Brent Council apologises to tenants after Social Housing Regulator delivers judgement that the Council has 'serious failings' in ensuring tenants' health and safety

 

The Regulator of Social Housing has delivered its judgement on Brent Housing after the Council's self-referral. LINK

The have graded the council at C3 (see above) which means the council has serious failings in the delivery of consumer standards and significant improvement is needed.

Brent Council owns and manages around 8,800 homes in London. Most homes are under direct management by Brent and there are an additional 4,000 leasehold homes in blocks owned by them.

Summary of findings (my highlighting)

 

The Safety and Quality Standard requires landlords to identify and meet all legal requirements that relate to the health and safety of tenants in their homes and communal areas, and to ensure that all required actions arising from legally required health and safety assessments are completed within appropriate timescales. The standard also requires landlords to have an accurate, up to date and evidenced understanding of the condition of their homes that reliably informs the provision of good quality, well maintained and safe homes for tenants, and to ensure that their tenants’ homes meet the requirements of the Decent Homes Standard.

 

Through our responsive engagement with LB Brent, we have found serious failings in its ability to meet these requirements and that these failings have negatively affected service outcomes for tenants.

 

The self-referral received from LB Brent highlighted that within the last year, around 12,500 actions arising from fire risk assessments had been closed. Following a spot check, LB Brent identified that where actions had been closed, evidence of the completion of the actions was not available in all instances and that some actions had not been completed at all. Most actions are of a high and medium risk and are currently being treated as overdue until evidence to confirm their completion can be obtained.

 

A key component of effective health and safety management is data integrity. Our engagement with LB Brent has highlighted that the data for fire safety, smoke and carbon monoxide safety, asbestos management and water safety cannot be reconciled, and LB Brent is not able to determine which legally required checks and assessments have been completed. We also have concerns about the data validation process that took place prior to LB Brent implementing its new asset management system and will be reviewing its efficacy as part of our ongoing engagement.

 

In relation to the quality of homes, although LB Brent is reporting that it has 95% of its stock condition data, our engagement with LB Brent has highlighted that almost half of its homes have not had a recorded survey. As a result, it is unclear how LB Brent is assured of the condition of its homes. We will be exploring this further with LB Brent.

 

LB Brent has engaged positively with us since making its self-referral and has plans in place to understand the wider impact of its current position. Those actions include work to understand the root causes of the presenting issues, reviewing the completion of all closed fire safety remedial actions through a risk-based approach and working to develop a suitable action plan to resolve the issues.

 

We will continue to engage with LB Brent as it seeks to address the issues that have led to this judgement. This includes evidencing that it is taking reasonable steps to mitigate risks to tenants as it creates and delivers its improvement plan. We are not proposing to use our enforcement powers at this stage but will keep this under review as LB Brent seeks to resolve these issues.

 

Reacting to the judgement, Councillor Fleur Donnelly-Jackson, Brent Cabinet Member for Housing and Resident Services, said:

 

We take our responsibilities as a landlord very seriously and the council accepts that we have let tenants down in the areas outlined by the Regulator and for this we apologise unreservedly. In this instance, we have fallen short of our responsibilities as a landlord and failed to meet the expectations of our tenants.

The council is determined to improve the quality of council homes. We have made real progress in recent months – from launching a new damp and mould squad to action days where teams blitz through repairs that are needed on council estates - but we know there is still much more to do.

We will continue to work proactively, positively and in an open and transparent way with our residents and with the Regulator to fix the issues identified. Council tenants are at the heart of this improvement work through the new Housing Management Advisory Board. By listening to their experiences and ideas, we can make better decisions and build a housing service that residents can trust.

Reacting to Cllr Fleur Donnelly-Jackson's statement, Pete Firmin,  Chair of Alpha, Gorefield and Canterbury Tenants and Residents Association said:

The statement from the Cabinet member is a joke. I can't believe she wrote it without her tongue firmly in her cheek. We have been waiting months and even years for all sorts of repairs around just our 3 blocks. What does that say about Brent as a whole. And she writes "We will continue to work proactively, positively and in an open and transparent way with our residents." Continue? They never have done yet.

In what they have sent to tenants, Brent says ""While all required safety checks have been completed, there were weaknesses in how we recorded and followed up on these checks. This includes inconsistent record-keeping on things like fire safety, smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, asbestos and water safety." This is complete nonsense, we know they have NEVER checked whether leaseholders flats have smoke etc alarms.