A MAJOR housing landlord is set to be brought in to manage hundreds of empty homes across East Lancashire in the wake of a lettings saga.

Council bosses want to seal a deal to cover properties across Blackburn with Darwen, Burnley, Pendle, Hyndburn and Rossendale covered by a controversial £5.6million Homes and Communities Agency initiative.

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Otherwise Rossendale Council, which has already been forced to spend more than £600,000 on the empty homes programme, would be facing an extra £200,000 bill per year in management and re-letting costs.

The plans have been drawn up in the wake of the AAAW Lettings saga, which saw a firm run by a former Pendle Council housing director, Todmorden-based Clive Thomasson, fail after taking on responsibility for upgrading 515 homes across the region.

Later the lack of oversight for the deal and ongoing checks on progress before AAAW went bust were sharply criticised by independent auditors.

Council leader Cllr Alyson Barnes hopes that the fresh approach will enable her authority to move on from the saga.

She said: “There was a significant sum in our budget to deal with this which can now be released to be spent elsewhere.”

Under the deal the housing landlord would take on the housing stock within its existing portfolio, and offer tenants a management, repairs and maintenance service for tenants.

And in return the organisation would be entitled to 30 per cent of the rents, with the remainder due to owners after loans on the properties are repaid.

The deal would last for the next nine years or so, with the total number of properties estimated to be around 400 and falling, as more sites are repaired.

If approved it would probably lead to the secondment of two housing staff, as the remainder are currently either agency workers or those on short-term contracts.

In a report to Rossendale full council, Council chief executive Stuart Sugarman said: “It is estimated that an in-house housing team would cost the council on average £200,000 per annum over a five-year period. Alternative managing agents would provide a significantly better-value solution, if the right contractual partner can be found.”

The contract would be advertised officially using European Union tendering procedures before a successful candidate was appointed towards the end of August.