"The North East Lincolnshire Council is performing adequately. It has made significant progress across key areas over the last two years." However, we give below a number of criticisms which the Audit Commission made. This is NOT intended to be a balanced summary.

Crime and Safety

"The Council needs to do more to make community safety a mainstream issue."

"The Council and its partners face a significant challenge to improve community safety. Crime in the area is high; in 2004/05 recorded crime was in the worst quartile compared with similar areas."

"The Council's arrangements for enhancing community cohesion are inadequate. Community cohesion does not feature in the community safety strategy."....."The risks of community conflict, between people of different ages, races or living in different parts of the borough are enhanced because of lack of community leadership by the Council on this issue."

"The incidence of road accident injuries, although improving, is too high."...."the area remains in the worst 25% nationally."

How well is the Council Working ?

"The scrutiny function remains underdeveloped and except for a few in depth reviews has been of limited effectiveness."... "too many reports are presented for note.This means that while scrutiny members may be well informed, meetings add little value."

"....a high proportion of the Council's services are still performing poorly when compared to all the other Councils in England. Examples include percentage of unfit houses, numbers of people killed and seriously injured on the roads........Over half of all BVIs (i.e. Best Value Indicators) are still showing below average performance with a high proportion of these being amongst the worst performing in the country."

"There are high levels of multiple deprivation, particularly in health, housing, low skills, worklessness and crime; outcomes for local people still do not match the Council's ambitions."

Housing Issues

"The Council has not provided appropriate leadership and strategic direction to ensure the borough's housing meets the current and future needs of its communities."

"The Council's strategic approach to housing is weak and underdeveloped."............"The existing strategy covers the period from 2003/2005 and fails to articulate specific targets to, for example, increase the percentage of decent homes in the private sector or lesson the numbers of empty homes in the borough."

"Housing market and need issues are not being effectively tackled"......."However, there are high levels of unfitness, non-decency and vacant property in the private sector housing stock which makes up the largest proportion of the borough's homes."