Ipswich Borough Council is the largest Local Authority Registered Provider of social housing in Suffolk with just under 7,900 homes. This brings with it great responsibility and accountability for providing decent, energy efficient and safe housing across all its housing assets, as well as providing services that are well managed and transparent.

Maintenance and Contracts is the Council service area that is responsible for managing the Council’s Housing Revenue Account property stock. We do this by ensuring the Council’s homes meet the Government national standards for social housing – the Decent Homes Standard.

The Council’s Executive has recently approved the adoption of a new Housing Asset Management Strategy.

The strategy seeks to address how the Council will respond to some significant events in Social Housing highlighted recently in national news, such as the Grenfell Tower tragedy. This has led to a new raft of legislation such as Building Safety Act, Fire Safety legislation and the Social Housing Act. The Social Housing Act now places specific responsibilities on social providers that are outlined in four new consumer standards.

The new Asset Management Strategy is based on ten key priorities, which are:

• Ensuring our homes are safe and secure
• Delivering effective and efficient repairs and maintenance
• Improving the quality and decency of our homes and neighbourhoods
• Ensuring, intelligent, data-led asset management
• Decarbonising our homes
• Modernisation our sheltered housing accommodation
• Regenerating, developing and evolving our portfolio of homes
• Embracing technology and digital approaches
• Delivering an excellent customer experience
• Having the right resources in place to deliver our work

Delivering these priorities will ensure we meet emerging legislation around safe homes, take a solid approach to asset management over the coming years, as well as providing a strong foundation for the future. In this way and most importantly, we can sustain a portfolio of homes that are safe, decent, suitable, and fit for purpose for our tenants.

If you are a tenant, you can contact the Council online about your home.

You can find out how to book repairs to your home online.