Nottingham council to extend housing deal with management firm

Nottingham city council is looking to sign a new partnership agreement with Nottingham City Homes (NCH), the housing management company wholly owned by the council, in a deal lasting up to 30 years.

NCH has looked after the council’s housing operation as an arm’s-length management organisation since 2005. It oversees 27,000 homes and has recently embarked on building new homes for council tenants.

A meeting of the council’s executive board will decide on 19 March whether or not to approve the new deal.

The current partnership agreement was signed in 2011 and has two years to run, but Nottingham council said the existing arrangement was outdated: “It does not reflect how the relationship between the council and NCH has grown over the last eight years.”

The council said the partnership also failed to acknowledge NCH’s new role as a housebuilder.

NCH said it had built more than 500 new council homes throughout the course of the existing agreement, “the first new-build programme of council homes in a generation”.

Nick Murphy, NCH’s chief executive, said: “With the council’s support we are determined to build more affordable housing for people on our waiting list.”