Progress on reducing the hundreds of council houses sitting empty in Southampton is not taking place as quickly as hoped.

Officers said there were several reasons behind the local authority missing its summer target for lowering the number of void properties.

Southampton City Council’s governance committee heard the number of homes becoming vacant in need of work and the volume of work required on a property before it could be rented out had increased by around 19 per cent.

The outstanding number of voids fell from 446 in January to 334 in August – a 25 per cent reduction.

The council’s target was to be at 307 properties by that point, with the goal of 120 properties by the end of March 2026.

Councillors suggested the way performance was reported failed to fully reflect the progress that had been made.

Conservative member for Harefield Cllr Rob Harwood said the most important metric was the average turnaround on a routine void, with the report to the committee suggesting there had been slow progress in this area.

As of August, the average turnaround for a routine void was 115 days against a target of just 10 days. Last year, the average turnaround was 133 days.

Mark Mullen, housing operations manager, said: “What we have found is that the amount of work in the properties has been increasing and it’s still continuing to increase.

“That volume of work in the properties and the number of voids coming in, which has been about a 19 per cent increase, is inevitably affecting the turnaround time on the voids.”

There were 136 more voids with completed work in the five months to August than in the same period a year ago.

This progress was largely due to relocating 23 trades and staff into the voids programme in March, which was part of the ongoing action plan.

Mr Mullen said some void properties required more than £50,000 of work.

Cllr Harwood asked if this meant there were often structural issues in homes.

“You will know some of the figures around the decent homes standard, the level that is failing the decent homes standard, that is reflecting in the number of building elements that are failing and that’s increasing the value of work and that is increasing the value of work,” Mr Mullen said.

“If you think about the average per void is actually continuing to increase, so we are getting more voids which involve structural work.

“We have been to some voids where the floors are absolutely rotten so you end up having to do quite significant amount of works.

“There’s also a few properties where the tenants have left them in poor condition and the actions in the plan is to spend more time targeting these properties, inspecting properties before they become void and try and get in there earlier and preventing some of this work getting worse.”

The committee heard time was being invested to improve the service’s productivity.

Cllr Harwood suggested splitting the data down to show the extent of work required in the voids might show “a different picture”.

Director of housing Jamie Brenchley said part of the “skew” was because the council was not targeting properties in date order.

“We are targeting properties in a way that allows us to bring those properties back into use in the quickest possible time frame alongside the more complex pieces of work,” Mr Brenchley said.

“Therefore some of those properties may have been void for a number of months, potentially years, which skews that data.

“We do need to rethink that and look at how we can provide a truer reflection and picture of performance in relation to routine turnaround rather than the way it is currently structured.

“In the short term, we have been really focusing on reducing the numbers and bringing as many properties back into use as possible.”

Mr Mullen said a lot of work in properties related to building components that had gone beyond their life cycle.

Committee chair Cllr Jacqui Rayment said members acknowledged the amount of effort and work that is being put in to tackle the void issue.

On how the data is presented, the Labour Bevois ward member said the “stark figures” in the report “doesn’t look good”.

Cllr Rayment said if the reporting was split up in more detail it would show that the actions being taken were “making an impact”.

She added: “The way we have decided to report stuff doesn’t always show us in a good light.”