Failings leave 1,000 Oldham homes unfit

MORE than 1,000 homes across Oldham are still unfit to live in — despite a flagship Government pledge to bring them all up to scratch by this year.

Now a watchdog has warned that the decent homes programme will take eight years longer than planned and cost almost twice as much as expected — a total of £37 billion.

The National Audit Office (NAO) said the department for communities and local government (DCLG) had failed to properly work out the costs and failed to monitor progress by local councils and housing associations.

But the DCLG insisted the programme was widely viewed as “a success”, with 92 per cent of homes — more than 1.4 million — brought up to scratch. A £19 billion backlog of repairs, inherited from the Tories, had been tackled, putting in 810,000 new kitchens, 610,000 bathrooms, 1,000,000 windows, central heating systems, rewiring and insulation improvements.

A DCLG spokesman said: “We remain totally committed to completing the decent homes programme and making sure it is fully funded.”.

The NAO report reveals that 305,000 homes — eight per cent of the total — will not have reached the “decent home” standard by the target of the end of this year. Of that number, 1,106 are in Oldham according to DCLG figures.

According to the NAO, the “public service agreement”, announced in 2000, to ensure all local authority properties met “decent” standards by 2010, will not be fulfilled until 2018-19.

Head of the NAO Amyas Morse called for a “reliable funding mechanism” to deliver the remainder of the decent homes programme.

He said: “Hundreds of thousands of families are still living in properties which are not warm, weather tight, or in a reasonable state of repair. The department’s efforts have been undermined by weaknesses in the information it holds.

“There are important lessons here on the benefits of having clear information on programmes when delivery is devolved to a local level.”