A programme to refurbish nearly two million council homes will cost more than twice the original budget and take eight years longer than planned, the public spending watchdog says today.
The National Audit Office says that the Government has missed its target to finish the programme to repair all social homes in poor condition by 2010. The initial budget of £19billion has been vastly overspent, with the total cost expected to hit £37billion by April next year, it says.
By last November 1.4million homes had been upgraded under the Decent Homes initiative out of the more than 1.6million originally needing work. By the end of this year only 92 per cent of the programme will be finished but the homes needing repair will have increased since 1997.
This would leave more than 300,000 homes still in a state of disrepair, with some not being refurbished till 2018-19. Part of the reason for the delay is Gordon Brown’s decision to pump £3billion into council house building at the end of 2008.
After a Treasury decision that most of the cash should come from existing Whitehall programmes. The Communities Department agreed to release £150million from the Decent Homes programme.
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The watchdog criticises the Communities Department for not preparing a better estimate of the costs of the programme at the outset by predicting that more homes would fall into disrepair during the timeframe.
Edward Leigh, chairman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, said the programme had been “riddled with oversights and a sketchy grasp of detail”.
Amyas Morse, head of the NAO calls for a more “reliable funding mechanism” to be introduced to deliver the rest of the programme. “Hundreds of thousands of families are still living in properties that are not warm, weather-tight, or in a reasonable state of repair,” he said.
A spokesman for the Communities Department said it was always recognised that the Government’s initial estimate of £19billion was only to improve the backlog of local council stock and would not fund the entire programme.
Two thirds of the remaining backlog would be completed by 2014 with the rest finished four years later, he said.