UP to 28,000 homes across the North-East are still unfit to live in – despite a Government pledge to bring them all up to scratch by this year.

A watchdog has warned the decent homes programme will take eight years longer than planned and cost almost twice as much as expected – a total of £37bn.

The National Audit Office (NAO) said the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) had failed to properly work out costs and failed to monitor progress by local councils and housing associations.

But the DCLG hit back, insisting the programme was widely viewed as a success, with 92 per cent of homes – more than 1.4 million – brought up to scratch.

A £19bn backlog of repairs, inherited from the Tories, had been tackled, putting in 810,000 kitchens, 610,000 bathrooms, 1,000,000 windows, central heating systems, rewiring and insulation improvements.

A DCLG spokesman said: “We remain totally committed to completing the decent homes programme and making sure it is fully funded.”

However, the NAO report reveals that 305,000 homes – eight per cent of the total – will not have reached the “decent home” standard by the target of the end of this year.

Of that number, 27,963 are in the North-East and a further 28,620 across Yorkshire, according to figures released to The Northern Echo.

Among the worst-hit local authorities are Easington (6,636), South Tyneside (8,999), Newcastle (6,955), Gateshead (1,513), Stockton (700) and Durham City (560).

However, no figures are available for Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Redcar and Cleveland and Sedgefield, because their housing stocks have been transferred to housing associations.

According to the NAO, the “public service agreement”, announced in 2000, to ensure all local authority properties met “decent” standards by 2010, will not be fulfilled until 2018-19. Meanwhile, the cost of repairs is set to hit £37bn next year, compared with the estimated £19bn bill when Labour came to power in 1997.

More demanding health and safety standards, introduced in 2006, had hit a separate pledge to improve the homes of “vulnerable” people in private accommodation, the watchdog reported.

Amyas Morse, the head of the NAO, said: “Hundreds of thousands of families are still living in properties which are not warm, weather tight, or in a reasonable state of repair.”