Northwards & the City Council

Who does what?

Northwards Housing is an arms length management organisation - or Almo for short. It is a 'limited company' which means it has independence from the City Council to make its own decisions.

Northwards manages your home and neighbourhood - collecting rent, ordering repairs and so on - and makes improvements to all housing. But Manchester City Council still owns all Northwards properties. You are still a council tenant, with the City Council as your landlord. There is no change to your rights and responsibilities.

Management agreement

The City Council pays Northwards a fee to manage the housing. The 'management agreement' is a legal document that sets out in detail the 'who-does-what' relationship between the two organisations. It includes arrangements for checking how Northwards performs to make sure we keep to high standards.

Here's how the major areas of housing responsibility are divided. . .

Northwards responsibilities
  • Deciding how to spend improvement money.
  • Employing contractors to make the improvements
  • Ordering repairs employing contractors.
  • Collecting rent, dealing with rent arrears and giving debt advice. More about rent
  • Dealing with empty homes.
  • Finding new tenants using the rehousing and home-exchange systems.
  • Consulting, informing and involving tenants in the housing service and improvements plans.
  • Making sure people keep to tenancy agreements, and taking action if they don't.
  • Managing local estates, providing a neighbourhood warden service, caretaking and sheltered housing.
  • Looking after the environment - dealing with untidy gardens, garages, maintaining land around homes and monitoring street cleaning.
  • Dealing with anti-social behaviour and neighbour nuisance incidents.
City Council responsibilities
  • Overall housing strategy - wider policy issues like promoting sustainable communities.
  • Setting the level of rent. More about rent
  • Dealing with claims for housing benefit and council tax benefit.
  • Setting the overall rehousing policy in consultation with Northwards.
  • Setting Northwards Housing's minimum service standards and monitoring its performance.
  • Dealing with Right to Buy applications.
  • Providing a service for homeless people.
  • Providing the Supporting People service and housing support for vulnerable people.
  • Setting the overall strategy and policy for tackling anti-social behaviour in consultation with Northwards. More about Council's anti-social behaviour policies (City Council website)

And of course the City Council still delivers all its other traditional (non-housing) services - education, leisure facilities, social services, libraries, street cleaning, bins, benefits and so on.

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