Thousands of council homes in Brighton and Hove have not had fire risk or electrical reports, according to a government report
The Regulator of Social Housing today (Friday, 9 August) said Brighton and Hove City Council’s housing department has “serious failings” and needs to make “significant improvements”.
It found out of approximately 12,100 social housing homes the council owns, 3,600 are without an electrical condition report.
There are more than 600 homes where a water risk assessment is required but not completed and 500 are at least three months overdue for water safety repairs and improvements.
The council has also found more than 1,700 medium and low-risk fire-related repairs and improvements which are overdue by a minimum of two years.
There is a reported backlog of around 8,000 low-risk, low-priority repairs which were raised in 2023, and some date back to 2021.
When housing repairs were in crisis in 2022, the number reached 10,000 as workers tackled a backlog that built up through the covid-19 pandemic.
In the last quarter of 2023/24 the Housing Performance Quarterly Report to councillors showed routine repairs were taking 92 days to complete against a target of 15 days.
Of the 5,277 routine repairs reported in the last quarter of 2023/24, 2,180 (41 per cent) of these were completed within 28 days when the target is 70 per cent.
The housing report published in June said that the quarterly average for 2023/24 has increased to 8,854 repairs carried out (of which 3,438 emergency and 5,416 routine).
The average number of repairs per quarter between 2015 and 2020 before the council brought the service in-house, when private company Mears held the contract, was 8,102 repairs per quarter.
The regulator’s report said: “The Safety and Quality Standard requires landlords to provide an effective, efficient, and timely repairs, maintenance and planned improvements service for the homes and communal areas for which they are responsible.
“The information provided to us by Brighton and Hove City Council during our engagement with it demonstrates it is failing to provide an effective, efficient, and timely repairs service.
“Brighton and Hove City Council reported a backlog of around 8,000 low-risk, low-priority repairs, the majority of which were raised in 2023 however some date back to 2021.
“Brighton and Hove City Council also shared its performance data in relation to the completion of routine repairs which shows that it has been consistently below its target timescale for more than a year.
“Taking into account the breadth and significance of the issues across the relevant outcomes of the Safety and Quality Standard, we have concluded that there are serious failings in how Brighton and Hove CC is delivering the outcomes of the Safety and Quality Standard and significant improvement is needed.”
The Regulator of Social Housing contacted the council in October 2023, after it was aware of the backlog of repairs.
Conservative group leader councillor Alistair McNair said his party were not surprised at the “serious failings” and criticised Labour for in-sourcing housing repairs when they were previously in power in 2019.
Councillor McNair said: “In Patcham and Hollingbury, residents complain to us about the state of their windows, damp, cleanliness and often the lack of support when dealing with challenging neighbours.
“Labour complains about the private sector when, with an expensive housing sector, they should be wooing private landlords.
“They complain about the quality of the private sector when it is social housing which clearly does not meet the required standards.
“Labour must get a quick grip on the quality of social housing in the city – they are clearly letting some of our poorest and most vulnerable residents down.”
Councillor Gill Williams, cabinet member for housing and new homes said the issues raised are serious and the council is introducing new measures to improve work in the areas of concern identified.
Councillor Williams said: “Clearly, however, there is still much work to be done and this council will not shy away from either the criticism within this report, or the urgent hard work needed to improve our services.
“Like many councils with a largely ageing housing stock, we do face challenges in modernising our homes, and are absolutely committed to doing so.
“Even so, this report shows there are areas where even allowing for those challenges, we owe it to our residents to be performing better. Our promise now is that we will.
“Everyone deserves to live in safe, secure, affordable and high-quality housing and should expect nothing less.
“This council has not met that expectation. We deeply apologies to all those who have been affected.”
Councillor McNair never misses an opportunity to mud-sling, does he? Says he gets loads of complaints, but I note he has no drop-in sessions for people to talk to him about those issues before they become critical, which he has plenty of opportunities to do so. I would suggest to the councillor that he has plenty to work on himself.
Having said that, there are clear quantifiable points of improvement to be made here. Ones that can be easily measured and scrutinised moving forward.
Do cllrs earn their keep? Competitive verbal swordplay about each other dominates their interest in the job. Most are unfit to hold officers to account.
I certainly believe we get more value out of some councillors compared to others. Even someone like, Cllr Icons, whom I am often critical of this inflammatory and disingenuous hyperbole does a good job in addressing his ward’s local issues and being present.
McNair, on the other hand, I can’t say he does the same. The only time I really hear from him is when he opens his mouth to, as you put it, competitive wordplay, which unfortunately is not only extremely low quality in my experience, but often not helpful. I hope he humbles himself and actually work for his ward more, personally.
Cllr Icons?
Ivons – autocorrect did me dirty, even after correcting it twice beforehand!
This has been a long time coming. The council used to put all of its fire risk assessments online so they were accessible to residents, they seem to have disappeared at some point shortly after Grenfell in 2017 – this is not open and transparent and prevent proper scrutiny of residents, making it harder to hold the council to account.
The underlying issue is that councils don’t have enough money to put things right as quickly as they need to, which was massively exacerbated over the last 14 years under the tories. Rather than pushing back against the Govt, the Labour council has managed the situation and worked within its budgets, rather than saying the obvious – that they need to have more support from central government to repair and replace fixtures and issues that were deemed OK by national standards at the time they were installed, but are not now.
Now there’s a Lab government, if councillors hear do not challenge their colleagues in Westminster about the need for more money for local councils, they really will be letting residents down – and in the case of fire safety repairs not being dealt with quickly enough this is just morally unacceptable.
It is clear that the recent introduction of licensing for privately rented housing is merely a politically motivated distraction from the council’s own woeful shortcomings in terms of standards of rented accommodation. The phrase ‘throwing stones when living in glass houses’ springs to mind.
Will BHCC be charged £500 for each of the inspections of defective properties as they propose to do for private landlords? Surely it is now difficult to justify the granting of BHCC with the powers to implement the proposed licensing schemes in the light of these findings.
I hardly think a tu quoque is a particularly engaging argument, Barry. However, now it’s highlighted, I’m sure journalists like Ms Brooker-Lewis will ensure the council are kept to account in ensuring improvements are made.
I am rather disappointed that you have chosen to defend this one in the manner that you have. Although I don’t always agree with your position, your reasoning is usually measured and sensible. I would expect a bit better from you than this Benjamin.
I meant this to be a reply to Barry.
I do feel this article has come about from a fundamental lack of social housing officers and regular tenancy checks that should have been standard practice that would have highlighted these issues as they came out rather than allowing to gather as they have.
Next step is clearly to turnabout on this issue, and I would hope the next article will be a positive one to that affect.
The licensing scheme is definitely needed and is a positive move – however – there is something of double standards when:
a) a lot of the council’s own housing stock appears to not meet fire / safety standards (several high rise blocks have enforcement notices issued against the council because of fire safety issues)
b) mould and damp is rife in BHCC’s social housing stock and the disrepair in much social housing is shocking
c) the council uses private landlords and pay them millions of pounds to provide emergency and temporary accommodation of low standard (this FOI shows BHCC paid Baron Home more than £10 million in last 5 years: https://bhccportal.icasework.com/resource?id=D8151417&db=3nP4fsKIIxA%3D)
Taking enforcement action against rogue landlords us always going to be a positive step, so the licensing sheme is good – but the council needs to get its own house in order before it starts crowing about what its doing to support tenants taking action against dodgy landlords – especially when there are plenty of examples of failings in their own housing stock and questions about the way they’ve treated their own tenants.
Yet BHCC has the bare faced cheek to charge private landlords for HMO certificates and try and bring in an additional Landlord Licencing Scheme when they cannot even comply with their own lettable standards re their own housing! No checks on sub-letting council properties either.
The council demonises private landlords who provide quality accommodation and imposes unreasonable bureaucracy and costs upon them. These costs are then passed on to tenants. All the while the council breaks all the rules, turns a blind eye to major failings and safety transgressions in its own housing stock. The 3,600 are without an electrical condition report will have out of date, potentially unsafe, residual current device (RCD) boards. This is ILLEGAL. BHCC housing wilfully breaks the law and is mired in bad practice at best…. Different rules for different people in this city. Unacceptable. Corrupt.
I think the safey checks have been quite good in the Council’s sheltered housing team. Our alarms pull cords and fire alarms are checked quarterly, they do an annual boiler check, have recently wired in new smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors. Speed of repairs varies, according to what they deem a priority. We’re still waiting for holes in the asbestos porch to be done, reported over 1 year ago, but we had an electrical fault and unsafe window done as a priority.
That feeds in line with what the Housing Report says too. Priority repairs are being handled in a timely manner as per their policy. The challenge comes from the routine and backlog, which remains significant. Seems like they need a bigger team to try to work that list down, or they’ll always be playing catch-up.
How can council morally take the high ground and preach about private landlords when they don’t even run their own portfolio in accordance with accepted codes of practice. They need to focus on getting their own house in order and leave the political rhetoric to MPs and not look for local soundbite opportunities.
Because a tu quoque argument is a classic example of a logical fallacy I’m afraid Chris.
Put it this way, if I tell someone they should speed because it is dangerous and illegal, then I go off and speed dangerously and illegally, that doesn’t negate what I told the other person. However, two wrongs don’t make a right, and yes, the council has some work to do here.
That analogy isn’t quite correct Benjamin. What is missing in your example is that not only would you be doing the opposite of what you are telling others to do, you would also be the authoritative body setting the speed limit, checking and policing people’s speed, setting the level of fines/endorsements and being the beneficiary of those fines. It is clear that raising concerns about the potential for an unacceptable conflict of interest, given BHCC’s evident poor performance with their own rented properties, should not be merely dismissed as a tu quoque.
That said, I do agree with your point that more council housing officers would be of benefit although whether they are likely to be sufficiently qualified to make decisions about construction/property defects is questionable.
Aye, my analogy does have those elements of “self assessment”, which I also agree with you, should be an independent process to circumvent bias, and certainly is why ombudsman exist.
With council offers, at the very least, they should be capable enough to pass on the information to a specialist who can inform them appropriately on the severity and urgency of a highlighted issue.
Hastings just fined a landlord £10,000 for failing to provide an electrical safety certificate. That equates to £36 million in fines for BHCC negligence and willfully ignoring safety laws. All the hallmarks of corruption.
That’s a paradoxical statement.
What else would expect from council staff?
Nice, safe, comfortable job for life, nice pension, long holidays, three months off every year for “stress”, no worries, no pressure, no questions asked.
Councillor Sankey would have your comment flagged as a hate crime.