Click here for Housing Strategy 2005 - 2010
Leicester City Council offers one of the most comprehensive and successful housing services in the country. We provide a wide range of front-line services for individuals and communities – services that make a huge difference to the quality of day-to-day life in the City.
Housing is not just about bricks and mortar. The condition of your home affects many other aspects of life: your health, how well your children are doing at school, how much money you have left at the end of the week, your sense of personal safety, the stability of life in your neighbourhood and the extent to which you engage in life in the wider community.
The housing service in Leicester has a strong track record of achievement, both in our own right and in partnership with other public, private and voluntary sector agencies.
The City Council is the biggest landlord in Leicester, letting, managing and maintaining approximately 22,200 homes across the City. As landlord our responsibilities include collecting rent, handling transfers and exchanges, providing help and advice on tenancy issues and dealing with incidents of racial harassment and other anti-social behaviour.
We deal with all the day-to-day repairs for our properties, gas servicing and annual gas inspections and also carry out large scale modernisation and improvement projects. These major programmes include providing new PVCu windows and doors, re-roofing, re-wiring, re-cladding and refurbishing kitchens and bathrooms.
We enjoy very effective tenant and resident consultation and participation with Tenant and Residents Associations (TARAs) across the city, making sure that services are designed and delivered to meet customers’ needs.
We are also concerned with private sector housing, especially in areas where high proportions of housing are unfit or in poor condition. Over the many years of our pioneering Renewal Strategy, thousands of inner-city homes have been renovated through grant aid and with the help of our locally-based staff. Associated services, such as home maintenance and crime prevention, help keep properties in good order and encourage a sense of community safety.
We work in partnership with housing associations and developers to renovate existing properties, bring empty homes back into use and build new properties, in particular to meet the need for particular types of accommodation, such as accessible, life-time housing or larger homes for BME families.
Providing services for people who are homeless or are threatened with homelessness is another key area of our work. In partnership with other public and voluntary sector organisations we offer advice and information, temporary accommodation in hostels, medical care, and family support.
Alongside this we run projects to prevent homelessness and help create sustainable communities, such as Supported Housing, Community Care and STAR. Our Housing Options Centre offers a broad a range of advice and information for people with housing problems across all tenures.
Housing for older and disabled people is also a priority. We own 15 sheltered housing schemes, run an emergency alarm service and provide home adaptations for disabled people, ranging from the installation of simple grab rails to complete ground-floor bathroom extensions.
Homes cost money: through Housing Benefit we help homeowners, council and private tenants across all tenures pay their rent and Council Tax and sustain their homes. We now also run the Council Tax collection service for the City. We work with the Supporting People programme to channel funding to meet the housing and housing support needs of the most vulnerable of our citizens.
Housing also makes a major contribution to improving energy efficiency in Leicester. District heating schemes, dramatic improvements to the energy efficiency of our council housing through modern heating systems, loft and cavity wall insulation, PVCu double glazed doors and windows, and Energy Sense all play their part.
Energy Sense offers an integrated service across all tenures to help householders increase the energy efficiency of their homes, make them healthier places to live in, and reduce waste and pollution.
