Councillors are due to meet in mid January to approve a new housing management contract for Ellesmere Port and Neston.

Existing provider Plus Dane Housing has handled the 5,800 council homes in the former Ellesmere Port and Neston district since 2012 on a £100m contract.

But it emerged in the autumn it would not be submitting a final bid for a new 10-year contract due to run from next July.

The old borough’s housing became a political hot potato following the creation of the then Conservative-controlled Cheshire West and Chester Council in 2009 which was highly critical of the state of the properties it inherited.

Tenants had previously voted against transferring the homes and their management to a housing association as had happened in Chester district and elsewhere.

Strong arguments were raised the homes should remain entirely with the council but Plus Dane was brought in to manage the stock with ownership remaining with Cheshire West and Chester.

Following consultations in 2015, tenants and leaseholders voted narrowly for the homes to continue to be owned by the council but managed by an outside organisation as at present

Tenders have been invited but a community forum heard that Plus Dane would not be seeking to retain the contract.

Borough housing chief Angela Claydon (Lab, St Paul’s) said at the time: “We regret to hear that Plus Dane has decided not to submit a final bid for the new housing management contract.

“We will continue to work in partnership with Plus Dane to ensure a successful and smooth handover to a new provider.

“We have written to all of our tenants about the changes that won’t start until July 1, 2017.”

She continued: “We have received two bids and are in the process of fully evaluating these.

“The appointment of the preferred provider is due to be made by the council’s Cabinet at its meeting in January 2017.”

Plus Dane revealed that after ‘much deliberation’, its board, chaired by former Cheshire Chief Constable Sir Peter Fahy, ‘has taken the decision not to submit a final bid for the Ellesmere Port and Neston housing management contract’.

It continued: “Plus Dane has been through a period of significant change and improvement over the last two years including fundamental changes in our executive leadership and governance arrangements and in March we adopted a new corporate plan.

“Having gone through a thorough dialogue process with the council we concluded that to achieve a bid without compromising what we wanted to deliver in terms of quality would have a potentially detrimental effect on the successful delivery of our corporate plan so the decision not to submit a final bid was taken with a very heavy heart.”

Plus Dane stressed: “Our priority over the coming months will be to ensure we continue to deliver an excellent service for tenants in Ellesmere Port and Neston.

“We are firmly committed to doing all we can to ensure a smooth handover to the successful bidder and remain committed to working corroboratively with the council now and in the future.”

Activist and West Cheshire TUC vice chairman Ray McHale pointed out that trade unionists and Labour Party members had fought against and defeated housing stock transfer in Ellesmere Port and Neston.

The decision of the new, Conservative-led borough council to outsource the management of the housing stock ‘was one we always strongly opposed’ and went against what tenants had shown they wanted in a ballot.

He commented: “In opposing the privatisation of the housing management service we had the support of the Cheshire West and Chester Labour Group and we had hoped that a new Labour council, elected in 2015, would want to return the management of housing to the council.”

He described the consultation, which he claimed was undertaken mainly by Plus Dane staff, as ‘confused’, with just 22% of tenants responding.

Mr McHale believed tenants wished to avoid further change and added: “The fact that Plus Dane, having reached the short-list of three companies bidding for the new contract, have now pulled out of the process is more than disturbing.

“Tenants know nothing of the other companies that are bidding and face wholesale change once again.

“In these circumstances we believe there is a strong basis for revisiting the decision to retender the contract and to again consider the potential to return the service to direct council control.

“Plus Dane have made many changes to the service and have had the benefit of significant amounts of central government capital funding to improve the stock.

“The council has now taken on the borrowing and the income associated with the council housing in Ellesmere Port and Neston and are intent on building more social housing.

“In these circumstances it seems logical to return management of the service to the council in line with the original wishes of tenants.”

He added: “We will be seeking to raise these concerns over the coming weeks to ensure the issues are debated and considered within the Labour Party and the Labour Group.”

The council has agreed external advisers should be appointed to support and engage with tenants and leaseholders throughout the process of procuring the new contract.

The decision is due to be made on Wednesday January 17.