Four councils receive non-compliant grades on consumer standards

Council responses

Brighton and Hove City Council

Brighton and Hove City Council said it is introducing a “string of urgent measures to build on the positive work already begun during the last 12 months”.

This includes investing more than £15m in making “rapid and necessary improvements” to its existing housing supply in direct response to issues raised in the report.

It also includes prioritising electrical checks on homes, making sure all homes have working smoke detectors, carrying out water assessments in homes identified at risk of potential problems and fast-tracking fire safety assessments.

The council is also clearing a historic backlog of repair work and reducing response times for new requests, as well as improving its collection and analysis of data.

Gill Williams, cabinet member for housing and new homes at Brighton and Hove, said: “The findings of this report are extremely serious, and we do not take them lightly.

“We have already introduced new measures to improve our work in each of the areas of concern identified by the Regulator of Social Housing.

“Clearly, however, there is still much work to be done and this council will not shy away from either the criticism within this report, or the urgent hard work needed to improve our services.”

Ms Williams added: “Our focus is not only on making sure all our homes are safe and that we are meeting expected standards as a landlord, but on exceeding these expectations and delivering a Brighton and Hove where everyone has a home which they can be proud of.”

London Borough of Hackney

Clayeon McKenzie, cabinet member for housing services and resident participation at Hackney Council, said: “We have never hidden the fact that we need to improve the service we provide to the people living in our homes. We have made strides towards this, and we are seeing improvements in both performance and resident satisfaction, but we fully acknowledge there is still more to do.

“As one of the biggest social landlords, there are huge challenges in delivering high-quality services – including a national shortage of council and affordable homes, overcrowding and years of national underinvestment in council housing. 

“However, I can reassure everyone that we take our responsibilities extremely seriously. We know the positive impact well-maintained, safe and warm housing can have on people’s lives. This is why we self-referred our work in five areas – fire, gas, asbestos, water and lift safety checks – to the regulator as we had not fully met their measures by the end of June.”

Mr McKenzie added: “While we fully acknowledge and accept the regulator’s findings, since submitting our self-referral we have improved in all the five areas and we are now compliant with the fire risk assessment of communal areas. For the remaining areas we have improvement plans in place to ensure compliance by the end of August.

“Our satisfaction surveys have shown that residents are seeing the benefits of the steps we are taking – but while there is still a long way to go we are not going to waver on our work to continually improve the service, which I and everyone working across housing are committed to. We will take on board the regulator’s comments and findings to bolster the plans we already have in place.”

Ashford Borough Council

A spokesperson for Ashford Borough Council said: “We referred ourselves to the regulator following a commissioned external review that highlighted a number of issues with the Safety and Quality Standard and the Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard. 

“There has been a dramatic change already with the recruitment to key roles, the big six areas all close to being fully compliant and the subset compliance issues progressing well. We have a new IT system for monitoring all compliance and this will link into our main housing systems.”

The spokesperson added: “Since the review we have taken swift action and introduced a range of measures aimed at resolving the shortcomings highlighted by the Housing Quality Network. In working closely with the regulator, we believe we are demonstrating that we fully understand the importance of complying with all aspects of our health and safety obligations, and other areas including complaints-handling.

“A robust action plan continues to be worked through, and we are clear about the steps we need to take to address the outstanding issues and ensure 100 per cent compliance moving forward, so we can demonstrate this to our tenants and leaseholders, members, staff, the wider public and the Regulator of Social Housing.”

South Derbyshire District Council

Dr Justin Ives, chief executive of South Derbyshire District Council, said: “South Derbyshire District Council commissioned a self-assessment against the housing consumer standards that highlighted areas where we were falling short and consequently, we made a self-referral to the Regulator of Social Housing in April 2024.

“Subsequently, we wrote to tenants informing them we were not meeting the consumer standards and giving them our commitment to make changes, not just to meet the standards, but to become an excellent landlord.

“We also invited tenants to come forward to help us on that journey, and as a result we have increased the size of our re-energised tenants’ voice group. They are now actively engaged in helping us on our improvement journey.”

Dr Ives added: “As well as engaging additional resource and expertise, we have been working proactively and transparently with the regulator and elected members and have started implementing the improvements needed.

“There is still much to do, and we are concentrating our initial efforts on completing all the safety checks and repairs to ensure our tenants continue to live in safe homes.

“We shall continue to work closely with the regulator and our tenants’ voice group over the coming months to complete the work needed to become the landlord we aspire to be. We will continue to update tenants regularly and share our progress.”