Housing department under strain

Residents in need of social housing in the north of the county are waiting six months to be assessed to even get on the housing list, while there are also issues with housing repairs

The housing department run by the North unitary council is under major strain, unable to cope with the hundreds of households who are coming to it each month for help.

Staffing issues, last year’s amalgamation of former housing departments, unprecedented numbers of people seeking council accommodation and huge delays in repairs are all being felt in what has been described as a ‘perfect storm’. 

The authority has told NN Journal it is receiving 500 new applications for housing each month.

Once applicants are assessed - a process which is now taking up to six months - they will then join a housing waiting list of several thousands and the problem is being made worse due to an issue with putting void properties back into the housing stock. Repairs are taking a huge amount of time and the authority is struggling to find contractors to do the work.

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Long waits for assessments

The Labour opposition, which first raised concerns about the council’s housing department at a full council meeting in February, now says the wait for housing needs assessments situation is ‘unacceptable’ and thinks it is only a matter of time before a resident takes their case to the ombudsman.

Cllr Lynn Buckingham and Cllr Alison Dalziel, who share the housing brief for the council’s Labour opposition, say it appears that the department is in crisis and residents are now facing unacceptable delays, having to wait up to six months even to be assessed as to whether they are eligible to join the housing list.

Cllr Buckingham said she is sympathetic to the staff trying to deal with the huge numbers of people coming to the council for aid, but action is needed by the council’s ruling executive.

 “They’re trying, but the sheer volume of people coming through is the problem and there’s not enough housing.

“40 percent are homeless and the private sector is becoming so unaffordable. Even single room rents are going upwards of £150 a week.  People can’t afford that.

“It’s five to six months just to wait for an assessment and you probably won’t even get a house.”

Cllr Buckingham

Cllr Dalziel said:

“Demand is completely outstripping supply. There is a huge backlog in getting the assessments.

“There is still a very long process, even when you get onto the housing list, you are not going to be guaranteed a house any time soon. We’ve been told 31 per cent of all applications last year were actually homelessness, there is a statutory obligation to house homeless people, which is obviously good, but that is crisis management.  That is helping the people who are already in crisis.

“Previously with the former Corby Borough Council  we were looking at 14 days (for people to be assessed), now it is about five to six months. The delays are stressful for people. What can we say to people who are there waiting? There are massive delays and it is endemic of cuts across the board.

“Everything is having a knock on effect and as a council we are slipping further and further behind.”

Cllr Dalziel

The north unitary told NN Journal it received 8212 housing applications in 2021/22 and made property offers to 1,557 applicants. It says there are currently 3033 active applicants and 2207 waiting processing (as at 25 May 2022).

The authority uses the keyways service to assess housing needs assessments.

 A council spokesperson said: “The Keyways backlog is recognised as a high priority and steps continue to be taken to address the backlog of applications.

 “Actions being taken include interim staffing arrangements, hiring temporary staff and existing officers and management working overtime to reduce the backlog. These actions are beginning to have a positive impact.”

Repairs issue

Coupled with the long waits is an issue with repairs to council properties.

Cllr Dalziel said:

“Long waits for housing needs assessments is just one aspect. In February there were 3000 outstanding repairs in Corby and 2,000 in Kettering and so there is still a significant amount of repairs. It is not just specific to the housing needs assessment, it is the whole of the directorate which is in a bit of a pickle.

“What we would like as a Labour group is a high level snapshot of housing and see where the particular pinch points are and what help needs to be put into place.”

The councillor said there was also a big issue with turning around vacant council houses and making them habitable for new tenants. She said the time taken by the former Corby authority was 21 days. This has now taken as long as 19 weeks for people to receive the keys to the door once they are told they have a house.

At a meeting of the levelling up sub committee earlier this month the director responsible for housing David Watts said there was an issue with the recruitment of tradespeople. Corby and Kettering operate different systems for repairs. Kettering holds its own repair stock while Corby buys equipment to order from a construction firm. Watts said there is a huge amount of work going on to try and solve the issues, but it is not happening quickly enough for him.

However a full report about the issue has not gone to a council meeting and the length of waits for housing needs assessment and the turnaround times for void properties is not being publicly reported in the council’s corporate key performance indicators. Therefore the authority’s 78 councillors are not being kept up to date with the situation through the usual means.

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Not enough stock

When the new council started up last April it amalgamated all of the housing departments of the former boroughs and districts in the north of the county. Corby and Kettering owned their own housing stock - combined this is just over 8,000 homes which are now owned by the North unitary -  while Wellingborough and East Northants had handed theirs over to an social housing providers.

Cllr Dalziel said:

“There is a chronic shortage of social housing. That is not just unique to Corby - that is countrywide. There are huge waiting lists for housing and now we have the added situation that there’s a huge waiting list just to get on the list for a house. There are small numbers of housing that are coming into the housing stock, but it is the tip of the iceberg - it is not touching the sides. We need a reset in this country. We need a massive council housing building programme and we are just not getting it. 

“That is something that is going to take years to fix itself. What we are seeing now is the result of the right to buy policy from the 1980s. There was a massive strip out of available council houses and years down the line we have not replaced that stock and we’ve now got this chronic shortage of housing.”

Political response

The Labour group think the issues within the housing department have in part been caused by the new authority and want a response from the council’s political leadership about what they are going to do.

Cllr Dalziel said: “This can only be resolved by the current executive. We’d like to know what they are going to do.”

NN Journal contacted Cllr Andy Mercer who has been the executive member for housing since the authority began last May.

However when we spoke to him on Tuesday he said he had resigned that day from the position due to ill health. Asked about what was going on within the department he said it would be ‘inappropriate’ to comment as he was no longer the portfolio holder.

Cllr Mercer

We then contacted council Leader Cllr Jason Smithers to speak about the issue but have not had a response.

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