For the fifth time in six years, Harrogate Borough Council's housing team has been assessed as the country's top performer.

This follows an independent report by Housingqualitynetwork into the country's 222 housing authorities and has proved once again that Harrogate is the 'best of the best'.

The report examined the recorded performance of local authorities in England and focused on average re-let intervals; repairs completed on time; and the percentage of rent collected.

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In the period under review, 99.2% of urgent repairs were completed within government timescales, 99.75% of rent was collected and just seven days taken to re-let vacant properties.

Councillor Jean Butterfield, Cabinet Member for Housing, says this is an outstanding achievement especially with the team's performance on the number of days taken to re-let vacant properties.

She said: "Affordable housing continues to be a top priority for us and a fast turn round of re-letting vacant council homes is obviously needed. We took this top award last year with a re-let period of 11 days. To get this down to seven is a credit to the housing team and our contractors. We have really good team work here and they should all be extremely proud of what they have achieved. The average for district councils is 29 days."

(CD/JM)