The Residents for Uttlesford (R4U) administration at Uttlesford District Council has turned its attention to the council housing portfolio in the latest round of its improvement programme at the local authority.
Arthur Coote (R4U)Cllr Coote continued “We’ve followed the same successful approach that we’ve used before at UDC by conducting an audit to help us understand where improvements could be made. The council housing stock is generally in excellent shape, but UDC needs to build more new social homes to replace those being lost under right-to-buy. Our audit did find a number of issues with the performance of ongoing housing inspections, some of which date back more than five years. As with other issues that we found when we took over UDC, they are generally the result of long-term underinvestment in the council’s processes, people and technology. Our administration is determined to fix this through our programme of ongoing change. The work has already started to make improvements, including the refurbishment of existing properties, the recent purchase of 19 new council houses in Dunmow, and a new monitoring system to track inspection performance.”
Cllr Coote added “Making a large number of organisational improvements to a council is a long job as you can’t change everything at once. However, at UDC there is a great senior management team in place, and we’ve happy that our R4U-led administration can give them the tools and investment they need to deliver better services for residents.”