LAST Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting saw Thurrock Conservatives housing spokesman, Rob Gledhill, call for Thurrock and other councils across the country, to come clean on Council rent collection.
During the regular performance review item it was revealed that last year approximately £1.2 million of rent was lost due to poor turn around times on re-letting empty council properties. Cllr Gledhill pointed out that this lost income was not reported in performance figures and asked if it was about time all councils came clean on reporting uncollected rent.
Cllr Gledhill said: “I find it unbelievable that a performance measure which ignores rental income lost due to properties sitting empty, or some housing benefit overpayments, was created. I find it equally as odd that despite this performance measure being scrapped some years ago is still being used by councils up and down the country”.
The idea of reporting the loss of income appeared to get approval from the Labour leadership, with an undertaking it would be looked at immediately. Cllr Gledhill added “It was good to see universal agreement to do this. With Councils having the freedom to set local agreed performance measures, now is the time to break the mould and be at the forefront of openness in performance reporting. I fully appreciate there will need to be some work to ensure every penny missed is now reported, but once done I would urge the Council to write to all other local authorities to ensure a similar benchmark is adopted.”
Has Thurrock Council ever know how best to utilise their assets?
How is the mythical and somewhat elusive asset register going?
Do Thurrock Council yet know exactly what land and property they own in Thurrock or are they still discovering plots of land that they didn’t realise they owned.
And why after 15 years is the former allotment between Dell Road and Orsett Road still empty and unused? This is a criminal waste of a community asset. The former allotment was transferred to Thurrock Council by Essex County Council, after Essex County Council kicked off all the tenants of the allotment. And it has sat there becoming overgrown ever since. Either sell it off for housing to raise some cash or bring it back to use as community allotments.
And if you sell it off please don’t use whoever valued the King Street car park in Stanford-le-Hope – get a rea valuation – not a Mickey Mouse valuation.