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London council breaches consumer standards after failing to complete thousands of ‘high-risk’ fire safety repairs
The Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) has found a London council put thousands of tenants at risk by failing to meet health and safety requirements for fire and electrical safety.
In a judgement published today, the RSH concluded that Haringey Council had breached the Home Standard, creating the potential for serious detriment to tenants.
Following a self-referral, the English regulator found that the council had failed to complete a significant number of remedial fire safety actions, including 4,000 that were high risk.
In addition, it did not have up-to-date electrical safety reports for thousands of homes.
Through its investigation, the RSH also found that over 100 of the council’s homes had serious, ‘category one’, hazards, and nearly 5,000 did not meet the Decent Homes Standard.
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Haringey Council is undertaking a full condition survey of its tenants’ homes and has put a programme in place to rectify these issues, the RSH said.
Kate Dodsworth, director of consumer regulation at the RSH, said: “Haringey Council put thousands of tenants at potential risk by failing to meet health and safety requirements for fire and electrical safety.
“Our investigation has also revealed that a significant number of Haringey Council homes do not meet the Decent Homes Standard. The council needs to act urgently to put things right for tenants, and we are monitoring it closely as it does this.”
In a joint statement, Peray Ahmet, the leader of Haringey Council, and Andy Donald, its chief executive, said that every single family and individual living in the borough should expect to live in a warm, safe and well-maintained home, and that this was why the council had taken the decision to bring housing management back under direct control in June 2022.
The pair continued: “Accountability is key to this, and we wanted to take immediate action over the housing issues that are affecting our residents by commissioning two independent reviews.
“These reports revealed a number of areas where the housing service being provided to our tenants and leaseholders was well below our expected standard. This is why we took the decision to refer ourselves to the RSH.
“We felt this was an important way of bringing independent oversight and transparency to the process of improving our services.”
They said the regulator’s judgement confirmed “what we had expected” and said they were “very sorry that our residents have not been receiving the quality of service that they should have done”.
They added: “Our tenants and leaseholders are experts about their homes, estates and communities and we want to benefit from their views and experiences as we look to improve the way we work.
“The council has taken a series of actions to ensure the number of overdue actions starts to rapidly come down since we initially reported the figures to the regulator in December.
“We know that we need to build trust with our tenants, build trust with our leaseholders and we will only be able to do this when they see real progress on these issues. We will be transparent about how we are doing this and will provide regular updates.”
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