A CONSERVATIVE member of Winchester City Council has questioned whether her colleagues are taking their jobs on a scrutiny committee as seriously as they should.

Councillor Caroline Horrill, who sits as a deputy on the committee but is not actually in it, spoke sternly to its members at a meeting on November 12, calling for them not to skimp on discussions about the council's finances, waste disposal and sustainability.

She said said: "On a general point, chair, I just wanted to raise the fact that [considering] the length of the agenda this evening and the importance and the number of papers that you have before you, I question whether the commitment to scrutiny is as robust as it should be for this council.

READ MORE: Winchester City Council has more than 1,000 empty homes

The scrutiny committee on November 12 (Image: Sebastian Haw/WCC) "We seem to be curtailing some of the discussions because of time on some very important elements of the council’s business, and I would have hoped that there would have been better planning to allow full discussion for everyone."

She continued to ask several questions about housing and tenants, specifically about renters' service charges.

This is not the only occasion in recent times Cllr Horrill has raised concerns to Winchester city councillors about the future of the council's housing assets.

At a full council on Wednesday, November 6, civic chiefs heard how a total of 1,043 homes are empty, 433 of which are in Winchester city, prompting some to wonder whether they couldn't be reclaimed to ease the housing crisis.

On that occasion, Cllr Horrill asked: “How many empty homes does the council have in total in the district and how many by ward?”

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In response, deputy council leader Neil Cutler OBE said: “In October this year there were 1,043 homes registered as empty. Of these 815, which is 78 per cent of them, have been empty for less than one year. 112 of them, that’s 10.7 per cent, have been empty for between one and two years and 90 have been empty between two and five years, which is 8.6 per cent. […] Three houses have been empty for over 20 years.

“The empty homes for less than one year represent 1.39 per cent of the total number of homes [almost 60,000] and for more than one year 0.39 per cent.”

The figure, Cllr Cutler said, is always at its peak in October due to students not having registered themselves.