Another £24m worth of Nottingham council housing rents could have been wrongly spent, a fresh investigation into city council and Nottingham City Homes accounts have revealed. Following the discovery, the authority will meet later this week to consider bringing Nottingham City Homes in-house.
The Labour-run authority was handed an extremely rare Section 114 legal notice in December for ‘unlawfully’ spending more than £15m on the wrong services. It was revealed £15.86m from the council’s Housing Revenue Account (HRA) – which involves income from council tenants’ rent and should have been spent on housing repairs – were incorrectly credited to the General Fund for all council services.
The HRA is strictly ring-fenced and cannot be used for other purposes. The unlawful spend had taken place since 2014/15. The council said it intends to replace the lost money from its reserves – but concerns have been raised by opposition leaders there is not enough cash to replace the money lost.
