Council’s housing department given zero-star rating - but benefits advice marked ‘fair’

The crushing report gives a zero-star rating to the district’s housing services, criticising the poor performance of staff in collecting rent and recovering arrears and a weak level of maintenance work, with many urgent repairs requiring more than one visit.

A spokesman for the independent government watchdog said: “It was disappointing to find such significant weaknesses. We inspected different parts of the housing service and found none to be of an adequate standard.”

Long delays in answering phone calls, filling empty properties and carrying out major adaptations to tenants’ homes were also cited.

Cllr Moira-Ann Grainger (Con, Warwick North), who is responsible for housing, admitted the inspection in June couldn’t have come at a worse time as there had been no continuous head of service for the previous 18 months following a reorganisation.

She said: “There have been major improvements to our repair service since then and the average void property times have changed from 44 days to 23 days.”

Warwick council tenants John Wheatcroft and and Lance Hutchinson both believe the housing service has “definitely” improved over the past three months, especially following the first meeting of the newly set-up Tenants’ Panel.

But Eizabeth Parry, who has three children and lives in a two-bedroomed flat in Lillington, said: “My experience of the council has certainly not been helpful. The second bedroom of my flat is only classed as half a room because it’s so small and I’ve been trying to get a transfer since 2008, without success. I’m in the urgent band 2 but it feels as if they don’t really care about us.”