GOVERNMENT housing inspectors and council managers have told a seminar for residents why Chester-le-Street housing department has been rated as poor.

In an exceptionally candid look at the failings of its service, members of the public had the chance to put their questions about the district council's housing department to council representatives and government inspectors last Thursday.

At the meeting at the civic centre, housing inspector Suki Jandu told residents and councillors that they had looked at the housing service from the point of view of tenants and residents and found a string of failings.

Problems included the length of time properties stood empty, causing the council to lose out on hundreds of thousands of pounds in potential rent, houses falling short of the council's minimum standards, long waits for routine repairs and rent arrears amounting to £641,000.

Mr Jandu said: "There's some really difficult issues there, that require some really difficult decisions. But these issues just haven't been tackled at the end of the day and the only people it has an impact on is the tenants."

He added: "We inspected once and found the service poor, we inspected a second time, we again found it was poor. We felt we couldn't do any more than that.

"That's why we referred it to the deputy prime minister for potential intervention."

One of the first steps in tackling the problem has been to set up a housing advisory board, made up of district councillors, tenants and members nominated by the Government with specialist knowledge of housing.

The initiative has been set up by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and the district council and its role was explained.

Chairman of the housing advisory board Peter Kemp, former chief executive of Tynedale District Council, said there was a lot of national interest in the situation at Chester-le-Street now, as it was the first time the Government has intervened in a service.

He said: "People are looking at us and if they're not happy there will be further consequences.

"We don't know what they are yet, we're here to try and make sure we focus on the issues of housing, which wasn't being done in the view of the inspectorate."