THE CHAIRMAN of the Northern Ireland Housing Executive Brian Rowntree has resigned ahead of a report expected to be critical of how the executive has managed multimillion-pound repair contracts.
Mr Rowntree tendered his resignation to the Minister for Social Development Nelson McCausland who today in the Assembly is due to comment on a report understood to refer to cases of overcharging by contractors and sub-standard work.
Mr Rowntree, who has held the post for nine years, said the executive had experienced internal difficulties but these problems were being worked through.
“I do not believe that as a board we could have done any more in terms of the strategic direction of the organisation and the accountability framework around operational issues and inspections/ reviews and investigations,” he said.
Referring to today’s expected statement he added: “I believe that there are imminent statements which are about to be made by the Minister within the privileged confines of the Assembly relating to events and reports which neither I as chairman nor my board have had an opportunity to address.”
Mr Rowntree said that the individual strength of skill, expertise and innovation of the executive’s senior management team served the “organisation well and allowed it to deal with some of the most difficult budget and corporate governance issues faced by anyone in the public sector in recent times”.
The housing executive was established in 1971 to deal with the issue of discrimination, mainly against Catholics, in the allocation of local government housing.
