Working for Housing & Communities
Help forge our future to achieve our ambition
Welcome
from Kathryn Jones, Director for Housing & Communities
Dudley borough has been a great place to call home for over 1,000 years and through our borough vision we are continuing our exciting journey as we look to forge a future for all.
Now, more than ever, Housing Services play an integral role in supporting our customers and communities. Here in Dudley borough we are lucky to have retained our stock of nearly 22,000 homes and we have huge ambitions to continuously improve our services, placing our customers at the heart of everything that we do. Our Housing and Communities Directorate includes the advertising, letting and management of our homes, and supporting our customers to maintain their tenancies and live as part of a cohesive community. We have in-house teams dedicated to repairing and maintaining our homes and keeping our customers, staff and stock safe, as well as ambitious plans for the regeneration of our existing homes and development of new homes to provide much needed housing in the borough. We have statutory duties around homelessness, community safety and private sector housing and place great importance on delivering our legal and regulatory duties, including but not limited to those around compliance and consumer standards.
This is an exciting time for housing services in Dudley and recruiting a cohesive, ambitious Heads of Service Team will be key to embedding and driving forward the culture of customer focused continuous improvement that will enable us to deliver upon our vision both for housing services and for Dudley Council.
If you thrive in a fast paced environment and have a passion for innovation and great customer service them we want to hear from you!
We are committed to working in partnership to create a cleaner, greener, affordable and attractive place to live.
Dudley borough has over 129,000 residential properties, including more than 21,000 council homes.
Our priorities are to:
-
provide excellent services by ensuring efficient and effective services that provide best value for tenants
-
offer high quality housing by implementing a 30-year asset management strategy to ensure a viable business for current and future tenants
-
working in partnership with others to ensure that appropriate joint service interventions are in place to support our customers and communities
The borough’s council housing stock is about much more than simply bricks and mortar and supports our work to build stronger communities in many ways. The Housing Revenue Account funded floating support services help reduce the impact on statutory adults and children’s social care services whilst significant housing investment in adaptations benefits the NHS and helps people retain their independence.
Through an extensive multi-million pound package of regeneration and housing projects, we are making it clear that it is Dudley’s time to build, connect and grow.
Exciting new-build housing programmes over the last year have added to one of the largest retained council managed housing stocks in England. The Housing Revenue Account (HRA) has an annual revenue budget of £103m and a typical capital programme of £47m, and represents a significant amount of the council’s total spend each year. It houses around 1 in 6 of everyone living in the borough, and employs over 450 staff.
In October 2019 our ten-year housing asset management strategy was agreed to tackle challenges such as managing void properties and investing in our existing house stock, whilst also taking opportunities to invest in ensuring we provide quality affordable housing to help regenerate communities and meet our diverse and growing housing needs. The removal of the HRA cap potentially unlocks a further £100m of extra borrowing capacity for capital investment in new and existing stock over the next ten years.
These investment activities in housing will present the opportunity for significant direct additional employment and apprenticeship opportunities.
Increased connectivity will support our housing regeneration priorities by improving connectivity to areas of housing development opportunity. From the Midland Metro extension and DY5 Enterprise Zone, to the unique Very Light Rail scheme and the innovative Institute of Technology plans, we are making great strides in growing the economy and creating jobs.
Dudley Housing Partnership
Dudley Council works with 13 housing associations currently operating in the borough. The Dudley Housing Partnership sets priorities and oversees work to meet housing needs across the borough, contributing to regeneration and resilient communities. It co-ordinates partnership work to respond to, and influence, changing housing markets and the housing aspirations of people in Dudley.
The Council also works in partnership with a wide range of environmental organisations and voluntary and community organisations, including friends of nature reserves and parks and In Bloom groups to make the borough an attractive place.
Working together to improve our communities
In Dudley our strong, diverse communities express our pride of place and provide the foundation to forge a future we can be equally proud of.
There is a clear vision which is ensuring that collectively the council is working for communities today and building for tomorrow.
To achieve this we:
-
are committed to dedicating time to proper and meaningful consultation and listening to the views of our residents
-
are working with local communities and encourage active involvement of our residents
-
are actively working with the voluntary sector to establish new ways of delivering value for money services, and are committed to encouraging the growth of a social enterprise culture
In an effort to ensure we grow safer and resilient communities, we have a strong history of people working together to improve their local communities. Community forum meetings are open to local people and provide a great opportunity for local councillors, police, local organisations/businesses and residents to come together on a regular basis.
Many of the issues and concerns about local areas can only be addressed by working together to come up with solutions. Engaging with our communities is vital and we use a variety of face to face and digital channels to keep people informed and get residents involved.
Targeted engagement with tenants and residents is done through the housing service in the form of Tenants and Residents Associations (TRAs), local estate forums, estate walkabouts, surveys, High Rise Living Forum, and networking events.
Dudley Federation of Tenants and Residents Associations is the umbrella group for TRAs across the borough and offers an important link to our communities. Meanwhile Dudley’s Housing Board provides a community based scrutiny function of the housing service, to help to ensure that services meet residents’ needs and are of the highest standard. The board comprises of up to 11 community volunteers, the cabinet member for housing, and communities, and cross-party councillor representation.
The housing and communities team
The housing and communities service is provided through the following service areas: Community Housing, Housing Strategy, Assets & Development, Community Safety, and Housing Maintenance, with each area having a head of service.
Our existing service plan and performance indicators are being reviewed to ensure the service is customer focused. There are certain key areas where we want to improve performance further, and there are pockets of good practice, some of which have been externally recognised.
The service is well represented in a variety of partnerships and that approach has worked well.
Supporting the housing team
The council has been committed to the health and wellbeing of its workforce for some time and has gained accreditation to the Workplace Wellbeing Charter, and achieved gold standard for the WMCA Thrive at Work commitment.
Through the council’s in-house housing maintenance team, Dudley became the first local authority to become a member of ‘Mates in Mind’, a mental health forum established by the Health in Construction Leadership Group, as part of our wider action plan of improving and supporting mental health within the team.
Recruitment Timetable
-
Closing date: 1 November 2022
-
First round of interviews: 9 and 10 November 2022
-
Second round of interviews: 14 November 2022
For further information contact:
-
Kathy Jones, Director of Housing and Communities
Kathryn.Jones@dudley.gov.uk
To apply for any of the Heads of Service roles please click on the following link.