Due To Overspends Highland Council Housing Committee Suspends Non Essential Repairs On Council Houses

18th November 2022

Overspends are currently projected on housing repairs, homelessness, and other rent void loss, with the biggest emerging issue on housing repairs.

Labour and material costs for housing repairs continue to be affected by rising inflation. We have also experienced some difficulties in recruitment to our in-house building maintenance trades teams and this has resulted in greater use of external contractors, where costs are generally higher. If spend remains at the current level for the rest of the year an overspend of £2.758m is projected. To manage this and minimise any year-end overspends on the HRA overall it is recommended that non-essential repairs are suspended.

In general terms, this would include non-essential repairs largely associated with the external fabric of properties and environmental improvement works. This would include repairs to fencing, gates, garages and pathways.

A weekly review of repairs would take place. This would allow Maintenance Teams to assess the risk of property/estate deterioration if the repairs continued to be suspended and to allow them to carry out these repairs if they required to be reprioritised.