Supplementary A - London Borough of Hillingdon

and will be sold at the end of the modernisation process to help recoup some of the capital
costs.
• Older persons’ residential care is now wholly provided by block and spot contracts from
independent sector providers. In 2003 the Council jointly commissioned, with Hillingdon
Primary Care Trust and Hillingdon Hospital NHS Trust, the development of additional
nursing home and intermediate care capacity on a site leased to the provider from the
Council. This development has increased the proportion of places available to Social
Services under block contract and has assisted its strategy to facilitate timely hospital
discharge and also prevent some service users from becoming permanently dependent on
residential and nursing care following short-term intensive health care.
• The bulk of the Housing Service’s property assets are considered in the Council’s Housing
Revenue Account Business Plan. This plan which deals with the housing stock, and the
shops, garages and other pieces of land located on housing estates, was passed “fit for
purpose” by GOL. It will be reviewed in 2007. This AMP will consider the Service’s future
requirements for staff office accommodation and the impact of its development activities on
the property portfolio.
• The Council set up an Arm’s Length Management Organisation (ALMO) on 1 May 2003 to
manage the Council’s housing stock. Hillingdon Homes Ltd has been operating very
successfully since then in support of the council’s strategic objectives. It achieved a 2 star
rating on inspection by the Audit Commission in March 2004 and is currently waiting the
outcome from its most recent inspection in November 2006. Hillingdon Homes is managing
the Council’s £60m Decent Homes programme and is on target to achieve the decent homes
standard for Hillingdon’s housing stock in 2008, two years before the government’s 2010
target.
• Hillingdon Homes, on behalf of the Council, carried out a review of HRA property. The
review identified many underutilised sites including garages, amenity and play areas, shops
and some other non-residential use buildings. One of the key objectives of this review is to
identify opportunities for releasing underutilised assets to facilitate an increase in the supply
of homes. This review will now be developed into an asset strategy which will look at how
these sites can be best used to meet the department’s service requirements, including
accommodation to meet adult social care modernisation programme and other housing
needs. The shopping parades were the subject of a separate study and this will form the
basis for a new strategy for the management of that portfolio.
• In 2004 a review was carried out of eight hostels in the HRA. The Council’s Cabinet
approved the redevelopment of these hostels as Phase 1 of the department’s asset strategy.
Five sites are being tendered during 2007 for partners to redevelop to provide affordable
housing. Part of one site will be redeveloped to provide twelve self contained flats as part of
the learning disability modernisation programme, and the remaining sites will be sold for
open market housing development.
• An HRA temporary accommodation hostel, Middlesex Lodge, was closed in December 2004
and the Council is building thirty two-bedroom flats for older people on the site. These new
homes are due to complete in April/May 2007 and most of the tenants will be moving from
larger council homes. These new tenants have had a lot of choice in the fit and finish of their
new homes. The council in conjunction with Hillingdon Homes has been successful in
attracting additional funding for extending six properties to provide larger homes. The
homes selected are those under occupied by tenants moving into the new Middlesex Lodge
development. There was a lot of interest in the new flats being built on the Middlesex Lodge
site, over 60 households have expressed an interest if there are future schemes of this type,
and the Council is looking to include similar schemes in its affordable housing development
programme.
• Five HRA garage courts have been developed to provide nineteen new council houses. The
last of these new council homes was completed in February 2006 and they are all occupied
by households from the Council’s housing register.
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