Our Commitments

GREATER MANCHESTER TRIPARTITE AGREEMENT

Supporting health creation for future generations.

We will do things differently and embrace health creating strategies and practices, encouraging others to do the same. We are champions of public service reform and creating inclusive and sustainable transformation. We support people, their aspirations and their communities and our focus is to develop preventative actions that can contain future costs and enable full participation in the economy and society. Our focus will be to truly embed the role of housing in joined up action on improving health.

We will do this by:

aligning resources and expertise, to improve outcomes in existing homes and neighbourhoods;
influencing the development of new housing and communities with the right physical, social and green infrastructure that promote healthy lifestyles;

supporting public service reform by aligning health and social care systems to wider public services such as education, skills, work and housing; and

embedding the principles of Inclusion Health into the way we work, deliver services and commission, to ensure that supporting the most vulnerable is everyone’s business.

Creating safe places for people to start well, live well and age well.

The bedrock of health creation is the ‘right’ housing and we will build more of the ‘right’ type of homes. Creating the quality environment for those homes and ensuring that the services that are provided to support people to live in them for longer is a long-term goal of our partnership. The pandemic has highlighted the potential that the social housing sector has in terms of capability and organisation to rise to the challenges that the crisis brought over and above the private rented sector, and our commitment to build more homes is critical.

We will do this by:

building more truly affordable homes in neighbourhoods of choice where people can thrive;
improving and upscaling supported and specialist homes in collaboration across housing and social care, which meet the needs of some of our most vulnerable residents;
using our collective influence around development and investment to deliver homes, neighbourhoods and infrastructure that support healthy lives;
creating choice in the housing market by building intermediate and market homes to meet GMSF commitment to delivery;

developing creative delivery models for new housing which impacts positively on pace of delivery and quality;
better targeting of investment and interventions toward the groups of GM households most challenged in accessing homes they can afford;
developing a neighbourhood quality and health standard, across Greater Manchester;
campaigning for neighbourhood renewal investment on a business case based on the costs of poor housing in terms of health and social care, to provide the tools, capacity and sources of funding to directly intervene in raising standards of homes across all tenures;

developing place-based working across localities, sharing our joint intelligence to influence and shape local plans;
using modern methods of construction and invest and enhance our assets supporting place making and high-quality design; and
exploring alternative models of community ownership of housing which can promote community resilience and cohesion, tackle loneliness, provide affordable accommodation and give residents of all ages real influence over their homes. Our goal is to institute a permanent Co-operative Housing Hub, to facilitate community-led housing across Greater Manchester.

Focusing on those who need the most support.

In 2017, we established a Housing & Health work programme, to make the most of our unique opportunity to truly embed the role of housing in joined up action on improving health. Through our partnership we intend to drive forward our plans to improve the outcomes of more vulnerable households who are often at a greater risk from poor housing conditions and health inequalities. We will ensure that the homes, neighbourhoods and environment that we work in are tailored to the needs of vulnerable households and those that require specialist housing.

We will do this by:

reducing the pressures on health and social care by introducing our Healthy Homes services across all ten authorities; to support vulnerable households and improve their health and wellbeing, providing an effective route to support local people where they live;
developing a better understanding of current and future need for all types and tenures of housing to help direct commissioning;
exploring diverse housing options and invest in new modern homes and models of support for people who are older, living with learning disabilities, Alzheimer’s and dementia, mental health issues and physical disabilities, young people leaving care and people who are homeless as a means to live independently for longer;

championing and advising on specialist accommodation for those who require it and to use our workforce as key agents of behaviour change;
supporting delivery of the Greater Manchester Age Friendly Strategy, particularly where housing and spatial development can support people to ‘ageing in place’ and improve health outcomes for our older population;
creating a range of accommodation and support for care leavers that meets their needs and ambitions to live independently;
delivering the Greater Manchester Housing and Mental Health Strategy to develop alternative models and pathways which will assist key groups to achieve secure, high quality homes and support;

supporting a greater proportion of the population to remain independent and reduce their need for formal care;
innovating to lower the cost of long-term care e.g. use of technology or asset-based approaches; and
developing stronger links with housing, social care and community mental health teams to ensure the best possible outcome for people receiving services in the system.

Supporting people who are homeless and rough sleepers.

Tackling homelessness and rough sleeping are key priorities in Greater Manchester and for our partnership. We have a strong track record of innovation and collective working to prevent and tackle homelessness and rough sleeping and our commitments continue to prioritise this. We will support independence and homelessness prevention, to reduce the need for crisis services and build on people’s potential, delivering access to appropriate health and care, employment opportunities, training and mentoring for people who are homeless.

We will do this by:

learning from the lessons during Covid-19 and retain the practical solutions that supported these households;
offering a more collaborative approach to finding solutions to support households negatively impacted by welfare reform;

reducing reliance on expensive and often poor-quality temporary accommodation by providing emergency accommodation and support (A Bed Every Night), housing-led approaches (Social Impact Bond, Housing First and Rapid Rehousing Pathways);
extending the ethical lettings agency so that by 2024 an additional 800 units will be supplied through the private sector to applicants who are homeless, threatened with homelessness or on social housing registers;

continuing to develop our health and care system response to homelessness, advocating for a universally high standard of healthcare and embedding the principles of inclusion health to facilitating change to improve access to mainstream services; and
providing key health services into ABEN and other temporary accommodation to improve health outcomes for our homeless population.

Improving access and choice to quality homes and neighbourhoods.

We want to create opportunity for local people to live in better-quality environments. This means creating better neighbourhood environments and creating more clarity around access to better homes.

We will do this by:

working toward a consistent approach of accessing better neighbourhoods, by creating a coordinated Greater Manchester housing allocations framework;
investing to improve accessibility and quality and provide improved quality of life outcomes for those living in the private rented sector;

bringing forward place-based investment and interventions in neighbourhoods with high risk private rented sector markets to find ways to raise standards; and

championing and supporting further integration of housing into neighbourhood models, further demonstrating the impact of the housing sector on the health and wellbeing of our population.

Maximising our positive impact on the environment and the economy.

The impact that we make matters, and this cross-cutting theme maximiseas the positive impact we are able to make through our partnership and priorities.

We will do this by:

supporting the Green City Region agenda and contributing to meeting national and Greater Manchester zero carbon ambitions;
embedding social value into our internal procurement and contract management processes;

providing a compelling, therapeutic model of support for people to get back into work that can be rolled out nationally;
creating people centred solutions – whatever training, health services or advice people need to get into work. Our ambition in Greater Manchester is to create an employment, health and skills ‘ecosystem’ that has the individual (and employers) at its heart; and

ensuring that when we spend our Greater Manchester pound, we will deliver new employment, training and mentoring opportunities and create new apprenticeships.

Using our influence for change.

We will do this by:

Using our expertise, experience and evidence and the intelligence, we will influence and lobby for change on local, regional and national platforms, pushing the boundaries and bringing innovation, focusing in the first 12 months of lobbying to create a positive lasting legacy from the Covid-19 recovery.