£34m spent on council home upgrades

More than 2,600 homes are said to have benefited from the modernisation works which include fitting new boilers, heating, plumbing and electrics.

Kitchens and bathrooms have also been updated to ensure the homes have modern facilities.

A new team of Tenant Inspectors has also been created to check up on the city’s housing services and demand improvements on behalf of residents.

The inspectors will carry out assessments and present their findings and suggestions for improvements, to the council’s housing services management team.

Coun Ann Reid, executive member for neighbourhoods and housing, said the new inspectors would help to improve the service given to council tenants.

“Satisfaction with the housing service is generally very high in York”, she said.

“Our last housing satisfaction survey found that 89 per cent of tenants were happy with the overall service.

“However, we are always looking for ways in which we can involve tenants more in decision making and ensuring that the service meets their needs.”

“This new system of tenant inspectors will be an excellent way of ensuring that not only do our services meet the targets we set, but that they also respond to the needs of the people living in council homes.”

The council says it is set to decide to ditch the Decent Homes Standard guidelines created by the Government and create a York Standard for homes in the city.

Officers say the York Standard will ensure that as well as replacing fittings that exceeded the Decent Homes lifespan, items which were more than two thirds of the way towards the limit were also replaced, meaning residents did not have to suffer repeated disruption while upgrades were carried out.