Welfare visits and feedback from residents have resulted in council workers carrying out more housing repairs than ever before, councillors were told.
The number of repairs wasn’t stated but the backlog has fallen even as the Brighton and Hove City Council rceives about 3,000 extra repair requests a month.
And more than 500 high-rise block tenants have received visits as part of a council programme to address failings found by the Regulator of Social Housing last year.
Green councillor Ollie Sykes asked how bringing repairs and maintenance in-house had affected the way that the council addressed the regulator’s report which highlighted a repairs backlog as well as fire, water and electrical safety issues.
The council’s assistant director for housing management Martin Reid said that the council now had more control over what work was done and when.
Conservative councillor Anne Meadows asked about sprinkler systems in tower blocks where resistance from leaseholders had been blamed for delays.
Mr Reid said that it was a “conundrum” and, in some blocks, half the residents objected to having them – but they were not required to comply with the regulators’ report.
On addressing the regulator’s concerns about the “significant backlog” of 8,000 low-risk and low-priority repairs, Mr Reid said that the council’s aim was to go beyond what was required.
He said: “Our ambition extends to being the best possible landlord that we can and listening to our tenants because the gist of the post-Grenfell Tower regulatory environment is that we know our homes and we know our tenants and we are listening.”
Labour councillor Gill Williams, the council’s cabinet member for housing and new homes, said that the council’s response to the regulator’s concerns had made it a “victim of its own success”, with the high rates of reported repairs.
She said that there were more contractors working on the backlog – currently 6,500 outstanding repairs – as well as the new repair reports coming in at more than 3,000 a month.
Councillor Williams said that the focus was always on winning the trust of tenants and meeting their expectations.
She said: “Our recovery programme goes beyond the regulatory requirements, as it should. It aims to make Brighton and Hove City Council a benchmark for housing safety and quality through open communication, clear accountability and continuous improvements.”
The discussion took place at a meeting of the council’s Place Overview and Scrutiny Committee at Hove Town Hall yesterday (Tuesday 21 January).
It was the second time that councillors had discussed progress in addressing the regulator’s concerns since they were raised in August 2024.
The committee agreed to reduce its scrutiny of work to address the social housing regulator’s concerns from every meeting to quarterly.
Happy residents, possibly.
The elephant in the room being what to do with the tower blocks that have LPS. As a resident of one of these blocks, I have an interest as to what the medium term plans for them are. Enormous sums of money has been spent updating the blocks plus what to do with residents whilst whatever decision comes to pass? Interesting conundrum.