There are three times more housing inspections carried out each year in the Scarborough Borough than in the whole of the rest of North Yorkshire.
As North Yorkshire prepares for it's existing district, borough and county councils to be merged in to one authority in April, Scarborough Borough Council has lead on a bid for government cash to help the new authority bolster it's regulatory housing activity and along the way discovered some big differences in the way the system works across the county.
Borough council Housing Manager - Andrew Rowe - says a study looking at housing regulation across the county found some big differences.
The borough council has secured £1.4m of government cash to help bolster the work of the housing team at the new North Yorkshire Council when it's formed in April.
Mapping undertaken as part of this work had shown significant variations in approach and capacity with regard to the use of regulatory tools to improve housing conditions. A report presented to borough councillors said:
"Whilst the more urban areas of Harrogate and Scarborough were reasonably well resourced and took a proactive approach with regard to regulatory activity, the smaller more rural councils struggled with capacity and levels of intervention were more limited. Staffing resilience, recruitment and retention was another issue highlighted across the county."
The countywide funding bid was aimed at providing the new North Yorkshire Council with the necessary starting point to improve resilience and to ensure that going forward this work was sufficiently prioritised across the whole county. With increased resilience and capacity, the aim was to double levels of overall housing enforcement interventions across the county over a three year period.
Borough Council Leader Steve Siddons says the money is great but thinks more needs to be done to ensure a supply of safe, affordable housing.
In advance of re-organisation the Borough Council has been leading on the Private Sector Housing work-stream for the Local Government Reorganisation Housing Board. The bid was submitted by the Borough Council on behalf of all the Districts and the County Council with a view to the creation of the new Authority.
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