HOUSING minister Keith Hill will visit Bury on Monday to the give the go-ahead to improvement for the borough's 9,000 council houses.

He will formally launch Six Town Housing, the organisation which will take over the town's houses, before meeting tenants and handing over the keys to the vans for the estate caretakers.

Six Town Housing is the council's "Arms Length Management Organisation" - or ALMO - a company set up by a local authority to manage all or some of its homes.

It is hoped the move will help the borough's housing stock meet the Government's Decent Homes Standard by 2010. In the short term it could also bring more than £8.5 million in improvements to former council houses over the next two years.