More than 200 desperately-needed city council homes are gathering dust while the authority grapples with a huge backlog of repairs.

Norwich is facing "unacceptable delays" in fixing up its houses with extra contractors called in to tackle the issue.

This has led to delays in re-letting the properties without tenants - known as 'voids'.

Around 238 homes are currently sitting empty in the city at a time while around 3,400 people are waiting patiently for a council home.

The council owns more than 14,500 houses.

Those waiting for a house include Aram Sarbir and Shahla Qadir, a couple forced to live in their car for the last seven months while they have waited for a council house to be handed over.

The couple was shown a house in March and told it would not be long before they moved in.

The keys are yet to be handed over.

Despite being asked repeatedly by the this paper, the council has not said how many people are in Mr Sarbir and Ms Qadir's position and are effectively homeless as a result of the delays.

The city council has also recently faced criticism for buying two homes before seemingly abandoning them.

The backlog has come about as dozens of council homes are handed back to the authority every week, which may then need repairs.

But a perfect storm of issues has led to delays to 'voids' in Norwich.

This includes a failure of oversight which resulted in missed safety checks at hundreds of homes, with some vital checks last carried out five years ago.

A repair contract with Norse, a Norfolk County Council-owned company, also came to an end with the city's own company, NCSL, taking over.

Labour shortages, material supply-chain issues, rising costs and Covid have also been blamed.

The average time to re-let a property rose from 26 days in January to March of 2021 to 63 days between July and October.

In the first three months of 2022, the average time was still 35 days.

Council leaders accepted that turnaround times are too long during a grilling from opposition Green group leader, Lucy Galvin.

At a cabinet meeting last Wednesday Ms Galvin said: "There's been an improvement and that's very welcome but it's still very high at 35 days to turn around a house.

"At the present time 238 council properties are empty and we have had reports of long-term empty houses, particularly, people in Clarkson Road in Wensum have told us a property has been empty for over a year.

"And that property management issue has other knock-on effects, for example, people are able to bid on properties that need refurbishing and being told they will be ready soon and in fact they are not, they come off the list and they are essentially homeless and waiting."

Ms Galvin said thousands of people are waiting for housing and commercial operators can turn voids round in a much shorter time.

Both Alan Water and Gail Harris, the leader and deputy leader of the council, said they shared Ms Galvin's concerns, branding it a "top priority".

Ms Harris added the council has put a new team in place, with good progress being made.

She said: "We have got more than one contractor working on this and they are aware that we need these houses turned around quickly but they've got to be of a good standard at the same time. It is a challenge."

A spokeswoman for the city council said the authority has been "very open" that the repair backlog has created "unacceptable delays".

She said additional contractors are helping address the backlog in all areas, including empty homes.

She added: “We have an average of 900 council properties every year that we have to turn around as quickly as possible after a tenant leaves and a new tenant takes up residence so the number we have empty at any one point naturally varies.”