Regulatory judgements: London council breaches Home Standard after failure to replace 3,000 fire doors

“Taking into account the seriousness of the issues, the duration for which tenants were exposed to risk, and the number of tenants potentially affected, the regulator has concluded that LB Redbridge has breached the Home Standard and that there was a risk of serious detriment to tenants during this period,” the regulator said.

Redbridge has since started to put a programme in place to rectify the failures and has “assured the regulator that it is taking action to remedy the breach of standard”.

The RSH said it would not take statutory action at this stage because it had assurances that the situation was being remedied. 

Claire Symonds, Chief Executive of Redbridge Council, said: “Redbridge Council has designed and implemented a programme of works to rectify those issues identified, and has rapidly made progress since June. The Regulator will continue to monitor our progress until we achieve compliance.

“We apologise for any concern this situation might cause to our residents and want to provide reassurance that we have acted swiftly to put things right.”

 The report on Redbridge Council was one of four in-depth judgements published by the regulator. Among them was the news that South Yorkshire Housing Association’s (SYHA) governance was being downgraded from G1 to G2.

This means that while the 5,200-home provider currently meets the regulator’s requirements for governance, some aspects of its arrangements could be improved.

The RSH’s in-depth assessment of the housing association, a charitable community benefit society, found weaknesses in the board’s oversight of risk management, strategic and financial planning, and strategic plan delivery.

The regulator found that a previous “significant issue” was not escalated to the board or the regulator in a timely and effective way. There was no additional information about what that issue was. 

The regulator also found that when approving the business plan, the board did not have sufficient or timely information to fully consider its risks, or the impact on SYHA’s broader strategy.

“In the context of increasing pressures reducing SYHA’s financial resilience, the quality of stress-testing and mitigation work needs strengthening,” the regulator said.

While the board has a “reasonable” range of skills and experience aligned to the services it delivers, the regulator added, SYHA needed to ensure the board composition was appropriate in the context of “current and future financial challenges”.

It pointed out that there had not been an external board effectiveness review for several years.

John Jeffries, Chair of the Board at SYHA said: "G2 is a compliant rating, but nevertheless we are disappointed not to be G1.  We will be dealing immediately with the points raised, and look forward to working with the Regulator to restore our G1 rating in the near future.”

Beyond Housing, which manages more than 14,000 homes in the North East, also saw its governance rating downgraded from G1 to G2. It came as the housing association was also hit with a regulatory notice for an error that led to it overcharging tenants £3m in rent.

The mistake, for which Beyond Housing’s chief executive apologised earlier this month, was deemed a breach of the Rent Standard in the regulator’s newly published judgement. 

Beyond Housing’s rent error affected 486 homes that were incorrectly classified as “intermediate rent” and stretched back to 2003, when the provider was formed through a merger with two other housing associations.

In its report, the regulator said that while Beyond Housing had put in place a plan to refund tenants as soon as it realised, the impact on tenants was “significant” because the mistake went unidentified for a “prolonged” period.

The RSH said the error showed that Beyond Housing’s risk management and internal control assurance arrangements were not “effective” in managing the risks around rent compliance.

It said: “Our expectation is that providers have comprehensive and robust information about their homes, with a specific requirement for accurate assets and liabilities records to be kept up to date. This takes on additional importance where a merger has taken place as this can increase the risk of inconsistent and incomplete records.”

Rosemary Du Rose, chief executive of Beyond Housing, said: “The regulatory notice comes following an audit of certain rents within one of our legacy organisations and we immediately informed the regulator and appointed independent experts to verify the findings.

“We are contacting all the relevant customers, to apologise and ensure they are fully refunded as quickly as possible. We accept the findings and continue to work with the regulator to ensure that the required action plans are completed as quickly as possible.”

Elsewhere, Hundred Houses Society (HHS) saw its financial viability downgraded from V1 to V2. This means that the organisation complies with the regulator’s financial viability standards but needs to manage material risks to ensure continued compliance.  

It said that while the 1,600-home landlord had an adequately funded business plan and a consistent financial strategy, it was gearing up for an increased investment in existing homes.

The regulator’s judgement said that the organisation, which holds the majority of its homes in Cambridgeshire, had a programme of planned investment and energy works in 2022 and 2023 that weakened HHS’s interest cover performance and limited its ability to manage adverse financial scenarios.

However, the judgement gave the landlord a top G1 rating for governance, stating that it had assurances that HHS’s governance arrangements enable it to adequately control the organisation and to continue meeting its objectives.

Responding to this, Matt Thomas, chief executive of HH said: “We are really pleased to retain our G1 rating for governance, which reflects our focus on being a well-run local housing association which delivers great homes and services to people in housing need.

"V2 for financial viability is fully compliant and is a reflection on both the current economic climate and our planned higher levels of investment in compliance this year and ongoing commitments on sustainability, to make sure existing homes continue to be safe and well-maintained.”

Alongside the narrative judgements, there were three strapline judgements. Bromford, The Pioneer Group and Trent & Dove Housing all maintaining their G1 and V1 gradings.

UPDATE: at 10.27pm, 30/09/22

This article has been amended. The original article stated that the V2 rating meant that Hundred Houses had areas of improvement on its financial viability. However, V2 does not mean that. This has now been corrected to state that the landlord "complies with the regulator’s financial viability standards but needs to manage material risks to ensure continued compliance".