Housing
The aim of Housing and Community Services is,
" To enable households in Poole to live in decent, warm, affordable homes within safe neighbourhoods and strong empowered communities"
The service unit pursues this aim through the provision of seven inter-linked services:-
Housing Needs and Resources
Helping people keep their home, find a new home and also providing more affordable homes. This covers the housing advice and homeless services as well as resettlement. The service manages a portfolio of housing for homeless households waiting to be rehoused in a permanent home. It also includes the allocation of affordable housing in Poole and running HomeChoice. The service area also works with registered social landlords to support the development of new affordable housing. We manage the contract between the Borough of Poole and Poole Housing Partnership 
, who in turn manage the council's housing stock.
We work in association with Poole Housing Partnership , an Arms Length Management Organisation (ALMO), set up under the government scheme to bring investment for improvements to council homes across th Borough of Poole, these include:
Private Sector Housing
Helping those households living in private rented homes or their own homes to live in decent, warm, adapted accommodation. This includes the provision of grants and equity mortgages, and disabled facility grants and affordable warmth grants. It also includes the Council's statutory functions in respect of health and safety in housing and licensing of houses in multiple occupation. The service works with landlords to ensure the quality of private sector housing and management is achieved. Lastly, the service provides "home safety assistance, advocacy and support to vulnerable elderly home owners.
Community Safety and Community Development
This service works with communities to improve their feelings of safety in Poole as well their voluntary activity. This includes coordinating work to address anti-social behaviour in the Town as well as working with the Police and other agencies in the Safer Poole partnership to improve community safety. The service supports the Council's grant making to voluntary groups and community development workers help set up new community groups as well as supporting existing groups and community centre management committees.
Business Support
This service area provides the administrative support to all the teams in the service unit as well as the receptions service for the service unit. This includes the provision of the information technology and payments and processing for the service unit.
Borough Control room
The Borough control room provides the Council's 24 hours 365 day a year response service. It provides the lifeline service for vulnerable households . It provides the emergency out of hours services as well as monitoring of CCTV and out of hours car park management. The service lifts Poole Bridge.
Emergency Planning
This includes the 24 hour 365 day a year emergency response officer for the Council. It also produces the plans necessary to respond to emergencies and works with the emergency services to make sure that the incidents can be properly responded to that we can effectively communicate to the town in such circumstances.
Our reception times are:
8:30 am - 5:15 pm Monday - Thursday 8:30 am - 4:45 pm Friday
Please select one of the links below for more information about that service:
Directgov