A council vote on selecting and appointing a preferred social housing provider in Angus has been scrapped after an 11th-hour request from the Scottish Government.
Councillors were to be asked to approve neighbourhood services director Ron Ashton’s decision to proceed with a joint Angus Council and Scottish Government tendering process to secure a preferred developer for Angus for 2011/12 to 2012/13 to secure efficiencies in the procurement of affordable housing, or abandon the tendering exercise.
Subject to their recommending the report, neighbourhood services committee members were to be asked to agree appointing the DOMUS consortium as the government’s preferred Angus social landlord developer from April 2011 to March 2014.
DOMUS had been the front-runner in a three-horse race to become the area’s preferred registered social landlord developer, in response to a government reform of affordable housing.
DOMUS comprising Hillcrest Housing Association, Home Scotland, Perthshire Housing Association and Servite Housing Association topped a government scoring system and was being recommended by Mr Ashton.
The authority was about to move forward the government’s preferred developer process at its previous meeting in November.
However, the suggested selection of DOMUS led to claims that jobs could be lost in the county and criticism from one leading developer that the proposal was not a good deal for Angus.
Opposition members on the neighbourhood services committee succeeded in getting the plan deferred to last night, because councillors were not given a promised report on the scheme’s progress.No delay ‘whatsoever’Committee convener Jim Millar told councillors at Thursday’s meeting in Forfar, “As you know there was some debate at the last committee concerning this matter and I can confirm that the briefing meetings were indeed held.
“As a result, the procurement process in conjunction with the Scottish Government did go ahead.”
He added, “However, at a very late stage we have now received a request from the Scottish Government to withdraw consideration of this process to allow further discussion with the government as to how best we may jointly proceed.
“As the process is actually one of their devising, I was happy to accede to that request to ensure no party is in any way disadvantaged.”
He added, “I would confirm that this will not lead to any delay whatsoever in providing much-needed housing for Angus.”
Angus Housing Association had claimed the reports going before councillors regarding the selection and appointment of a preferred social housing provider were “factually inaccurate and misleading.”
Chairwoman Hazel Farquhar had reacted angrily to two reports on the agenda of Thursday’s committee meeting.
The association has indicated that the move would cost jobs in a group which has delivered more than 1000 affordable homes over four decades.
Image used under Creative Commons courtesy of Flickr user woodleywonderworks.