Castle Point Council to spend more than £400K on new staff to improve housing

An Essex council is set to spend more than £400,000 on new staff and jobs to improve its council housing. A housing watchdog heavily criticised the council for failing to collect data about tenant satisfaction and the standard of the authority’s homes.

Castle Point Council is proposing to spend £165,000 in the current financial year and then splash £273,000 within the next financial year as part of its housing improvement programme. It comes after the Regulator for Social Housing gave the council a C3 rating which states there were “serious failings in the landlord delivering the outcomes of the consumer standards and significant improvement is needed.”

The council discussed and approved plans to spend the cash and improve its housing stock at a meeting on November 20. Documents from the meeting state that the council’s collection, monitoring, escalating and reporting of data relating to housing services “is inconsistent and, therefore, not fully fit for purpose.” It also says, “There is no single IT system, and the systems that we do have don’t talk to one another.”

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The council is looking to appoint staff for a number of new roles, including a housing property and compliance manager with a salary between £57,942 and £63,982, a housing repairs manager with a salary range of £51,802 to £56,692, a housing surveyor whose salary would be between £41,511 and £45,718, along with a number of other roles for the improvement plans.

As part of the improvement plan, there will be an initial sample check of 50 properties looking at all areas of health and safety compliance, whilst a stock condition survey will be undertaken over the next 12-18 months.

The council documents add: “Data is collected by the council, South Essex Homes, as the planned maintenance provider, and MCP, as the reactive repairs provider, but consolidation and cross-checking needs improvement. This does not necessarily mean that the data does not exist, but without clear sight of the data, we cannot be assured that it is complete or consistent. This means the quality and integrity of what data we do have is compromised and there is no single version of the truth upon which the council can place reliance.”

At the meeting, Rob Lillis, councillor for health, wellbeing and housing, said: “Compliance is non-negotiable. The deficiencies in our data mean that the council cannot say with 100 per cent certainty that all those requirements have been and continue to be met.

“This is not to say that homes are inherently unsafe, as in some areas the level of compliance is on target, but the Council recognises that it needs to do a lot more to ensure robustness of data, including the recording of remedial or periodic works in order to give that full assurance.”

“Work has already started on addressing the data issue so that the council can gauge the true level of compliance. All contractors’ work must meet the relevant regulatory standards and certificates that show this must be produced.”

Following the meeting, Dave Blackwell, council leader, said: “We are completely committed to delivering this improvement programme, and the whole Council is absolutely behind these plans.

“Tenants are at the heart of this service re-set, and their voices will be heard. They will shape, influence and drive our next steps, and we will show them the respect that they so deserve.”