Council turning a ‘blind-eye’ to shabby homes

A Dudley councillor and former cabinet member said the authority is turning a blind eye to the shabby state of some of its homes.

At a meeting of the Housing and Assets Scrutiny Committee, Cllr David Stanley had his say in a discussion on how some of the council’s 21,000 properties are left when tenants move out.

Cllr Stanley, who is also a former mayor of Dudley, told senior officers the authority did not do very well at enforcing tenancy conditions to ensure  residents were keeping their homes in good order.

He said: “That is what is causing a lot of problems, the housing manager is very frustrated at not being able to get anything done. The condition of some of the gardens and some of the properties are horrific and yet we turn a blind eye."

The council has a policy of selling off homes if they are handed back in need of repairs costing more than £10,000.

Cllr Stanley added: “We are disposing of a lot of properties, the reason why this is happening is because tenants are not having home checks and they get into a diabolical state.

“We need to identify properties where we have got people allowing the condition of the property to get into a state that costs us money to repair.

“We cannot afford to keep getting rid of our housing stock with such a huge waiting list.”

Dudley director of housing Kathy Jones told councillors the housing department has a target of inspecting around 1,200 homes per year and had fallen behind during the pandemic when access was impossible.

Ms Jones said: “The team are doing more than 100 percent of their target every month in terms of getting into homes. That period during the pandemic – we had issues of how we maintained homes.

“The program of checks has now restarted, we have much earlier intervention. We are also much tougher in terms of what we expect before they hand a property back to us – it is a much more robust approach.”