopted a housing manifesto which is supporting the acceleration of improvements to council houses, as well as at least £19 million for new social housing over the next four years. The raising of the quality of homes we expect forms an integral part of the manifesto, and I am hopeful that the new 'Cornish Housing Standard' will be adopted more widely in the future.”