Council could lose £425,000 through empty homes

3.56.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Mon 5th Oct 2009

Failure to meet a key housing target could cost Norwich City Council almost half a million pounds this year, it was revealed last week.

Norwich Liberal Democrats have discovered that it is taking an average of 60 days to re-let council housing. Labour controlled Norwich City Council has a re-let target of 25 days. The poor performance means that in the first quarter of this year the council lost £182,368 of rental income on the empty homes. Had the council been hitting its 25 day target the figure would be just £75,987. This means that the council is losing £106,381 each quarter through rent loss and, unless performance improves, will lose £425,524 this year.

Cllr David Fairbairn, Liberal Democrat Councillor for Lakenham who asked the question at last week's full city council meeting, commented: "I am disappointed that poor performance is losing the council so much money. If the targets continue to be missed the council will lose over £100,000 each quarter and £425,000 a year in lost rent. This is totally unacceptable. A turnaround time of 25 days should not be that taxing, really we should be aiming to go below that."

The council's housing department is still struggling to overcome the Greyhound Opening houses-for-staff scandal and the zero-star rating from the Audit Commission whilst the council still faces an £8 million shortfall in its budget.

"With a budget shortfall of £8 million the council can ill-afford to be losing money through inefficiency. Labour need to quickly get on top of this issue. They have promised time and again that they have sorted the voids issue, but last night's figures reveal just how big and costly the problem still is."

ENDS

1. Cllr Fairbairn's question and the response from Cllr Arthur (Executive Member for Housing and Adult Services):

Question 19

Councillor David Fairbairn to the Executive Member for Housing and Adult Services:-

''The average time between re-letting of council houses was 60 days in quarter one of this year.  How much lost rental income does this represent, both as a sum of money and as a percentage of total income from housing rents, for that quarter?''

Councillor Brenda Arthur, Executive Member for Housing and Adult Services' reply:-

"Total rent due for the first 1st quarter of the year equals £ 12,428,328.26. The rent loss figure for this period equals £ 182,368. Had we been operating a 25 day void turnaround time, which would be top quartile, the loss would have been £75,987. Voids are always going to produce some loss in income but we do have some work to do to reduce our void turnaround.

The last quarter's turnaround time is clearly unacceptable and officers are aware of this. There are a number of reasons for this increase; internally these include vacancies in our management structure and within the voids team. Externally we have been working with CityCare to bring their turnaround times down and their performance has improved to an acceptable level.

Now that we do have an Assistant Director and a Head of Neighbourhood Service in post we are putting measures in place to address the poor performance. Our new Head of Service,Tracy John is an experienced senior manager and reducing void turnaround time is one of her main priorities. As a result of this a review of the void process was carried out in August and housing managers are working together to embed sustainable improvements. The vacant post in the voids team has been filled and further research is being carried out to help deliver an improve void turnarounds performance by

Improving acceptance rates first time,

Joint working to ensure early intervention and sustain tenancies through an "Over the door step" information sharing and tenancy health checks

Weekly reviews of all voids with key partners

Advice for tenants/perspective tenants on moving (being prepared before you move during and after)

Fortnightly exception reports to the Housing management team

As a result of this work the turn around time is already reducing and I am receiving weekly updates of voids performance rather than a monthly report.

However it is not simply the current high figures that concern us but the fact that the figures can fluctuate a good deal. This suggests that there are underlying factors which mean that the usual short term efforts that go in don't offer a long term solution. Therefore, as we have on so many other issues, we are asking officers to abandon the short term fixes and get right into the problem so it can be solved fully and properly. This is especially important so that when the new contract is set up the contractor starts and continues with a system that delivers consistent voids performance."