A FOLLOW-UP to an inspection that uncovered low morale among council staff will come to a close during the next few weeks.

A report shown to The Northern Echo reveals that last year, inspectors from the Audit Commission found staff morale and motivation to be "very low" at Chester-le-Street District Council.

In the report, they recommended the council tackle issues including "valuing staff, treating staff properly, motivation, training and development, recognition and reward".

The subsequent report containing the inspectors' findings was released last September and heavily criticised the council's housing department, rating it a poor, no-star service.

Targets for improvement were set and progress on these goals are now being analysed in the follow-up inspection, which should be completed before the end of the month. The findings will be made public in September.

The last report recognised that the council was providing services with limited resources and praised staff for being "professional, hard working and committed".

The report concluded that the pressures of modernisation were causing difficulties for small district councils.

But the council is still hopeful that it has made progress in areas where it was criticised, particularly where staff are concerned.

The district council's personnel manager, Joanne Machers, said they had invested a lot of time and resources acting on the inspectors' recommendations.

Focus groups were set up by the housing services manager to involve officers in decisions, and individual members of staff were assessed to find out what their train-ing and development needs were.

She said: "We have acted positively on the inspectors' recommendations by investing a lot of time and other resources in identifying and implementing appropriate staff training."

The council's housing department recently conducted an in-house survey to find out how many targets had been reached. Some issues, such as tackling the backlog of houses needing adaptation for disabled residents, have not been resolved because of a lack of funding.

But speaking on a previous occasion, housing services manager Brian O'Doherty, who took over the department ten months ago, said "significant" improvements had been made in the department since the commission's report.