The Housing Regulator & Self-Referral
The Housing Regulator looks at how well the council is delivering against the outcomes of their standards overall. Councillors are also responsible for ensuring their organisations are delivering the outcomes of our standards so that the council does the following:
- provides good quality homes and services to all tenants;
- makes best use of resources to deliver what we are required to as landlords;
- consistently fix things promptly and effectively if they go wrong.
The council understands its responsibilities and has identified areas for improvement and transformation with housing health and safety. The council therefore self-referred to the Housing Regulator on 8th April 2024 due to non-compliance in electrical and fire safety. The council wants to start this process with openness and transparency so that our residents are aware of our challenges and what we are doing to overcome them. Tenant safety will always remain our top priority, and we are moving very quickly to rectify issues and prioritise improvement actions.
Three key factors to highlight showing the council’s quick and decisive action to address these concerns are immediate changes and restructures to the housing management team, more investment going into capital programmes over the next three years to improve homes, and robust action plans drawn up and already being implemented to improve and transform key areas of the service. The self-referral did not result in regulatory action against the council.
The council has undertaken a considerable amount of works to ensure that we now meet all health and safety compliance standards ensuring tenants remain safe in their homes.