Dear Editor,
Brent Council told us they would keep residents up to date regarding their response to the Social Housing Regulator by providing updates through their two scrutiny committee meetings. The regulator graded the council at C3 which means the council has serious failings in the delivery of consumer standards and significant improvement is needed. LINK
However, the Council have not published anything in either scrutiny committee but instead announced that they will give us an update at the 19th November Community and Wellbeing Scrutiny meeting.
At the Audit and Standards Committee meeting on 16th June 2025, several councillors suggested that the council needed to restore the Housing Scrutiny Committee. The council replied there was no need as housing was already covered in their two scrutiny committees. LINK
But with nothing published regarding the council’s response to the regulator, how will residents ever find out if their homes are safe?
I thought the response to the regulator might be discussed at next week's Full Council meeting, but it seems no one is interested in this very important issue that affects the lives of everyone living in a council home which currently stands at 8400 tenants and 4000 leaseholders.
At the end of May the Council reported that they would take 6 weeks to carry out the housing repairs audit but then extended it to 8 weeks. They were due to discuss it at Monday’s cabinet meeting The Council will now publish an update on the performance of their housing services on the 3rd October in papers tabled for the October 13th Cabinet when they will also publish their Action Plan which responds to the regulator. Previously the Council reported they had major concerns with the Wates contracts that were only given an extension back in April of this year and I expect it will be highlighted in the report.
Obviously, there were several housing delivery failures identified by the regulator, so all these reports are likely to affect service delivery, especially on repairs for several years to come.
The Council have not explained why it is taking so long to publish anything The audit should have been ready before the end of July.
I can only speculate that the council have uncovered so many issues, that they are finding it difficult to cover everything before they give us the full picture.
Best wishes
John
6 comments:
Unfortunately, the London Borough of Brent has been mismanaging housing for years and no one is held unaccountable. Readers will recall that only about 2-3 years ago the council spent in excess of 18 million pounds fixing flats they bought on Granville Road, this amount was more than the bought the building for! At the time I believe the deputy leader assured residents the council put things in place to prevent something like this happening in the future. Were lessons learnt - probably not. What will this new failure mean? More tax payers money has to be spent on fixing buildings due to Brent councils incompetence to keep buildings in order…? Residents of Brent will have to vote in another party to see change, but even then it will take a long period to see substantial change as this council is frightfully badly run IMHO.
Rubbish cabinet members, obviously no oversight or understanding
For a while our esteemed leader Cllr M Butt (Labour) took on the role of Lead Member of Housing in Brent. While good at photo opportunities he is not very good at detail or anything too complicated that needs fixing.
If Brent Council published everything that is wrong with Housing in Brent just a few months before the local elections the Labour party would be made to look useless and incompetent.
So a careful cover up operation is needed by the Brent Chief Executive so that the man who assesses her performance and is in charge of her pay rises is not made to look too bad.
Has there not been a big clear out of senior officers responsible for Housing in Brent. After all could not possibly allow the 'buck' to stop with teflonman Butt.
Brent is not the only council to get that downgrade and for good reasons.
Councils assets are mismanaged, probably some fraudulently allocated to start with.
There is no proper audit like with everything else in the council.
When houses are left to fall into disrepair for years, they reach a point when the cost outweighs the value of the property. They keep doing this, inaction, to let things sort themselves out in one way or another.
What happened to that company Brent setup to manage Lettings of council properties ?
In their mid term report the council admitted that their Housing Revenue Account (HRA) is facing an uncertain future , mainly due to high interest and inflation, resulting in increased costs to repairs and major works.
So now it will face further financial difficulties, as the HRA budget has to pay to fix all the costs arising from all the failures identified by the regulator.
At the present time, we do not know how much these costs will be but they are likely to be several millions as it will take between 2 to 3 years to fix everything.
The next Audit & Standards Committee meeting on the 25th September 2025 will be discussing and reviewing the councils plan in response to the regulator.
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