GMB will be approaching Copeland Borough Council to make sure GMB members jobs are protected jobs and the standards of service are maintained.

Home Group North West, the organisation that manages public housing stock in Copeland in Cumbria, announced plans to transfer 150 of its direct workforce in its maintenance services department to a contractor in October 2011. The tender process has already started and will be completed during July. The intention is to transfer all its maintenance service employees to the successful contractor.

Home Group North West inherited Copeland Borough Council's housing stock in 2003 when Copeland Homes was formed. Two years ago Copeland Homes was assimilated into the Homes Group parent business.

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GMB Regional Organiser Kevin Young said: "GMB will tell the councils that it has major concerns with housing policy direction over many years. There has been a steady erosion of local democratic engagement and accountability. Successive governments have looked to home ownership, private and social rent as a panacea for the UK's housing problems. This ignores another key part of the housing market, the council housing sector and said that this policy has led to many problems in urban and rural communities, with local people not being able to afford housing rents or mortgages.

"GMB view this transfer as a further move in the wrong direction. Local Councillors know that it is local people who live and work in Copeland who will suffer for this crazy shift in policy by the Home Group in externalising 150 jobs. If this goes ahead, most probably it will be Directors and Shareholders outside of the Borough with little affinity for Copeland that will benefit."

(CD)