25 July 2008
Local Home Improvement Agency Eastbourne Care & Repair is celebrating 20 years of helping older and disabled people to repair or adapt their homes. The Mayor of Eastbourne, Councillor Szanto will welcome guests including Local MP Nigel Waterson and Baroness Andrews OBE, Parliamentary under Secretary of State, Communities and Local Government, to a buffet lunch at the Chalk Farm Hotel on Friday 01 August to mark the anniversary year.
One of a national network of Home Improvement Agencies, Eastbourne Care & Repair is a charitable organisation that helps older and disabled citizens to access financial help such as Disabled Facilities Grants, Housing Renewal Assistance and other grants. It provides a technical and casework service which will prepare schedules of work, arrange for estimates and help with all the form filling and letter writing. Welfare benefits and other financial advice is offered to ensure that clients receive any help to which they are entitled. In doing so it plays a crucial role in helping Eastbourne Borough Council to deliver its housing renewal programme in the private sector.
Mayor of Eastbourne, Councillor Greg Szanto says “It is a marvellous to see that in the 20 years it has been operating, Eastbourne Care & Repair has arranged for over 5,000 jobs to be done with a combined value of over £8 million. Whether it is a major adaptation such as installing a level access shower or just a small repair they deliver a professional, caring and supportive service. Eastbourne Care & Repair has played a significant role in assisting the Council meet one of its key priorities in helping to ensure people have good quality and accessible homes”.
Baroness Andrews says “I have seen at first hand the valuable work Home Improvement Agencies like Eastbourne Care & Repair do in helping older and disabled people carry out repairs, improvements and adaptations to their homes. Our recently published strategy for housing in an ageing society, Lifetime Homes, Lifetime Neighbourhoods, confirms the important role we see for Home Improvement Agencies like Eastbourne Care & Repair in the future, to continue assisting older and disabled people to live more independent lives. My visits to Eastbourne Care & Repair played a vital part in shaping our thinking about this work, but, more significantly, in underlining why that work is so important”.
Tony Molloy, director of the National Body for Home Improvement Agencies, says of Eastbourne Care & Repair, “We congratulate those visionaries who back in the 1980s established Eastbourne Care & Repair, and those who continue to be involved with it today. We celebrate the 20 years of extraordinary work by a service assisting older and disabled people to live independent lives in their own homes in safety and security. It is right and proper that we look back on an occasion like this and celebrate the undoubted success story of Eastbourne Care & Repair. With demand for the services Eastbourne Care & Repair offer the need for high quality information and advice so that people can make informed choices has never been greater”.
Stephen Will, Director of Eastbourne Care & Repair says, “It is wonderful that so many people will be coming to celebrate 20 years with us. The fact that people have come from all over the county to be here indicates the respect in which Eastbourne Care & Repair is held, not just locally but nationally”.
