A GOVERNMENT report has slammed Hyndburn council for "excessive" spending on repairs to its 3,800 council houses.

The Best Value Inspectorate report revealed the organisation and red tape surrounding £1.1million of housing repairs from 2000 to 2001 cost the council £263,000 -- £16.22 spent on paperwork for each repair ordered.

The inspectors carried out the investigation for two weeks in May and said the amount was "more than double what similar sized authorities achieve."

And the report said the council's claim it completed 97 per cent of housing repair jobs within government time limits was false because the figures only recorded the time taken to complete the repair from the time work the contractor was contacted.

The performance indicator is supposed to record the time from receipt of the repair request from the tenant to its completion.

Council leader Coun Peter Britcliffe hit back, saying his council inherited a "clapped-out" system from the previous Labour administration.

He said: "We are concerned about this and Rome was not built in a day.

"However, there is to be a cabinet reshuffle of portfolios next week and one of our cabinet members will be looking at this problem to iron it out.

"But we inherited a clapped-out council and we have been stretched to put things right. The Best Value report has highlighted this problem and has given us a greater will to remedy it.

"We did not deliberately misreport the waiting times and it was good the report highlighted the problem. We shall be addressing the matter immediately." Labour Group leader Ian Ormerod called for the introduction of a programme of housing maintenance, instead of what he described as the council's reliance on emergency repair work. He said: "This is a damning report. They spend a lot of money on emergency repairs which costs an arm and a leg and are fire fighting when they should be doing regular preventative maintenance checks.

"We in the Labour Group share some of the blame because we didn't produce a programme of works.

"But we were being rate-capped at the time, which made things difficult.

"And with the Government's Right to Buy policy, we were forced to sell off 1,000 houses.

"The problem was, the financial burden of their maintenance fell onto fewer shoulders.

"But now the council has had a lot more money thrown at it by the Government, with their revenue budget going up to £11million in 1999.

"It was capped at £9.4million for the previous seven years.

"They should use it more efficiently."

Fellow Labour councillor Tim O'Kane added: "Members of the council and service users need to have total faith in performance indicators.

"What this reports reveals is a serious breakdown in the integrity of the system.

"Whether this is sleight of hand or an oversight, we need to know what happened and I will be demanding to know what the real figure is from the leader of the council."