A HOUSING councillor says Enfield Homes might not have failed its recent inspection if the council had established it earlier.

Achilleas Georgiou, chairman of the housing scrutiny panel, claimed Enfield Homes “would have had a better chance” of gaining two-star status and qualify for
£137 million in Government Decent Homes funding if it had been created six months earlier.

The organisation, which manages all the council’s housing stock, went live in April 2008 and has been accused by tenants of not responding to complaints.

And when the Audit Commission inspection report is published in a few weeks, it is expected to highlight tenant participation as a key problem.

Cllr Georgiou said: “The Enfield Homes board wanted to go live six months earlier [than April 2008] but the council didn’t want to because there wasn’t any Government funding. If it had, Enfield Homes would have been able to embed itself. Then it would have had a better chance to get its two stars.”

He said over half of Enfield Homes tenants he spoke to at residents’ meetings felt they were not listened to.

He claimed: “There is a lack of trust and confidence. If you go to meetings with tenants it often comes up. You get officers saying repairs and maintenance is good and giving these statistics to back themselves up, but you speak to tenants and they say, 'I never bother responding, and those contractors are awful why do you still use them?'.”

Conservative councillor Edward Smith, a member of the Enfield Homes board, agreed Enfield Homes had not been established long enough.

He said: “Tenant participation is a very difficult thing and needs to be built up over a number of years. The Audit Commission report said some of the new policies haven’t been fully embedded in the organisation.”

He said: “The Audit Commission did a preliminary review when Enfield Homes was first established and came back with about 70 recommendations covering every aspect from management to maintenance, which was an awful lot.

"Enfield Homes worked flat-out to achieve that, but wanted more evidence that we were doing the things we wanted.

“It’s a giant undertaking to set up a new housing organisation. There is an absolute determination on the part of the board to improve residents' satisfaction with the service.”