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Yorkshire council fails to meet consumer standards due to 20,000 outstanding fire safety actions
A council in West Yorkshire has failed to meet the English regulator’s consumer standards due to tens of thousands of outstanding repairs and fire safety actions.
In a regulatory notice published this week, the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) said that Kirklees Council had 20,000 fire safety actions and 1,500 damp and mould repairs that were overdue.
The council had carried out fire risk assessments for all relevant blocks, but more than 20,000 remedial actions from these assessments were outstanding. More than 200 of the overdue remedial actions were high-risk actions, the RSH found.
The council is now “developing a plan to complete these actions promptly”. Since December 2022, it has had a “consistently high” number of homes with unresolved cases of damp and mould.
More than 1,000 of these were classed as high risk, considering the needs of tenants and the length of time the works were overdue.
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The regulator therefore concluded that Kirklees Council had breached its standards, but said the local authority now understands its responsibilities and it is taking action to complete the overdue tasks.
Kate Dodsworth, chief of regulatory engagement at the RSH, said: “All landlords must meet health and safety requirements and provide an effective repairs service for tenants. Kirklees Council failed to do this and it is now working to put things right.
“The council referred itself to us and has engaged constructively. We expect all other social landlords to do the same when they find or suspect a problem, so issues can be resolved promptly.”
Moses Crook, cabinet member for housing and highways at Kirklees Council, stated: “Tenant safety is our top priority.”
He said the council needs to get through “a considerable backlog of works”, but that tenants “remain safe because of the risk management we already have in place”.
Over the next few months, the local authority “will be recruiting more staff to help increase the pace of delivery” across damp, mould and condensation and fire safety improvements.
For some blocks, Mr Crook said the council will undertake “large-scale refurbishment works”, while for others it means “renewals and small-scale improvements” to homes and communal areas.
Safety measures are “robust” and include a 24/7 waking watch and CCTV monitoring in high-rise buildings, “prompt” repairs and up-to-date alarm systems, he explained.
The council will invest £117m in fire safety improvements across council housing by 2031.
In 2023, Mr Crook pointed out that the way the council responds to reports of damp, mould and condensation was reviewed and changed to allow “earlier understanding of the vulnerability of tenants” and the problems with the home.
He added: “We are continuing to review our approach to damp, mould and condensation and have allocated a further £2m per year to the budgets for this over the next three years.
“We are working hard with our contractors to provide mould treatments, install additional ventilation in homes, resolve structural damp and other underlying issues.”
Kirklees Council revealed in August last year that it had put an IT system in place that is solely dedicated to damp, mould and condensation, as part of an action plan to tackle these issues.
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