Estate boards face massive overspend

Only a quarter of the year has gone by, but the weekly check on expenditure has already revealed there was likely to be a serious overspend unless budgets were adhered to.

Now letters have gone out to Bacup and Stacksteads, Whitworth and Rawtenstall EMBs, which are run by tenants who manage their own estates and are responsible for administering the maintenance budget, and neighbourhood offices in Waterfoot and Rawtenstall, telling them to keep repairs expenditure within limits.

Rossendale health and housing committee chairman Coun Stephen Birtwell said: "Rawtenstall had quite dramatically over spent and Rawtenstall and Bacup were the worst offenders. Haslingden had underspent.

"When we looked into it we found that some of the money had been spent on refurbishment works such as new kitchens and windows and when these are carried out as a one off the price can double.

"It is a lot cheaper if work such as this is carried out under a planned maintenance scheme which comes out of a different budget for architects to arrange a contract and get tenders for the works.

"I am sure that over the next few weeks we will see quite a considerable reduction in the expenditure and if those higher priced jobs are no longer going in then the amount of overspend will come down."

He said the tightening of the purse would not mean tenants with essential repair and maintenance work would not get them attended to.

Coun Birtwell said: "As far as the tenants are concerned they should not notice any difference."

He said the situation would continue to be closely monitored in the future and the council would be reviewing the way it allocated budgets.

He added: "In the past the budget has been set based upon what was spent the previous year which encouraged overspending and penalised areas which had controlled their budget. We are going to look at the way we allocate budgets."