Havering Council Marked As One Of The Fastest Boroughs For Repairing And Returning Unoccupied Social Housing.

Havering Council is one of the fastest at repairing and returning unoccupied social housing properties to new tenants when compared to other London boroughs, according to Housemark’s Annual Benchmarking on performance.

Like many councils across the country, Havering is facing a housing crisis and with demand continuing to outstrip supply for social housing, maximising the turnaround time of empty properties (voids) is crucial to reduce the risk of homelessness and provide quality homes for Havering residents.

Voids are unoccupied properties within council stocks, which often require repairs before being ready for new occupants (key-to-key), with the time taken to have them available and returned to the lettings team depending on the extent of the repairs.

The Housing Team aim to make all void properties available for letting as quickly as possible, this maximises social housing stocks, minimises loss of rental income and alleviates some of the temporary use of costly private accommodation such as hotels and flats where possible.

The Council manages over 9,000 homes in total including Private Sector Housing (PSH). Last year, around 750 became voids, there are about 80 voids with the maintenance, and lettings team at any given time.

Havering Council’s key-to-key times for returning voids back to the market is an impressive 55 days. This is faster than most other best performing councils, who take around 66 days on average to turnaround a void property as confirmed by Housemark, a leading data and insight company for the UK housing sector.

Havering’s key-to-key times have also reduced significantly over recent years, in 2020/21 it previously took the Council on average 80 days to return a void property to housing stocks.

Councillor Ray Morgon, Leader of Havering Council, said:

“Maximising our housing stocks is crucial to helping Havering tackle the housing crisis and ensuring local residents get access to the limited supply of council homes we have in the borough.

“The Council’s success in getting void properties back available in a timely fashion is great news for residents, as it reduces housing pressures and saves the Council money.

“It’s also positive that when these void properties are returned to new tenants, they have been repaired and upgraded to standard that is in keeping with our obligations as a responsible landlord.

“I would like to add my thanks to the Housing Team and to Mears, our repairs contractor, for producing such excellent key-to-key results.”  

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