Newark and Sherwood District Council aiming to be back on track with property re-letting target next financial year, with plans for better resources and management

Councillors have been reassured a council is taking its delays in turning around rented council properties ‘very seriously’, and aims to be back on track for the next financial year.

Currently, Newark and Sherwood District Council is taking an average time of 40.5 days to re-let its properties — exceeding its target by nearly a fortnight.

The figures were revealed in the authority’s latest community plan performance report for July to September 2024, which was first presented to its policy and performance improvement committee (PPIC) — where the delay was described as ‘disappointing’ — before being put before cabinet yesterday (December 3).

Portfolio holder for housing, Lee Brazier, said: “I think it would be remiss of me not to come on to the average re-let time of council properties, it was raised at PPIC, it’s obviously one of the main areas within housing that is in red.

“I do just want to reassure cabinet, and all members actually, myself and Suzanne [Shead, the council’s director of housing, health, and wellbeing] are taking this very seriously. We are looking at how we resource this department within housing, and how we can work through it with the business manager to get us out of this.”

Members heard it was an issue also faced by councils across the county and the country, due to rising costs, and difficulty with recruitment.

This was later corroborated by chief executive John Robinson, who said: “Housing repairs and housing compliance is an area which for most district and borough councils is probably the most challenging thing we’re dealing with at the moment. It doesn’t excuse our performance, but most of them are running at about 40 days for re-lets.

“One of the other challenges is we’re all competing for the same kind of staff as well, which makes things difficult in terms or recruitment and retention.”

Mr Brazier added: “We’re working our way through it and we’re hopeful that soon we will be back on track to reach target.”

The authority has a 2024-25 target of 28 days to re-let its rental properties.

Roger Jackson, who had raised the issue at PPIC and was representing the opposition following the recent resignation of Rhona Holloway, said: “It is a long time. I don’t know quite what the process is for letting a property, but presumably once a tenant has given notice to quit you know it’s going to be empty on a certain date — so is the hold up because you have to do repairs, or is it paperwork to get a new tenant in?

“I let properties and as soon as a tenant gives their notice to quit, I send a handyman round there to know what wants doing, and once they’ve left the handyman goes in and repairs it so it’s done automatically.”

He asked for an explanation of what was causing the hold-ups in turning properties around for the next tenant.

“It’s a long time, 40 days, to re-let a house. Why isn’t everything in place once they’ve left to get it ready and able to be re-let again?” he added.

Mr Brazier explained that the council only had a number of people on the team who are able to ready the homes for the next tenants, and that it had seen an increase in tenants leaving properties in the past year.

Additionally, he explained, in some cases turn-arounds take longer when during best practice fit-to-let checks with tenants, things are found which need rectifying, or in cases where there are issues such as asbestos in tiles which have been broken.

He said: “There’s a lot of reasons but we completely agree its unacceptable it’s taking that long.”

Suzanne Shead added: “The team are processing as many empty homes as usual but they’re coming in faster.

“We need to look at the resources full stop, but also how we can have resources that can adapt to those ebbs and flows of properties coming in because it’s not something that we generally have any control over.

“Another element is the condition sometimes that properties come back in — that’s not necessarily that they’re in a bad condition — but for whatever reason the residents may have asked for no major improvements to be done because they didn’t want the upset or the disturbance.

“But that means when those properties do come back they need more works than normal because we are replacing component parts such as kitchens and bathrooms.”

Hoped to be a key part in improving the efficiency of re-letting properties is a new housing management system, which is to be launched for acceptance testing in January and is set to be in place by May or June 2025.

It is set to allow the council to better manage empty homes, and help it make use of notice periods before tenants move out.

The housing director added: “There is more that we could do in that notice period. So there’s plenty that we can do, but what we need to do is make sure we’ve got resources in the right place, with the right knowledge and skills, to be able to really turn that around.

“The work that we do now will be to try to get us to a good position for the next financial year.”