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Losing £1m of funding is a hammerblow for RBH (a private company) but I remain convinced that long term it might be a good thing.
They are notorious for chasing a 'growth at all costs' strategy, which sees them spending money acquiring land and planning new projects whilst their existing tenants face awful support, deteriorating standards and, in seemingly lots of cases, unsafe homes.
If losing £1m means growth projects are put on hold, and instead for a year or two they focus on fixing the issues within their business (including IMO a full safety inspection of every single property they have, & making right any issues) then that might be a good thing.
[Post edited 24 Nov 2022 14:02]
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More bad publicity for the town on 13:43 - Nov 24 with 4789 views
More bad publicity for the town on 13:12 - Nov 24 by HullDale
Losing £1m of funding is a hammerblow for RBH (a private company) but I remain convinced that long term it might be a good thing.
They are notorious for chasing a 'growth at all costs' strategy, which sees them spending money acquiring land and planning new projects whilst their existing tenants face awful support, deteriorating standards and, in seemingly lots of cases, unsafe homes.
If losing £1m means growth projects are put on hold, and instead for a year or two they focus on fixing the issues within their business (including IMO a full safety inspection of every single property they have, & making right any issues) then that might be a good thing.
[Post edited 24 Nov 2022 14:02]
Absolutely bang on. RBH are shite , shite at doing the basics of customer service, terrible at repairing properties that they own. Their very highly paid higher management have failed. I honestly think that they don't really care about the poor tenants who have to put up with shitty conditions, maybe because they can't relate to their problems. They don't listen to the residents, or certainly the majority of College Bank residents who are opposed to the knocking down of perfectly good homes, that would be ok with a decent maintenance schedule. Their rents have shot up, costing both local and national government more in benefits, as well as residents themselves. When under Rochdale Council both the rents paid and service received was better. I for one would welcome it's return to Council control, it should never have been let go, but Councils were being squeezed at the time and they were promised a lot of money for building more properties and also for maintenance at the time.
The government however do not come out of this blame free. They have had 12 years to sort out the many problems in the private and social housing rent market.
Saw that on the news last night, you would imagine they would be up for sponsoring the Club...... perhaps we should become Rochdale Rashers ( not to be confused with the Rochdale Mashers)
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More bad publicity for the town on 16:59 - Nov 24 with 4464 views
If that's the same firm as the one in Whitefield they are decent to work for also, know a few lads that drive there and the company looks after them well...
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More bad publicity for the town on 20:01 - Nov 24 with 4265 views
There are major problems concerning social housing which used to belong to local authorities. My grandmother used to refer to them as "corporation houses" and many people still know them as "council houses" even though most of the old Housing Departments have morphed into housing associations. This was because all of those properties built in the late 1940s and early 1960s (Kirkholt being a classic example) all needed plenty of renovations by the time we reached the turn of the century. New bathrooms and kitchens for example, new roofs, rewiring. Councils weren't allowed to borrow money for this purpose though under legislation from central government so the solution was to form autonomous bodies like RBH to do the work. The other issue is that a lot of the prefabricated flats which were so fashionable in the 1970's are now showing their design flaws. Ashfield Valley was a mess from the moment it was built and Freehold and Lower Falinge seem to be just as bad. What are RBH's priorities though? Do they continue to maintain and improve existing properties or build new ones to meet a growing housing shortage? There isn't enough cash in the pot to do both unfortunately.
More bad publicity for the town on 12:31 - Nov 25 by EllDale
There are major problems concerning social housing which used to belong to local authorities. My grandmother used to refer to them as "corporation houses" and many people still know them as "council houses" even though most of the old Housing Departments have morphed into housing associations. This was because all of those properties built in the late 1940s and early 1960s (Kirkholt being a classic example) all needed plenty of renovations by the time we reached the turn of the century. New bathrooms and kitchens for example, new roofs, rewiring. Councils weren't allowed to borrow money for this purpose though under legislation from central government so the solution was to form autonomous bodies like RBH to do the work. The other issue is that a lot of the prefabricated flats which were so fashionable in the 1970's are now showing their design flaws. Ashfield Valley was a mess from the moment it was built and Freehold and Lower Falinge seem to be just as bad. What are RBH's priorities though? Do they continue to maintain and improve existing properties or build new ones to meet a growing housing shortage? There isn't enough cash in the pot to do both unfortunately.
Rochdale planning officers are an absolute nightmare in my recent experience.
More bad publicity for the town on 12:31 - Nov 25 by EllDale
There are major problems concerning social housing which used to belong to local authorities. My grandmother used to refer to them as "corporation houses" and many people still know them as "council houses" even though most of the old Housing Departments have morphed into housing associations. This was because all of those properties built in the late 1940s and early 1960s (Kirkholt being a classic example) all needed plenty of renovations by the time we reached the turn of the century. New bathrooms and kitchens for example, new roofs, rewiring. Councils weren't allowed to borrow money for this purpose though under legislation from central government so the solution was to form autonomous bodies like RBH to do the work. The other issue is that a lot of the prefabricated flats which were so fashionable in the 1970's are now showing their design flaws. Ashfield Valley was a mess from the moment it was built and Freehold and Lower Falinge seem to be just as bad. What are RBH's priorities though? Do they continue to maintain and improve existing properties or build new ones to meet a growing housing shortage? There isn't enough cash in the pot to do both unfortunately.
I watched a few TV bits last night on this, and it was confirmed several times that the £1m in lost funding to RBH was money designated specifically for building additional new homes.
As I mentioned further up, you can only hope this focuses their attention ok fixing the massive problems with their existing portfolio before looking to expand further.
Short term it might mean less people moving into the borough, as G4S (who RBH work closely with) will have to work with other locations, but if that means people in existing RBH properties get better service and live in safer houses that can only be a good thing.
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More bad publicity for the town on 14:08 - Nov 25 with 3603 views
The £1m lost for now is small beer. Homes England grants for Housing Associations remain significant and if RBH get their act together they will be able to ask for some of it. Or an alternative Housing Assocation can simply ask for cash to build houses in the borough. Its not a territory thing and RBH doesn't have a monopoly.
One thing about Freehold that hasn't been made clear - despite the refurbs that have gone on there over the years, the buildings are still poor. Isn't it best to have a plan to knock them down and build decent alternatives? The £1m could have been spent helping to do that.
Whilst RBH is a private company, it is a not for profit business and is accountable to the Social Housing Regulator. The latter will be under scrutiny by Michael Gove now. Whether you love him or hate him, Gove does drive action. He was the only person in housing in the past 5 years to do something constructive on cladding. He now needs to sort the Housing Associations that are failing. But where is the council in all this? They are required to inspect social housing to ensure it meets minimum standards.
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More bad publicity for the town on 10:48 - Nov 26 with 3138 views
More bad publicity for the town on 17:07 - Nov 25 by Dalenet
The £1m lost for now is small beer. Homes England grants for Housing Associations remain significant and if RBH get their act together they will be able to ask for some of it. Or an alternative Housing Assocation can simply ask for cash to build houses in the borough. Its not a territory thing and RBH doesn't have a monopoly.
One thing about Freehold that hasn't been made clear - despite the refurbs that have gone on there over the years, the buildings are still poor. Isn't it best to have a plan to knock them down and build decent alternatives? The £1m could have been spent helping to do that.
Whilst RBH is a private company, it is a not for profit business and is accountable to the Social Housing Regulator. The latter will be under scrutiny by Michael Gove now. Whether you love him or hate him, Gove does drive action. He was the only person in housing in the past 5 years to do something constructive on cladding. He now needs to sort the Housing Associations that are failing. But where is the council in all this? They are required to inspect social housing to ensure it meets minimum standards.
Good post, you also have to ask questions about the building of concrete appartment blocks in the wettest town in the country in the first place. Whilst you can repair individual houses, repairing whole blocks brings problems on a much bigger scale and cost. Equally Gove should acknowledge that sending poor people to live in poor towns at the rate that has been going on for the last decade reduces the options for the councils to knock down some of their outdated housing stock and replace it simply because here is nowhere to put people who need to be moved. This isnt really an RBH problem, it is more the manifestation of the bleeding obvious... the demand for housing is out stripping our ability to supply it, be it "suitable" or not. Apparently we need to build a new house every 5 minutes to satisfy the demand estimated at 300,000 a year.....its never going to happen! In 2019 the government awarded Serco a £2bn contract to house and support 20,000 Asylum Seekers in the NW, E midlands and the East, Serco are anticipated to make £150m a year from the contract. Imagine if that money had been put against new / replacement housing. https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-serco-group-contract-idUKKCN1P216Z
All this simply proves that we do not have the infrastucture required to house a population that has as many as 500,000 new arrivals every year in addition to the demand for better homes from the existing population and that building quick-fix solutions only results in huge longer term problems that cost more to sort out.
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More bad publicity for the town on 11:49 - Nov 26 with 3079 views
I’m not sure you can build that many new homes for £1m or even buy the land to build them on. Councils have, in the main, transferred their housing stock to housing associations like RBH. Not only have these not got the capital to build new properties but they struggle to fund planned or emergency maintenance because their main revenue stream comes from rents. There is a capped limit to how much these can rise annually and it’s estimated that in some areas 40% of rents are directly paid by the state in the form of benefits so it’s hitting the taxpayer if these are increased anyway. As for 1960s architecture…..I remember when I worked for the local authority in Calderdale that they wanted to renovate three blocks of high rise flats near to Halifax town centre. Call it 300 dwellings for a round figure. When they started the work it was discovered that the buildings were full of asbestos so everything was stopped and the tenants all decanted out. That was probably 600 people for whom homes had to be located. The blocks then remained empty for over ten years because it would be cheaper to demolish them entirely rather than strip the asbestos and there wasn’t even the money to fund demolition. They were finally ripped down and around 50 nice terraced properties built on the site but that’s still a loss of 250 dwellings.
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More bad publicity for the town on 14:17 - Nov 26 with 2984 views
I have no sympathy with RBH, they're nor fir for purpose. Why has no-one mentioned or apparently considered or pursued corporate manslaughter by gross negligence?
A young lad has - avoidably - lost his life here. There should be no hiding place for anyone.
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More bad publicity for the town on 15:24 - Nov 27 with 2668 views
More bad publicity for the town on 11:49 - Nov 26 by EllDale
I’m not sure you can build that many new homes for £1m or even buy the land to build them on. Councils have, in the main, transferred their housing stock to housing associations like RBH. Not only have these not got the capital to build new properties but they struggle to fund planned or emergency maintenance because their main revenue stream comes from rents. There is a capped limit to how much these can rise annually and it’s estimated that in some areas 40% of rents are directly paid by the state in the form of benefits so it’s hitting the taxpayer if these are increased anyway. As for 1960s architecture…..I remember when I worked for the local authority in Calderdale that they wanted to renovate three blocks of high rise flats near to Halifax town centre. Call it 300 dwellings for a round figure. When they started the work it was discovered that the buildings were full of asbestos so everything was stopped and the tenants all decanted out. That was probably 600 people for whom homes had to be located. The blocks then remained empty for over ten years because it would be cheaper to demolish them entirely rather than strip the asbestos and there wasn’t even the money to fund demolition. They were finally ripped down and around 50 nice terraced properties built on the site but that’s still a loss of 250 dwellings.
The reason that the Councils set up Arms Length Management Organisations like RBH was to transfer the housing stock off their books because the potential bills faced by Councils to ensure the stock meets the decent homes standard would have been financially calamitous for them all.
They always seem to have 'to grow' in their objectives but they never seem to go into detail as to how this is to be achieved.
The gall of the bloke not to fall on his sword was astonishing, plus how could any of these flats pass an inspection. I would love for these inspection teams to go and live in them for a month.
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More bad publicity for the town on 17:17 - Nov 27 with 2574 views
More bad publicity for the town on 15:24 - Nov 27 by watford_dale
The reason that the Councils set up Arms Length Management Organisations like RBH was to transfer the housing stock off their books because the potential bills faced by Councils to ensure the stock meets the decent homes standard would have been financially calamitous for them all.
They always seem to have 'to grow' in their objectives but they never seem to go into detail as to how this is to be achieved.
The gall of the bloke not to fall on his sword was astonishing, plus how could any of these flats pass an inspection. I would love for these inspection teams to go and live in them for a month.
In the immortal words of Fred Dibnah,, " the country was built by men in overalls and ruined by men in suits".
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More bad publicity for the town on 18:24 - Nov 27 with 2521 views
More bad publicity for the town on 14:17 - Nov 26 by turnthescrew
I have no sympathy with RBH, they're nor fir for purpose. Why has no-one mentioned or apparently considered or pursued corporate manslaughter by gross negligence?
A young lad has - avoidably - lost his life here. There should be no hiding place for anyone.
Just like Grenfell
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More bad publicity for the town on 12:19 - Dec 1 with 2011 views
More bad publicity for the town on 15:01 - Nov 24 by 49thseason
Saw that on the news last night, you would imagine they would be up for sponsoring the Club...... perhaps we should become Rochdale Rashers ( not to be confused with the Rochdale Mashers)
We could have an away strip that looks like a bacon rasher
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More bad publicity for the town on 14:08 - Dec 1 with 1915 views
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