A council’s housing strategy delivered “very little” of what it set out to achieve after coming into force eight years ago.

The admission from Southampton City Council chiefs came as the Labour administration confirmed the introduction of a refreshed blueprint was being expedited.

Members of the council’s overview and scrutiny management committee quizzed deputy leader and finance cabinet member Cllr Simon Letts and senior officers on the authority’s two-page housing strategy 2016-2025.

Executive director of resident services Debbie Ward said it did not lack ambition, with “clear priorities” highlighting the importance of good quality and affordable housing.

However, Ms Ward said across the life of the strategy there had been “significant challenges” in terms of what communities had faced and the operational conditions for local authorities.

“On reflection and learning from looking back at that strategy, what we weren’t able to do was develop a rhythm of getting the delivery to meet the ambition,” Ms Ward.

“There are a number of areas where there are some real challenges that have built through.”

At the meeting on November 21, scrutiny committee member Cllr Steve Leggett asked how successful the executive and officers believed the implementation of the strategy had been.

He said: “I think there is a tendency, the council writes a lot of strategies and they sometimes can gather dust on the bookshelf.

“What they are not always very good at is monitoring the effectiveness of the implementation because that is the key about the output.”

Ms Ward said while the strategy was “quite clear”, it lacked smart – specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-bound – targets.

She added: “What it lacked was that operational drive to bring it into a single clear plan that is monitor-able and reportable and we would be seeking to change that considerably into the new strategy.”

Cllr Simon Letts, who was council leader when the strategy was introduced, said: “I can answer on behalf of the cabinet member, who tells me that he has read the strategy and he thinks that it is a solid document but very little of it has been achieved and I think that is exactly where we are and there are a variety of reasons for that.

“Austerity is the obvious one but Covid in the middle of it probably didn’t help and I suspect if we looked at similar strategies written by similar councils at the same time we will find that they were also finding some difficulties in terms of housing delivery.”

Housing operations cabinet member Cllr Frampton had instructed an updated strategy be produced to fit the current situation, Cllr Letts said.

Ms Ward said there was a commitment to work as a full council across all types of housing in the city.

She added: “What we will see coming forward in the new strategy as that comes through in 2025 for consideration and agreement will be the same ambition but the real development of the implementation and delivery plans that can support that.”

The scrutiny committee gave a formal recommendation to cabinet that the next iteration of the housing strategy be developed and published as soon as resources allow.