Creating great neighbourhoods

Rochdale Council and Rochdale Boroughwide Housing are investing up to £9,500,000 over the next four years on improving the environment of its estates.

In order to make them safer, more secure, more attractive and better places to live, RBH will be looking at a variety of small and large scale projects. These will provide better quality fencing, lighting, landscaping, pathways, gardens, courtyards, play facilities and lobby areas.

This will be done in two ways: 

'Quick Wins' Schemes Each Township Area has a designated budget to carry out some smaller scale environmental schemes. These probably wouldn’t cost very much but would be designed to make a big impact. Examples might be fencing a small group of homes, improving lighting in a specific location, landscaping a small unused piece of land, upgrading a path or replacing some play equipment.

Lists will be compiled of possible schemes and they will be presented to the quarterly Area Panels for approval.

Quick Win Schemes usually don’t go over a maximum value of £30,000. 

'Priority Estates'
A short while ago, RBH and the Council produced a report looking at all aspects of the external environment of all of its estates. This 'Environmental Audit' led to a number of estates being termed, 'Priority Estates', where it was felt additional investment would be required to carry out some larger scale projects. Each Township has a number of these 'Priority Estates' as below:

• Rochdale North – Falinge Hill, Lower Falinge, Holstein and Spotland and Hamer 
• Rochdale South – Kirklee, Long Hill, Channing Street and Chesham 
• Pennines – Pennine View, Bramhall Close, Bishop Street and Ashbrook Hey
• Heywood – Heap Bridge, Heady Hill, Hopwood and Pot Hall 
• Middleton – Hollin, Baytree, Middleton Junction and Brookside

Further detailed studies of the estates have begun to see what type of work is needed to improve them.

Over the next four years, RBH will put projects in place after consultation with tenants, residents and councillors.

All of these potential schemes are brought before a Steering Group made up of RBH tenants, who look at them thoroughly to make sure we end up with the best design at the best price.

Tenant representatives are:

• Joan Turner (Rochdale North)
• Debbie Lord (Rochdale South)
• Keith Barker (Pennines)
• Roy Thompson (Middleton)
• Mary Diedo-Rayner (Heywood)