Council to use firms to declutter homes

Peterborough City Council (PCC) has named the five companies it will contract to clean and declutter vulnerable people’s houses before they’re discharged from hospital.

Mr Bright, Hygenic Solutions, aAFD Services, Spotless Cleaning Services and Foster Property Management will form a framework of specialist contractors which will help Peterborough residents “live independently as far as possible in an accessible, safe and warmhomeenvironment”,the council says.

Thecompanieswillprovide deep cleaning and decluttering services and will also be

expected to take a “non-judgmental and empathetic approach” to residents who might display “challenging behavioursandchaoticlifestyles” such as “entrenched hoarding behaviours”.

PCC currently provides these services through its own Care & Repair Home Improvement Agency, but says that awarding contracts to the five companies in future will “speed up delivery”.

The change follows a review of the arrangement undertaken last year “due to rapidly changing market and economic conditions following the pandemic and Brexit, compounded further by a decreasednumberofcontractors activelyparticipatingintheexisting framework”.

PCC says that the service is important as it can help ease pressureonhospitalsaswellas its own health and social care services.

“Often residents who are in hospital cannot return home whentheyaremedicallyfitdue to the condition and/or cleanliness of their home,” a council report says.

“This leads to a delayed discharge from hospital or use of reablement flats or interim carebedsforelongatedperiods of time.”

This could mean “bed blocking”, it continues, or “expensive moves into interim care settings”.

The new framework will be funded by PCC’s discretionary disabled facility grant, which is itself funded by the Better Care Fund.

PCC says that the value of the framework will be £400,000 between May 2023 and December 2025 plus £150,000 per year-long extension period.

Under current plans, there is an option to extend for a further two years meaning the framework is worth up to £700,000 overall.

The plans needs the sign off of Cllr John Howard (Conservatives), cabinet member for adult social care and public health, and Cllr Marco Cereste (Conservatives),cabinetmemberforhousingbeforetheycan be fully adoped.

The town hall