Strategic Housing Investment Plan 2010 - Falkirk Council

Care and Repair
6.26 The Council’s Care and Repair scheme is aimed at helping older and disabled
people in the private sector to live independently in their own homes by offering
advice and assistance about the availability of financial assistance and how to
organise necessary repair and improvement works. PSHG meets the cost of
financial assistance whilst revenue costs in respect of staffing are met from the
General Fund Housing Revenue budget. A pilot Small Repairs Service to owner
occupiers and a pilot Handyman Service across all tenures have been ongoing
since 2008 and were made permanent services in June 2010. The cost of these
services will be met by PSHG together with a small charge to users
Wider Role Funding
6.27 The Scottish Government’s Wider Role Fund supports RSLs to undertake projects
in local communities which intend to make the life of people living there better.
Falkirk Council works in partnership with RSLs and other organisations to help
deliver these projects. The most recent use of Wider Role funding in the Council
area have been in relation to:
• £57k towards a pilot Environmental Project in Grangemouth,
• £122k towards The Older People’s Advice Project,
• £87k towards The Green Action Volunteers Project.
The fund has allocated £36m of Wider Role funding activity throughout Scotland
over the period 2008/9 – 2010/11, however levels of future funding will not be
known until the Spending Review is concluded.
Council Funding Streams
6.28 The Council also uses its own resources to meet the key strategic objectives
identified within the Strategic Community Plan, Single Outcome Agreement and
Local Housing Strategy and details of the various funding streams are set out
below.
Council New Build Programme
6.29 The Council continues to maximise the provision of new social housing locally by
adopting a ‘twin-track’ approach involving both direct provision by the Council and
partnership working with RSLs. This allows any HRA resources directed to new
house building to be complemented by external development funding from the
Scottish Government’s Affordable Housing Investment Programme. Such an
approach also provides a degree of certainty for RSL partners in their forward
planning of investment programmes in the Council area by identifying appropriate
development sites for housing partnership projects.
6.30 The Council’s new build programme now includes the delivery of an additional 120
new affordable social rented homes over the period of the SHIP (Appendix 1e).
The total cost of delivering these units is estimated to be approximately £12.07m,
comprising: £8.09m capital investment by the Council, a Council land contribution
of approximately £800k and £3.18m Scottish Government grant funding. The
details of the individual projects are contained within the SHIP templates (Appendix
1a) and in the Project Summary (Appendix 7).
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