Tenants of Bury’s largest social housing landlord have overwhelmingly backed plans to bring the running of their homes back under council control.

An independent ‘test of opinion’ survey sent to Six Town Housing tenants has revealed that nine out of ten tenants who took part support the proposal by the local authority to take back direct management of its 7,700 houses.

However, less than 10 per cent of the total number of residents responded to the questions asked.

Six Town Housing was set up as an Arm’s Length Management Organisation (ALMO) in 2003.

With its own board and staff, it has been responsible for the day-to-day running of the council’s housing stock since then, from collecting rents to carrying out repairs.

Every tenant and leaseholder was written in the summer outlining the council’s proposals.

Cllr Clare Cummins, cabinet member for housing services, said: “We all want to ensure that our tenants receive an excellent service, and that Bury has quality homes in successful communities.

“While Six Town Housing has delivered housing services to tenants on behalf of the council for many years, there are now significant changes in regulation and new legislation and the council is committed to improve and integrate services to our tenants and residents and improve the quality of the housing and estates.”

A report presented to the council’s cabinet on Thursday reported that 90.5 per cent of the 771 tenants who responded to the survey supported the council’s proposal to deliver the housing management and maintenance service directly.

The feedback also identified 300 residents who said they were interested in getting more involved in activity on their estate.

Cllr Cummins added: “I am delighted that tenants are hugely in favour of our proposals, and we will be bringing another report to the cabinet in November setting out the next steps.

“It was good to see we had a good number of tenants involved in giving an opinion.”

The report said there was a 9.89 per cent response rate to the ‘test of opinion’, with 771 returns from 7,700 tenants.