GOVERNMENT inspectors and council managers have been explaining why a housing department had been rated as poor.

At a meeting at the civic centre in Chester-le-Street,on Thursday, housing inspector Suki Jandu told residents and councillors that inspectors had looked at Chester-le-Street District Council's housing service from the point of view of residents and tenants, and they had found a number of failings.

Problems the team identified included:

* The length of time properties were left 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;

* Rent arrears amounting to £641,000.

Mr Jandu said: "There are 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."

"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 Government-nominated housing specialists.

The board has been set up by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and the district council, and its role was explained at Thursday's meeting.

Peter Kemp, board chairman and former chief executive of Tynedale District Council, said there was national interest in the situation at Chester-le-Street now, because it was the first time the Government had 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."

Meanwhile, Easington District Council is expected to endorse a 2.7 per cent increase in its council house rents.

The rent rise - equivalent to an average rise of £1.13 a week - comes after the Government suggested that rents should increase by £1.44 a week, and the council calculated it was facing a shortfall of £340,000 in the housing sector.

The authority has attributed the shortfall to a loss of rent because of voids, the success of its marketing strategy, inflation, stock loss, reduced subsidies, extra superannuation costs and 2002-2003 budget difficulties.

An Audit Commission report published this week gave the council's housing repairs and maintenance service a poor rating, putting it in the bottom 20 per cent of authorities in the country.