Cirencester Housing has now transferred all of its homes to Cottsway. If you live in one of their properties you should have received a pack with more information. Read about the transfer

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Home > My home > My agreement > Tenancy support > Help with decorating and gardening

Help with decorating and gardening

If you live in West Oxfordshire, we may be able to help with decorating your home and maintaining the garden if you have a disability or are over the age of 70.

Sorry, we're not taking any applications for either of these schemes at the moment but we'll update this webpage when applications reopen.

You can apply for help if:

  • You receive either housing benefit, disability benefit or universal credit; and
  • Do not have someone aged between 18 and 60 living with or near you and able to do the work.

Your housing officer or a family member can also nominate you for these schemes.

We try to help as many people as possible, but as these schemes are offered free of charge, spaces are limited and there are some restrictions:

We can help decorate up to two rooms in your home. Please note, if you apply to have your hall stairs and landing decorated, this would be considered as two rooms.

You will not be able to apply if you:

  • have already been helped by the decorating scheme in the last five years
  • are a shared owner or leaseholder
  • have applied for right to buy or acquire your home.

Once you have applied

If there is space on the scheme available and we can confirm that you are eligible for assistance, we will:

  1. Book an initial appointment for the decorator to:
    • Come and survey the two rooms to be decorated
    • Show you the paint colours on offer so you can make a choice; or
    • If you would prefer the rooms to be wallpapered, they will confirm if this is possible or not. If it is, you would need to provide the wallpaper.
  2. A second appointment will then made for the decorating to be done.

If the scheme is full, you can reapply from the following April.

We can help you maintain your garden but it must be at a maintainable standard before we can help – ie, not too overgrown to begin with.

If we find that your garden does need additional work, you may need to pay to bring it to the standard required. You will be told about this before any work is done if you are accepted on to the scheme.

You will not be eligible if you:

  • are a shared owner or leaseholder
  • have applied for right to buy or acquire your home.

Once you have applied

We will confirm if you are eligible for assistance and your contact details will be passed to our gardening contractors. They will contact you directly to arrange an inspection of your garden to check if the garden needs any work to be carried out to bring it up to a maintainable standard.

Please note, if work is required there is a one-off clearance charge that you will need to pay to Cottsway. This can be done in either payment or instalments by agreement. We will let you know if this is required once the contractors have inspected your garden.

Once you have been accepted onto the scheme there is no charge for the ongoing service unless your circumstances change.

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