The city council’s housing service is in “complete crisis” with “no end in sight” on delivering improvements, according to the leader of the opposition Conservative group.

Cllr Peter Baillie gave a frank assessment during debate on Southampton City Council’s housing revenue account (HRA) budget and capital programme.

He accused the Labour leadership of “years of mismanagement” and suggested the funds allocated for investments and repairs would not deliver meaningful progress.

Cabinet member for housing operations Cllr Andy Frampton said the administration was putting tenants and leaseholders at the heart of what they do, providing better places for people to live and delivering value for money.

Labour’s £87.86million HRA budget for 2025/26 and £312.92million capital programme through to the end of 2029/30 were approved at full council on February 26 without the support of any of the opposition groups.

Cllr Frampton said the next 12 months of the capital programme would focus on accelerating improvements on the local authority’s decent homes performance.

The number of council properties that meet the decent homes standard in Southampton fell from 61 per cent in 2019 to 46 per cent in 2023.

An officer report said this was due to historic and current under investment in homes, partly due to budget constraints following rent reductions from 2016 to 2020 and partly due to insufficient capacity to deliver.

Cllr Frampton said the Conservatives’ decision to freeze rents in 2022/23 when they were running the council had a big impact on the finances of the HRA.

The new additional investment in decent homes was being funded by pausing, stopping or using alternative delivery methods to existing projects in the programme, including Millbank House, Albion Towers, Canberra Towers and plot 10 of Townhill Park.

Cllr Frampton said there 2025/26 would see a £6.88million increase in investment for improving the quality of homes.

This included £3.45million on roofing, £1.5million on new kitchens, £1.5million on heating upgrades on the Holyrood Estate and £500,000 on new bathrooms.

Rents and service charges will increase by 2.7 per cent, while there will be a 10 per cent reduction in landlord-controlled heating rates due to reductions in energy costs.

Cllr Baillie said the HRA was in a difficult situation, with the condition of housing stock and the cost of repairs and maintenance to those properties being unknown.

He said once this information is known the administration’s 40-year business plan will have to be “massively” rewritten, although he said it was concerning that this would be based on only a sample of property assessments.

“The aim for the HRA must be a full individual stock condition database,” Cllr Baillie said.

“That was promised some while ago and it’s exceptionally disappointing that a statistical exercise seems to have replaced a full survey.”

The Conservative councillor for Harefield said the number of void properties –empty homes not currently being rented out  – needed to come down and too few homes were at a decent standard.

He said the money allocated for new bathrooms and kitchens was not sufficient and the council was“storing up issues” by not putting enough money into these areas.

“This report I’m afraid is not a report for the future,” Cllr Baillie said.

“It is the report of a service in a complete crisis, leaderless and seemingly with no end in sight for improvement.”

Liberal Democrat group leader Cllr Richard Blackman said there was still so much to do after a “devastating” social housing regulators report last year.

He said the void issue had a way to go to be resolved and investment in properties was needed but the full financial implications were not known.

“The Liberal Democrats want to see rapid change here after years of neglect from the Labour and Conservative administrations that have been here over the past 10 or 15 years,” Cllr Blackman said.

Fellow Liberal Democrat Cllr Sam Chapman said a separate scrutiny management board should be created to focus just on the housing service.

In his summing up, Cllr Frampton said a housing improvement board had been formed.

He said the capital programme’s targets included lowering the non-decent homes standard down to 40 per cent by the end of 2025/26 and a “massive” reduction in void numbers.