Serious failings in Brighton and Hove City Council’s housing service are due to go before the cabinet and a scrutiny committee in the coming weeks.
The Regulator of Social Housing said that the council “is failing to ensure that it meets a number of legal requirements in relation to health and safety”.
And “significant improvements” were needed including fire and electrical safety reports for thousands of homes.
The report is due to go before the council’s Place Overview and Scrutiny Committee next Monday (23 September) and to the Cabinet on Thursday 26 September.
The regulator said that 3,600 council homes out of about 12,100 did not have an electrical condition report.
And more than 600 homes required a water risk assessment while 500 were at least three months overdue for water safety repairs and improvements.
The council said that it had logged more than 1,700 medium and low-risk fire-related repairs and improvements that were overdue by a minimum of two years.
There was a reported backlog of some 8,000 low-risk and low-priority repairs which were raised between 2021 and last year.
In a performance report to the council’s four housing management panels, made up of tenants, leaseholders, councillors and officials, the council said that it had tackled the backlog of older “non-urgent” jobs.
But this had affected the number of “routine” jobs completed in the first quarter of this year.
From April to June this year, council contractors and employees completed 5,421 routine repairs of which 2,535 or 46.8 per cent were completed within 28 calendar days.
But of the 2,829 newer jobs since the start of April, 77 per cent were completed within 77 days –above the target of 70 per cent.
Emergency repairs fared better, with 2,389 out of 2,931, or 96.9 per cent, completed within 24 hours, although target is 99 per cent.
Last year the quarterly average number of repairs was 8,854 – 3,438 of them emergency callouts. The average number of repairs was about 700 more each quarter than when the council brought the service in-house in 2020.
The regulator 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 City Council is delivering the outcomes of the Safety and Quality Standard and significant improvement is needed.”
When the report came out, Labour councillor Gill Williams, the council’s cabinet member for housing and new homes, said that the issues raised were serious and the council was introducing new measures to improve the situation.
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.”
The council’s Place Overview and Scrutiny Committee is due to meet at Hove Town Hall at 3pm next Monday (23 September).
The cabinet is due to meet at Hove Town Hall at 2pm on Thursday 26 September.
Both meetings are scheduled to be webcast on the council’s website.
Shambles really. The same people that spit venom at private landlords turning to be every bit as bad if not worse. People who live in glass houses comes to mind…
There are some dreadful private landlords in the city, the worst probably being the ones who make huge amounts of money from the council by leasing them property for emergency accommodation. I’ve lost count of how many collapsing ceilings there have been in the emergency properties the council rent from these millionaire landlords.
Agree with your broad point about it being a shambles though. The council have got 8 high rise buildings in the city they are currently reviewing to see whether they can be repaired at all, or whether the better option is to knock them down and start again. Let alone the damp and mould in their properties. The council are going to get really unstuck because there is new legislation around both fire safety and damp and mould, and they simply don’t seem to be meeting it. Perhaps they are banking on the fact that regulators and fire service need to catch up with the backlog of organisations they need to investigate – but they will.
There was something in an article about the lead Labour councillor saying they were working to make sure people “feel safe” in their homes, when actually what the council needs to do is just make the homes safe in the first place – that’s the best way to make people feel safe.
£350 approximately a week, I believe at the moment, for emergency accommodations, plus a service charge.
There’s an FOI on the council’s disclosure log that shows they paid Baron Homes £10,299,743 over the last 5 years, in addition to paying Moretons £6,043,936 and Chestnut £2,361,947. Moretons and Chestnut are owned by the same family as Baron Homes. That’s nearly £17 million over 5 years between the 3 companies – a huge sum of public money going to private landlords.
Which is money that could be better spent, right?
Yep – 100% could be better spent. The council isn’t meeting its legal duties regarding its housing stock and repairs, but arguably by lining the pockets of millionaire landlords and leasing properties which have collapsing ceilings which injure residents, councillors are massively failing any moral duties they have as well.
The council has failed to properly invest in its housing stock for decades (as well as selling lots off via right to buy, the majority of which is now in the hands of private landlords and rented out). It’s a cycle of neglect – and it’s been exacerbated by councillors reaching for sticking plasters (like relying on the private sector for emergency accommodation), rather than addressing the need for social housing investment and tackling policies like right to buy.
So we have a local authority landlord who is either unwilling or unable to put their own housing stock in order whilst going to great lengths to impose the standards that they do not meet upon private landlords, the vast majority of which achieve them anyway. It is about time certain councillors focused on getting their own house(es) in order.
BHCC is the epitome of failure is so many departments, yet it preached how good and righteous it is! Councillors need to scrutinise this subject organisation
Will the council fine themselves for their serious safety failures, like they would private landlords?
Of course not. Just shrug the shoulders and blame the tories.
Well, if they fined themselves, they’d be taking money from themselves to give…to themselves.
Hence they are a law unto….themselves
I take your point Benjamin but there has to be a sanction to disincentivise poor performance of this type. After all, that is precisely the approach BHCC wishes to take with private landlords who perform poorly.
Too many council employees having sickies and working from home, whilst managers roll out their agendas with no concern for what the city actually wants or needs. BHCC should have been in special measures years ago!
I can imagine it might be difficult arranging appointments or getting access with some tenants, hence fire and safety checks not being done, or followed through.
As mentioned before, I live in sheltered housing and our regular safety checks are good. Emergency repairs have been done quickly. What we thought was a repair, our scheme manager referred to adaptations department. We do have a couple of old repairs, which I hope are being dealt with. One was a health and safety one regarding internal glass doors, which several people are still waiting to get done. Our scheme manager does chase this up.
But things like doors are important issues the council should be doing quickly. Most act as fire doors, and if they are faulty they can result in fires spreading more quickly in buildings, or preventing evacuation. The scheme manager should really be raising it as a formal complaint and taking it to the ombudsman or regulator if the council continues to fail to do it.
The repair may feel small, but important the scheme manager pushes the council to make sure it’s done, and if they don’t that the relevant regulator is made aware.
Yeah, it does depend on what the nature of the repair is. If the building is insecure, as a general rule of thumb, it’s an emergency repair and should fall into the up to 24-hour window for this to be completed. It sounds like you have a good proactive scheme manager.
Another example of dysfunctional civil service on an irreversible downward spiral run by incompetents unable to make real change.
Emergency repairs have a dedicated team to it. If the challenge is long-standing repairs, how about introducing a team that is dedicated to only the longest standing jobs?