HAs plan to place staff in hospitals

The Greater Manchester Housing Providers Group, which includes 27 housing associations, and the combined authority on Friday signed a memorandum of understanding as part of regional talks. Landlords agreed to scale up a plan to place housing workers in hospitals and other NHS settings to rehouse patients who no longer need acute care but require help with housing.

The plan is already being trialled by three associations, including First Choice Homes Oldham, which since April has placed a staff member at Royal Oldham Hospital as part of its hospital discharge service. Associations in each borough will approach local hospital trusts to secure their agreement to expand the project.

The news emerged days after public spending watchdog the National Audit Office published a report showing that older patients are spending too long in hospital waiting to be discharged, costing the NHS £820m a year. It found 1.2 million bed days were lost to ‘delayed discharge’ in 2015, up 31% in two years.

First Choice Homes Oldham is funding its housing worker at Royal Oldham Hospital discharge service for an initial 18-month period and is paying for any work that needs to be done to patients’ homes before they return home. Other local housing providers will pay for any improvements needed to homes they own when a patient needs to return home.

A spokesperson for the Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs Royal Oldham Hospital, said the pilot is “working well”.

David Smith, customer first director at First Choice Homes Oldham, estimated the service has saved £28,000 in delayed discharge costs in its first six weeks.

Similar schemes have been set up in Stockport and Tameside focusing on homeless patients, led by Stockport Homes and New Charter.

All three schemes are working to help develop similar services across the region. The precise funding model for the scaling up of the work across Greater Manchester has not been decided.

Rachel Fisher, head of policy at the National Housing Federation, said: “It is great to see that housing is part of the wider Greater Manchester solution.”

The memorandum of understanding also includes a project focusing on warm homes. Housing providers, councils and Clinical Commissioning Groups will set up an investment fund to deliver energy efficiency measures to take households out of fuel poverty. The aim is that for every household taken out of fuel poverty, with the money they save from lower bills being put back into the investment fund to make it sustainable.

The memorandum of understanding sets out a number of other priorities for housing providers and the combined authority.

These include:

• Giving housing associations a place on strategic Greater Manchester boards
• Joint bidding for funding and joint investment in housing
• A review of the “long term function and form” of the social rented sector and its place in the wider housing market