Council's Strategic Housing Services only 'One Star' with 'uncertain' prospects for improvement - Audit Commission

8.25.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Tue 12th Feb 2008

Two years has seen only the minimum improvement in Strategic Housing Services

On 24th January last the Audit Commission issued a press release detailing its findings into Surrey Heath's Council's strategic housing services.

The service was given one star out of three but prospects for improvement was deemed only 'uncertain'. Incredibly, this was an improvement from the AC's report in 2005 when the service was awarded no stars and judged to be poor with poor prospect for improvement.

It is very disappointing that in the two years between reports so little improvement has been seen in the council's Strategic Housing services and residents might have expected to see some urgent action from the Conservative Council Executive as a result.

The inspectors found a number of positive features of the service, including flexible access arrangements which make it easy for people to get the housing support and advice they need. The council's housing options approach is having a positive impact, reducing numbers of people becoming homelessness, and there is good, up-to-date information about the housing needs of the local community and the council has successfully delivered high numbers of well-designed affordable homes.

However, there are also some issues that still need to be tackled, including:

• Gaps in systems to capture and monitor levels of customer satisfaction across all service areas and the council has not yet published specific housing service standards to enable service users to measure its performance;

• The council is not policing conditions in the private rented sector effectively and its research on conditions in the private sector is not robust; and

• Further work is required to fully understand the costs of the service and to develop a strategic approach to delivering value for money.

To help the service improve, inspectors made a number of recommendations, including:

• Publish and monitor service specific service standards that have been agreed with service users;

• Agree and publish the strategic approach to housing in the district; and

• Improve the approach to work in the private housing sector by strengthening the stock condition data held and develop a strategy to bring back empty private sector homes back into use.

When it comes to the urgency with which the Council views the matter, the Lib Dem Group was advised that the matter would go to the April Executive which takes place on the 15th of April which is a gap of 12 weeks (but for 2 days) from the publishing of the critical Audit Commission report.

This gives entirely the wrong message to residents in the Borough who expect the Council to be delivering a top class strategic housing service.