Customer Outcome 2: A Sustainable Improved Quality of Life

Within this Customer Outcome the key aims are:

• Ensuring the Borough offers a quality living environment for everyone, with access to good facilities including clean and attractive open spaces.
• Helping people to live longer, healthier lives
• Ensuring the Borough's residents have a good cultural "offer".
• Sustaining the quality living environment for future generations.
• Enabling people to enjoy a high quality independent life in their own homes and communities for as long as possible and when this is no longer possible ensuring more intensive care is available.
• Reducing crime and the fear of crime within our communities.
• Ensuring quality and choice in the local housing market across all tenures with the availability of sufficient decent, affordable and sustainable housing to meet the needs of all of the Borough's residents including those with special housing needs.
• Ensuring access to lifelong learning opportunities for learning and creativity to help everyone achieve their potential for quality of life and prosperity.

Within this Customer Outcome local people have identified four priority areas:

1. To reduce the fear and incidence of crime and disorder

We want to:

• Reduce all types of crime, anti-social behaviour, and the fear that these generate.

2. To provide a cleaner, greener, more sustainable Borough

We want:

• A pleasant living environment for everyone to enjoy, with access to good facilities including clean and attractive open spaces.
• To achieve this through sustainable processes that will not adversely effect the environment for future generations.

3. To address housing issues and deliver the Decent Homes Standard by 2012

We want to:

• Make sure that we achieve the national target of bringing all social housing into a decent condition by 2012.
• Tackle access to affordable housing, the quality of private sector stock, and disabled access to housing.

4. To improve transport facilities throughout the Borough

We want to:

• Make sure that our transport facilities allow people to access the services and access work, health, leisure and shopping.
• Improve bus services and the other forms of local transport.
• Look after the safety of road users and pedestrians.
• Ensure the maintenance of roads and pavements.

The Commissioning Strategies supporting this Outcome and its Priorities are: the Crime and Disorder Reduction Strategy 2005-2008; the Community Strategy; the Diversity Strategy; the Economic Development Strategy 2003-2006; the Housing Strategy and Investment Programme; the Sustainability Strategy; the Local Transport Plan; Local Agenda 21; and the Unitary Development Plan.

Two major developments, the establishment of the Care Trust and the delivery of our Decent Homes Programme through our Arms Length Management Organisation (ALMO), Solihull Community Housing, are key to the achievement of this Customer Outcome.

A Care Trust for the Borough

The Solihull Care Trust was established on 1 October 2006 bringing together the Solihull Primary Care Trust and the Council's Adult Social Services. It is responsible for improving health, reducing health inequalities, and commissioning health and social care on behalf of Solihull residents. There is a Partnership Agreement, which establishes the relationship between the Council and the Care Trust and an Annual Strategic Agreement, which sets targets and identifies resources. Although the Care Trust now delivers Adult Social Services, Solihull Council remains accountable.

The Care Trust unifies planning and decision making, and enables the timely delivery comprehensive packages of health and social care. The Care Trust has been challenged to ensure that the patient, service user or carer is always at the forefront of the planning of new, and improvement of existing services. Our customers will have:

• A clearer idea of who is providing the services, as they will come from one organisation, the Care Trust, and be delivered by staff employed by the Care Trust.
• Services delivered in a more efficient and responsive manner.
• Improved communications and less duplication of functions which has often caused frustration.

Housing - Solihull Community Housing our Arms Length Management Organisation (ALMO)

Solihull Community Housing (SCH) provides housing services on behalf of Solihull Council. SCH manages 10,722 council properties.

SCH was born out of the need to renovate Solihull Council houses and achieve the government target of bringing all social housing up to a decent condition by 2012. Management of Solihull Council's homes transferred to SCH on 1 April 2004.

In May 2008 SCH was rated a three-star (or ‘excellent’) organisation with ‘excellent prospects for improvement’ by the Audit Commission, making it the first three-star ALMO in the West Midlands.

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