A South London council will have to spend almost £2million repairing 370 empty homes so residents can live in them.

Greenwich Council said there is a “backlog” of homes needing to be fixed after work was paused during the pandemic.

Speaking at a meeting last week, council officer Akosua Boachie said work on empty homes was “slow-moving”.

On behalf of the head of accounting for the council, she said: “The Covid lockdown resulted in a backlog of void properties [empty council homes] and numbers have remained around the 370 mark.

"Work is being done, it’s slowly making progress but the voids are still presenting a problem at the moment which is adding to the overspend.”

The overspending on empty council homes is part of a wider £4million deficit in council funds ringfenced for housing.

Councillor David Gardner said he was “struggling to get to grips” with the figure, and didn’t see why work on repairing the homes didn’t fully resume after lockdown.

He added: “Having this loss in revenue in voids, and because of this extra time it’s taken us to turn around voids and ensure they are occupied means our direct labour costs have gone up by significantly above budget.”

The meeting heard that the cost of fixing the empty homes is predicted to rise by 10per cent and spending on subcontractors for the project is anticipated to increase by 24pc.

Councillors were “extremely concerned” about the state of the borough’s empty homes given the long housing waiting list and homelessness issue. 

Cllr Gardner added: “These are huge amounts. So on the one hand, we are underperforming on voids, and you can’t explain that by some delays back in the early part of 2020.

"And on the other hand, we’re overspending in all the other areas where we might have spent a little in order to clear the voids backlog. But the backlog can’t be that large.”

The councillor then asked why such a large increase in subcontractor costs is predicted, when most contractors work on a long-term basis for the council.

Councillor Pat Slattery said that three new subcontractors had been brought in for the work this month, and that inflation had made the fixed cost for long-term contractors “uneconomic for them”.

Ms Boachie added: “We have had to recently employ a couple more subcontractors in order to improve the turnaround.

"From now until the end of the financial year, we are hoping that we will be able to turn around the voids quicker than the first half.”

The representative for finance also said that there are changes in working arrangements and the systems in place scheduled for next year.

She said these changes should “improve productivity” and cause the council to rely less on subcontractors for the work. 

Answering the concerns raised by councillors, Kristian Melgard, assistant director of housing for the council, said that he is “privy” to the conversation on empty homes and will focus on the issue for the next six months.

He said: “Any property that we have empty is not bringing in income and it’s not housing people in desperate need of housing. So I think that’s a key focus for us.”

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