London council fails to meet consumer standards due to 5,000 outstanding fire safety actions

Although the council has carried out fire risk assessments for all relevant blocks, more than 5,000 fire safety actions were overdue, of which more than 200 were high-risk actions.

The council also had “a significant number” of overdue repairs. Between April and December 2023, less than 55% of repairs were completed on time. The average time to complete repairs was significantly above the service standard of 20 days.

In addition, the council had not correctly assessed damp and mould reports using the housing health and safety rating system.

More than 2,000 of its homes – or 17% – do not meet the Decent Homes Standard, Lewisham reported. However, the council does not have complete data for its homes and is now carrying out a stock survey so it can better understand the conditions.

Following the investigation, the RSH said the council has put an action plan in place to address the issues, including commissioning a stock condition survey, planning to address non-decency, closer monitoring of progress against all fire safety actions, and creating transformation plans for repairs and complaints.

Kate Dodsworth, chief of regulatory engagement at the RSH, said: “All social landlords need to provide good-quality homes and services for their tenants, underpinned by robust data. Lewisham Council has failed to do this.

“The council referred itself to us when it found problems and is engaging with us constructively to put things right for tenants. We will continue to scrutinise the council as it carries out this work.”

A Lewisham Council spokesperson said: “In October 2023, Lewisham Council took over responsibility for managing and maintaining more than 13,500 social rent homes across the borough, following the transfer of staff and services from the arm’s-length management organisation Lewisham Homes.

"We are determined to make improvements and tackle some persistent problems in the service, and as part of this process we decided to self-refer to the RSH in December 2023.

"We take the Regulator’s findings very seriously and we acknowledge our underperformance and ongoing challenges in some areas of the service.

"We have already made some progress, which the Regulator recognises in its notice. We will continue working with the Regulator until we have satisfied their concerns and achieved full compliance for our residents.”

This latest judgement comes as a senior figure at the regulator warned last month that most landlords have some “distance to travel” to comply with the new revised consumer standards.