Hundreds of council houses in Southampton are sitting empty for months.

Figures show the number of unoccupied homes in the city council’s housing stock peaked at 446 in January.

Councillors were told that the voids had started to fall in recent months but it would take time to see significant improvements.

Director of housing Jamie Brenchley said the latest total stood at 390, with at least four homes a week coming back into a rentable condition.

Mr Brenchley told members of the governance committee the overall target was to have between just 25 and 50 void properties.

He said the realistic aim for the next 12 months was to halve the number of empty properties to below 200 homes.

A report on the housing voids update said consultants had helped to carry out a review and develop a detailed plan to improve performance.

“The focus is on long-term improvements and we are unlikely to see trends reduce until later in 2024,” the report said.

The time taken to get voids back into a condition that they could be let had increased over the past year.

Twelve months ago the average was 94 days for properties requiring routine work and 225 days for major works.

At the end of last month, these figures stood at 133 days and 278 days, respectively.

The report said: “This is the trend we would expect to see. Long-term voids are being tackled and brought back into use. The actions being implemented will take time to embed and are being subject to significant management action.”

At a meeting on Monday, April 23, members of the governance committee raised concerns about the quality of the void project plan which was presented to them.

Mr Brenchley was asked if effort was being made to streamline the building trades process involved in carrying out work on voids.

The officer said no other authorities used individual specialist tradespeople like the city council did.

He said the council was in the process of moving to multiskilled trades.

Cabinet member for housing Cllr Andy Frampton said: “There are a number of pieces of work that we are doing around housing. The question keeps being asked how do we compare and we don’t compare good with some other authorities.

“We know where we are. We know that we can improve.”