HCA raps another landlord over gas safety

Severn Vale Housing Society has breached the Homes and Communities Agency’s ‘serious detriment’ threshold for intervening on tenant complaints by failing to ensure around a dozen properties had up to date gas safetycertificates. It has breached the HCA’s home standard as a result.

The 3,785-home landlord contacted the HCA to inform it that it had found one of its properties with an overdue gas safety certificate. A later data exercise led Severn Vale to identify further out of date certificates.

A HCA regulatory notice published yesterday said that in some instances  ‘certificates had been expired for several years.’ The HCA said: ‘The breach exposed a number of tenants to the potential of serious harm for lengthy periods .’

The HCA said the overdue servicing has now been completed and Severn Vale has revised its procedures and introduced a new gas servicing system. The regulator will now consider whether to take any further action and look at whether the case raises concerns about Severn Vale’s governance.

A Severn Vale Housing Society spokesperson said: ‘The safety of our customers is paramount and we take our responsibilities as a landlord extremely seriously.’ The association’s statement said it has now updated its processes to ensure 100% of properties are subject to annual gas safety checks and that an independent audit in February confirmed Severn Vales’s ‘processes are now working effectively.’

Severn Vale becomes the ninth social landlord to breach the ‘serious detriment’ threshold for intervention by the HCA on consumer complaints. Six other landlords have breached the threshold due to missed gas safety checks, the others are First Wessex, Merlin Housing Society, Yorkshire Housing, Guinness Partnership, Your Housing Group and Gallions Housing Association. Circle has breached the threshold for poor repairs while Blackpool Council breached standards due to the collapse of a balcony.