To authorise the use of up to £310,000 from the Housing Revenue Account Reserves to fund the engagement of resources from Local Government East, to address an urgent need to provide capacity within the Housing Repairs team to meet the Council’s statutory obligation in relation to the maintenance of Council Housing Stock.

Note: This decision was made on behalf of the Cabinet by using the special urgency powers contained within parts 3 and 5.8 of the Council’s consultation, and in consultation with the Portfolio Holder for Housing and Planning, the Section 151 Officer and the Monitoring Officer.

Regulatory expectations for housing services have increased, at the same time as a well?documented national skills shortage in specialist local government roles, particularly building surveyors and social housing professionals. This has created a highly competitive recruitment market affecting councils nationally and making it increasingly difficult to recruit and retain skilled staff.

Within this context, two members of the Housing Repairs Service management team have recently resigned and, together with an existing vacancy, all three management posts will be vacant by 5 March 2026. Previous recruitment exercises have failed to attract suitably qualified candidates, indicating that both the resignations and ongoing vacancies reflect wider national labour?market pressures.

To ensure that sufficient management resource is available as timely as possible to ensure the delivery of the housing repairs service.

To continue with the recruitment process, without having a suitable management structure within the housing repairs team.  Effectively this would maintain the currently unacceptable risk of a suitable candidate being found within an unknown timescale, having had two failed recruitment exercises so far to date.