Acting chief John Townsend pushed aside as Salford strives to meet funding deadline
Salford's arm's-length management organisation has demoted its chief executive in a last-ditch attempt to boost its performance.

New Prospect Housing, which manages 29,000 homes, has until next July to improve its zero-star rating to two stars so it will qualify for government cash in the ALMO second round. The organisation has bid for £53m which it needs to meet the decent homes standard.

Progress has fallen behind schedule, so Salford City Council and New Prospect's board have asked acting chief executive John Townsend to step down.

He has been offered a job as director of maintenance of director of property with New Prospect. If he turns this down, he will be offered a severance package. He was unavailable for comment but was said to be considering his options.

No replacement has yet been appointed.

Council leader John Merry said: "It is very clear that decisive action is needed, and we cannot afford to simply wait and see if the current gradual rate of improvement accelerates.

"If we fail to achieve a two-star rating for this service by July 2004, we will miss out on £53m of government investment.

"We must see clear improvement, and that just isn't happening quickly enough."

Hilary Peat, New Prospect's chairwoman, said: "This decision has been taken because of various information and reports which indicate that despite the fact that real progress is being made, we are falling behind schedule on the required performance indicators set down by the government."

Key indicators that must improve include:

  • the turnaround time for processing empty properties, which is currently 75 days, 25 days more than the government target;
  • the number of empty properties available for let, currently 895;
  • the rate of rent arrears, which is currently about 6% compared with a government target of 4.25%
  • the percentage of urgent repairs completed on time, currently at 88%, just below the 90% government target.

New Prospect was set up in September 2002, when Salford council received a zero-star rating from the Audit Commission for its housing service.

Because of the low rating, the organisation did not qualify for government funding at the time. If it does not manage to qualify for round-two funding, it is expected to put in a bid for round four.

Source

Housing Today