South Essex Homes, the Arms Length Management Organisation for Southend Borough Council is pleased to announce in partnership with their contractors they have reached the milestone of spending £10million of decent homes money so far in the 2009/10 financial year.

The decent homes money, totalling £58million, was unlocked following the successful inspection result released last year, where the organisation was awarded a 2 star with promising prospects result.

The decent homes money has been released to provide modern kitchen, bathrooms and improve insulation, roofing and other improvements.

Councillor Mark Flewitt, Lead member for Housing said:

“Much of the two star achievement and the release of monies was achieved through changing the culture of the organisation “South Essex Homes and the Council” to one of “can do”.

The 10 million spent has reinvested in decent homes for the future and for our tenants right now.

I know I can speak for my cabinet colleagues in saying how pleased we are with South Essex Homes and the partnership work they perform”.

Paul Longman, Group Manager- Property Services said;

“The decent homes funding is being used to improve properties that do not currently meet the Governments decent homes standard.

The next phase of investment to resident’s homes has funding of nearly £20 million which is available in the new financial year. The programme for this work is currently being prepared and the residents included in this programme will be contacted from April onwards.

This funding is really improving resident’s lives and the positive effects will be seen in the community for many years to come.”

Phil Lyons Chair of the Board said;

“This is a major milestone for the organisation and something we are really proud of – It is encouraging to hear from residents who have benefitted from the improvement works and the difference it is making. We’ve been working very hard with all of our contractors to ensure that when they go into someone’s home to do the work they keep disruptions to a minimum, but our residents have been amazing in what they have been prepared to put up with- and they still manage to make the workers a cup of tea!

However, this is just the start of a journey, although we’ve spent £10million so far we still have £3million to spend this year and nearly £20 million next year, which will mean that by the year end more than three quarters of resident’s homes, will be decent. This is a massive turnaround in just 2 years”

South Essex Homes closely monitor resident satisfaction on all areas, including decent home work. The satisfaction levels for this area, currently stand at 94% and is monitored following work being carried out.