Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council Home Page

Background

About Dudley - facts and figures
Dudley is a metropolitan borough in the West Midlands Region, and one of the four Black Country boroughs.

Housing Issues in the borough include

Affordability - Affordability of housing is a major issue for newly forming households as 31% cannot afford private rental and home ownership is beyond the reach of 43% of concealed households (ie people who are living with another household because they cannot afford to be in the housing market independently), even though 17% of them earn over £27,300 per year (national average earnings).

Market balance - Less than 4% of the housing stock within the Borough is for private rent so it is a priority to develop this sector to provide a more balanced housing market

Planning for population changes - It is projected that Dudley's population will increase by 1,500 people by 2021

Concealed Households
. 4.6% of households contained one or more households seeking accommodation (estimated total 5,789 households by 2007)
· Of the concealed households two thirds preferred owner occupation but
· 41% of households have incomes below £15,000 p a (compared to 28% UK average)

Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) Households - 47% of BME households said their home was too small compared with 43% of the wider population.

Support Needs - 28% of households (34,651) contain somebody with a support need.

Council Housing
· We are a stock retaining authority
· We have around 23500 homes, low void levels, little hard to let.
· We manage our homes and estates proactively and with a high level of local accountability to residents and elected members

Homelessness
· We have around 2000 presentations per year, full duty acceptances have been reduced from 813 in 2003/4 to 372 in 2006/7
· In our Homelessness Prevention and Response Team we have just six (FTE) Case Managers, although we are increasing this to eight. Their role is entirely generic, from receiving roofless clients through housing advice, homelessness investigations & decisions and case management until in settled accommodation.
· Our successes have been achieved through the commitment of our own staff and great relationships with our partners. Most of our projects have begun on a shoestring and grown into sustainable and cost effective services.
· We have a strong performance culture, but pride ourselves on balancing performance objectives with caring for all of our customers.
· We have targeted our resources by addressing each main cause in turn. We have already met the 2010 TA target and we are working hard on new preventative services, whilst we have always made the prevention of repeat homelessness a main priority, achieved through appropriate lettings, tenancy support and responsible housing management.
· We are a relatively low budget service that has achieved a lot but has lots more plans for the future!


Contact Details
For more information on any of the above, please feel free to contact us at Hsg.Advice@dudley.gov.uk

Regional Homelessness Champions Home Page