Housing: Nottingham deserves better

12.00.00am BST (GMT +0100) Mon 26th May 2008

When will the city get much-needed investment??

When the Council handed its housing function over to Nottingham City Homes, it was a complete mess.

NCH was only set up to get a government grant to modernise the housing, but they couldn't even get that right.

Labour asked for £165million to improve council houses - and then discovered the estates were in such poor condition tt actually needed £309million.

It didn't even get the £165million it asked for because the organisation set up by was so poor that it didn't get even get two stars in a government inspection.

Lib Dem Parliamentary Spokesman Tony Sutton said, "The government audit showed housing was poorly managed. There were also serious concerns about possibly fraudulent and illegal housing allocations. The District Auditor has been investigating these for the last two years and a number of senior people have already had to leave the company.

When NCH was set up there were more than 33,000 properties. By 2013, the NCH Board expects that there will be less than 26,000. Nearly a quarter of all the houses will have have been sold. And the waiting list for family housing is now nearly 18 months. In some areas it is over 3 years.

Lib Dem Councillor Alex Foster said, "There is a desperate need for council housing in Nottingham and the Labour group have sold off properties. They have mis-managed housing for years and Nottingham people are suffering as a result.