'Poor' housing service under fire

The council's housing repair service was criticised

A council housing repair service has been strongly criticised by a government watchdog.

The "poor" service provided by Easington District Council in County Durham, was given a zero-star rating in a report by the Audit Commission.

It criticised the department for having no challenging targets, low customer care standards no effective appointments system.

Director of housing for the council, Alan Caygill, said he was "disappointed" at the report.

Action plan

But he said he was confident standards could be improved before the next inspection in a year's time.

Mr Caygill said: "We are not very happy about the result of the inspection.

"A lot of work had been done prior to this inspection and we had identified a lot of problems that had been pulled out in the report.

"The Audit Commission has recognised that we have been positive about the results of the inspection.

"We have got an action plan which they agree is a positive step forward and which responds to all of the recommendation in their report.

"We have actually completed a lot of the recommendations within that action plan already.

"So we are confident that within 12 months we would have improved the judgement on the housing service."