Meet Cath, your new landlady...

IN the hot seat . . . Cath Green

THERE’S a new kid on the block in Oldham and Cath Green has put her head firmly on it. Mrs Green, from Chadderton, has taken over as chief executive of First Choice Homes Oldham which, in the next new few weeks, will undergo a massive and significant change of emphasis. MARTYN TORR interviews her.

FIRST Choice Homes, a 500-employee organisation manages the council’s estate of 11,500 properties as an ALMO — that’s an arms length management organisation to you and me.

Oldham Council owns the houses, flats, maisonettes, bungalows and sheltered accommodation which make up the borough’s largest tranche of social housing.

FCHO collects the rents and maintains, manages and generally looks after the properties and residents on behalf of the council.

All that is about to change. After a concerted campaign, FCHO has persuaded its customer base to vote for a change of emphasis and from January 17 FCHO will become a Registered Social Landlord.

This means FCHO will also own the properties it manages and will retain all of the rents it collects.

“This is a significant change of the organisation’s status,” Mrs Green told me during an hour-long chat at Medtia Square in Phoenix Street where the majority of the staff are based.

Brandishing the policy document which details how the change in status will benefit the residents, Mrs Green added: “This is our bible. We have made promises in this document and to make people believe we have to hit the ground running and deliver.

“We have stated, quite categorically, what we will do in the first 100 days and this has got to happen.”

The new-look organisation, which was voted for by seven out of eight tenants, will turnover in the region of £40 million in the first full year of operation, made up of social rents and associated service charges.

Over the life of its 30-year business plan, FCHO expects to invest more than £809 million in its properties and related infrastructure, calculated at current prices. The business plan is predicated on an intensive initial period of investment in the properties to bring them up to the Government’s Decent Homes standard hence the need for external funding.

The refurbishment of the properties will be funded by a £50 million loan provided by Santander.

The loan starts to be repaid after the initial 10-year investment period.

Raised on the open market, the monies will have to be repaid from rent revenues and Mrs Green, who has worked in the public sector for 28 years, is under no illusions about the future.

“We have to be very open and honest about this . . . with the social and welfare agenda of this Government, and the changes that are coming as a result of the cuts, we simply do not know what will happen in the months ahead.

“We have a financial inclusion team which will support our residents and our residents need to know that this support is there for them.”

Mrs Green, who is married and has one daughter, will draw on her experience of nearly 30 years in local government to steer the good ship FCHO through the new few months.

That experience started when she left school at 15 and took a job as a housing clerk with Rochdale Council. She left Rochdale in 2000 to take a job with Liverpool Council.

During 10 years as an executive director on Merseyside Mrs Green was responsible for housing, environmental issues and others.

Mrs Green said: “I am proud of the way I worked my way up the ladder.”

She readily admits she enjoyed her time, and the responsibility, and that she will miss her previous professional life, but . . . “I saw the advertisement for this job on a Saturday morning while I was a reading the Inside Housing magazine and thought to myself ‘I want this job’.

“Not having to travel to Liverpool everyday was only a small part of the equation — the job of leading First Choice Homes into a new era, and all that goes with it, was too much to resist.

“We are heading for an exciting new era and I want to make my contribution to delivering a new quality of life.

“As a team, all of us here at First Choice Homes have to prioritise delivering the promised that our residents voted for.”


In Cath’s first 100 days she wants to organise the installation of:
::200 kitchens

::200 bathrooms (including showers over baths)

200 replacement central heating systems

::communal area and stair-tower improvements affecting 200 homes

::four extra caretakers to improve services and carry out minor repairs

Cath also wants to:

::Speed up response times for repairs — emergency repairs attended within three hours and completed within four hours

::Respond to serious anti-social behaviour issues in 24 hours

::Introduce a handyman service to undertake tenants’ own improvements for a small charge