Val pledges to act on ‘scandal” of empty council properties
Date posted: 26-07-2012
FORTY FOUR council homes were deemed unfit to rent out as they had long term structural defects admitted housing boss, cllr Va Morris-Cook.
They were among 770 void (empty) properties that lay vacant around the borough over a twelve month period.
Cllr Morris-Cook made the admission in response to a question from Mr Aaron Mohammed at a full council meeting.
Councillor Morris-Cook also pledged to fill each empty property nearer to the target time of 30 days. At the moment, the figure is nearer to 120 days.
Cllr Morris-Cook said: “There were 770 empty properties during the last year. We are down to 130: 44 of which have serious structural issues, 65 are as a result of the backlog. 20 are new and currently without structural issues are being turned around in under 30 days.
Cllr Morris-Cook also revealed a new sign that will be affixed outside each property once let.
Cllr Morris-Cook said: “The signs enable the residents to see when a property is going to be fit to occupy.
“We have turned what was a disaster of approx 120 days to currently within 30 days.”
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I cant believe that there are 770 empty properties in Thurrock! That’s a shocking statistic.
Thurrock Council were one of the authorities that accepted self financing for their housing stock. Here they are presiding over 8% of their housing stock laying idle for a third of the year and earning the council no money at all. I think darling Val has missed the concept of self financing. It means the government will no longer bail them out if things go wrong. There are no more subsidies. Still we are talking about the labour party. They leave 10% of the country’s assets rotting on benefits. Why change the habit of a lifetime just because it’s houses. After all they still have the ultimate bail out. The taxpayer. Pathetic. Probably a million a year lost in rents and still the repairs costs on top to get them occupied. These are the types of people looking after our public assets and finances. Looking forward to the day the Labour party are re-elected to govern the country. Off shore accounts will become ever so popular.
Will our friend Val be sorting this out before focussing on her election efforts, or will she continue to pound the streets of Essex on the campaign trail?
Apparently she blamed inheriting the Morrisons contract as the reason for the delay. Has nobody pointed out to her that Labour have been running the show in Thurrock for over two years now.
The relet time of Council properties reduced every year from 2004 I believe and was down (if my memory is working) to about 19 days prior to 2010. (Please correct me if I am wrong on this). It is disgusting the average relet time is 120 days – this is the average time so no doubt there are properties that have been emty for longer than four months in Thurrock.
You can’t keep blaming the previous Conservative administration when you have been running things for over two years. If the average re-let time has increased from a few weeks under the Conservatives to over four months under Labour’s watch then you only have yourself to blame Val.
As for sticking signs up – how much is this pointless excercise going to cost?
There are thousands of people on the waiting list – if you pulled your finder out and got the properties re let in a few weeks then you wouldn’t need to mess around sticking signs up on council properties.
God help us all if this woman was ever put in charge of the Police!
Does anyone actually still believe anything that this woman says? she has been the curse of TBC for so long now and leave a trail of destruction with whatever portfolio she takes on, if she spent as much time working on the issue as she does with the blame game then things may improve….
Ed: If your figures are true it looks very to me that the labour administration have deliberately mis managed this contract?
I think the problem started when Cllr John Kent announced he would be holding back money from Morrisons and then Morrisons couldn’t pay their contractors – who then downed tools and things have got worse ever since.