Published on:
08
April 2013
Clackmannanshire Council is launching a major new scheme which will offer significant support to residents adapting, repairing and maintaining their homes.
Councillors agreed to establish a Supported Owners' Service, which will be available to homeowners and private tenants in Clackmannanshire to adapt, repair and maintain their homes. Assistance ranges from advice and information to financial help.
Priorities were set by the Council in 2010 with limited resources set aside for mandatory private sector disabled adaptations and to those properties in poorest condition.
While range of works eligible for funding is restricted, the minimum grant has increased from 50% to 80% of costs, and there is no upper limit.
Housing Convener, Councillor Les Sharp, said: "Since the pilot of the Private Sector Housing Assistance Scheme in 2010, cash spent has increased year on year. It is anticipated there will be £190,000 spent in 2012/13, an increase from £120,500 in 2010/11 and £141,400 in 2011/12.
"The Clackmannanshire Housing Strategy ensures that the Council provide a service to help older owner occupiers and tenants of private landlords to improve and adapt their homes, particularly as their needs change through age or infirmity.
"In Clackmannanshire our aim is to support older people to remain at home for as long as possible for quality of life, choice and expenditure reasons.
"From experience across the shared Clackmannanshire and Stirling social service, we know that these types of services can contribute considerably to this aim by providing support for essential repairs, such as keeping homes wind and watertight, as well as adaptations and minor repairs that prevent slips, trips and falls, avoiding unnecessary hospital admissions."
Assistance for older and disabled people to organise, and pay for, significant repair works will be carried out with funds set aside for the Private Housing Assistance Scheme.
Making better use of existing housing and bringing empty properties back into residential use is also a priority in the Housing Strategy.
The Council has successfully bid for £75,000 for 2012/13 through the Empty Homes Loan Fund. The focus of the scheme is to work with private landlords to bring back into use ten one bedroom properties in town centres.
The owners of these long term vacant properties will receive assistance up to a maximum of £10,000, through an interest free loan from the Council of £7,500, funded by the Government, and a one-off grant of £2,500, funded through the Council's Private Sector Housing budget.
Councillor Sharp added: "The owners will be assisted in becoming private landlords if they are not already renting. The properties require to be let for a minimum period of five years on a priority basis to young, single people who are homeless, threatened with homelessness or who are on the common housing register."
The rent level will be set at a rate which will meet full housing benefit thresholds for single people under 35 years - around £60 per week.