You are viewing 1 of your 1 free articles
Greater Manchester landlords to team up with NHS
Housing associations in Greater Manchester are set to team up with NHS organisations and care providers in the region, under draft plans by the combined authority.
The region’s housing strategy – published yesterday in draft form – reveals that Greater Manchester Housing Providers (GMHP) will be working more closely with the Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership.
This body, which is responsible for the devolved £6bn health and social care budget in the region, will be added to GMHP’s memorandum of understanding with the combined authority.
The strategy said: “The health of older people, children, disabled people and people with long-term illnesses is at a greater risk from poor housing conditions.
“Variable quality of homes is a driver of health inequalities, with those living in poverty more likely to live in poorer housing, unstable housing circumstances or lack accommodation altogether.”
READ MORE
Jon Lord, chair of GMHP, told Inside Housing that housing associations in Greater Manchester have already worked with NHS organisations, but that this will enable a much closer way of working.
An example of co-working could include helping homeless people with health issues, ensuring that people coming out of hospital have homes to go to, he added.
Other plans in this area, he said, could be a “focus on halfway house-type provision, keeping people in their properties longer, doing work on the properties around disability and adaptations that allow people to go home quicker and enable them to stay there for longer”.
The housing strategy – the first to be published by a Greater Manchester mayor – also said that the combined authority would “explore the benefits of a co-ordinated Greater Manchester housing allocations framework as one way to improve the accessibility and availability of social housing”.
According to Mr Lord, this means allowing housing providers in different local authority areas to help out with other councils’ waiting lists.
He told Inside Housing: “We’re currently working with 10 different policies from 10 different local authorities. That’s never really come together. It’s a big and complex task that has been tried before to bring it into one system.
“That can be clunky, but one of the things we’re looking at is putting a framework around them so that broadly you’re looking at the same set of principles in terms of rehousing people, making it easier for people to apply from one borough to another or move from one borough to another.”
