Housing office closure plan

Council tenants will be visited in their homes.

Over half of Nottingham City Council's housing-offices could close under new plans.

There are 34,000 council properties in Nottingham with 19 housing offices to deal with rent payments and problems, 10 of them may go.

Since the launch of a new 24 hour repair call-centre and a similar free phone card payment line, some of those offices are becoming redundant.

Among those offices earmarked for closure are Sneinton, Broxtowe, Hyson Green and the Victoria Centre.

No redundancies

Officials claim the measures are intended to reallocate existing funding rather than cut costs.

The council says there will be no job losses, instead staff from closed offices would be offered new community services, such as visiting tenants in their homes.

A prospective tenant who does not wish to be named spoke to the BBC about the proposed closure of his local office in Sneinton which currently manages nearly 2,000 homes and the reallocation of services to St. Ann's over a mile away.

He said: "It will certainly be inconvenient for myself because I have been coming here to make sure I'm on the waiting list and when they are going to locate me a property.

It is not a cost-cutting exercise. Lynne Pennington, Housing Director

"If this is closed I don't know the nearest housing office nearby.

"A lot of people I see here are mothers and single parents with children and prams.

"There's lots of hills from here to St. Ann's so I don't know how they would get up a hill and get back."

Many people are using the internet to access services and use the housing offices less.

The council also stated it has many tenants in massive arrears and will use the staff in the closed offices to offer help and support on getting out of debt to tenants in their own homes.

Hilly walk

Lynne Pennington, Director of Housing at the City Council told the BBC: ""It is not a cost cutting exercise

"We want to increase the number of staff going out to see people in their homes.

"This would see us taking the service to the tenants rather than expecting the tenants to come into the building.

"We would like to give tenants one person they could relate to for all their housing issues, if they are struggling paying rent, have got repairs issues, or noisy neighbours, then we can get someone out there to talk to them about that."

A final decision on the matter is expected to be made by a committee of tenants and officials in October.