Now Chester-le-Street will get the David Hucker treatment

Chester-le-Street council has hired respected troubleshooter David Hucker to overhaul its no-stars housing department.

The council, which is in County Durham, was rated “poor” in the Audit Commission’s comprehensive performance assessment of local authorities and given “no stars” for its housing service last year.

Now it has commissioned Hucker, the consultant who tackled Birmingham council’s backlog of 57,000 repairs, to help bring the service up to two stars by December next year.

He will be acting director of housing until this December.

The council started advertising this week for a £70,000 director of community services to take over from him. The new director will start work in November.

Hucker said his hit list would include the stock options appraisal, housing revenue account business plan, repairs appointments and the decent homes standard.

The council’s housing revenue account business plan was out of date but is now being written in consultation with the region’s government office. It will be completed by November.

“The council has sufficient resources to meet the very basic decent homes standard but consultation with tenants – which has been done well here – shows they would like more than the basics. The stock options appraisal will look at what can be done and how much the funding gap would be,” he said.

The council plans to consult tenants on stock options by early December.

Many of the criticisms made by the Audit Commission inspectors, including the council’s lack of a housing strategy, have now been addressed, said Hucker.

“Having addressed the significant points, it’s a question of getting it up to a standard that would rate as two stars,” he added.

Hucker will introduce a new appointments system and diagnostics software for repairs.

Chester-le-Street is also seeking directors of resources and development services and last month appointed a new chief executive, Roy Templeton. He is currently corporate director of York council’s environment and development services.