LA tenants face long wait for housing inspections

The quango said that the sheer scale of its rolling five-year annual programme of 900 Best Value inspections inevitably meant that many tenants would have to wait.

Launching the commission's annual report, commission chair Dame Helena Shovelton said the timetable for the first year of Best Value would be extremely tight.

The first three months of the new regime, which begins next April, would be taken up by assessing council best value performance plans, followed by an intense programme of inspection before individual reports are published around April 2001, she said.

Only after that would improvements begin to be made, and most would come later still, added Shovelton. She said: "Timing will be crucial in year one."

However she said she was confident the organisation could rise to the challenge.

Her comments follow warnings from housing bodies that inspectors would be unable to cope with the amount of inspections the Commission expects each year (Housing Today, issue 135).

Announcing a major internal restructuring to meet its new remit she said: "The challenges ahead represent the biggest change programme since the commission was established in 1992. To meet these challenges effectively we have reviewed our structure so that it is appropriately aligned to our new responsibilities.

"We must remain focused on delivering real improvements for the public while maintaining the high standards that already exist in public services." The new structure will be implemented progressively during 1999, she added.