Response to the Regulator of Social Housing findings on Hackney Council Housing Service
The Regulator of Social Housing has today (Friday) issued the findings of its investigation following Hackney Council housing service’s self referral to it in June.
Among the steps the Council has and is taking include:
- Fire Risk Assessments - all social landlords must ensure all their communal areas have an annual fire risk assessment. At the end of the 2023/2024 financial year there were 178 communal areas where we had not completed a fire risk assessment. These were mainly small communal areas in street properties which have been converted into flats. We have been working with residents to gain access to these areas and we are now fully compliant with 100% of fire risk assessments completed.
- Gas Safety - there are currently 274 services outstanding from the 18,608 gas services that we carry out annually. This was mainly caused by redirecting gas engineers from servicing to support delivering responsive repairs earlier this year. In the short term we have brought in additional engineers to help us carry out the outstanding appointments. We have also been working to gain access to the homes where residents haven’t responded to our requests to agree an appointment date and we are on course to have these checks completed by the end of August. Going forward where we have to force entry to a home to check the safety of its gas appliances because access has not been granted, this will happen on the day the certificate runs out.
- Asbestos - the Council, like all social landlords, is required to ensure all communal areas in buildings built before 2000 have an annual asbestos assessment. At the end of the 2023/2024 financial year there were 304 communal areas where we had not completed these assessments. Like the fire risk assessments, these were mainly in small communal areas in converted street properties. We have been working with residents to gain access to these areas and 99.59% have now been carried out leaving 7 which will be completed in the coming weeks.
- Water - every social landlord is required to ensure that its water storage tanks have up to date risk assessments which lasts for five years once completed. Unfortunately there has been a delay in some of these assessments being completed which resulted in the Council not being compliant. A programme is now in place and 97.44% have now been completed leaving 23 (14 of which have been completed but we have not yet received the report) which will be completed in the coming weeks. While recognising this is a failing, we can reassure residents that the water tanks are safe as we have a regular water testing regime that runs independently of the five yearly risk assessment.
- Lift Safety - the measure used by the regulator to determine lift safety is the annual insurance check. Unfortunately, following a change in contractor to carry these out there was a delay starting the annual checks meaning some lifts did not have their insurance check within the 12 month period. We are working closely with the contractor to ensure the checks are brought up to date by the end of August. However, we can reassure all our residents that our lifts are safe. Alongside the annual insurance check, our lift repairs contractor carries out monthly checks on all of our lifts to ensure they are safe.
- Stock condition survey - we fully recognise the importance of having full stock condition surveys to inform the repairs and maintenance needed to continually improve our homes. We have recently appointed an independent specialist contractor to undertake a stock condition survey of all our homes, with the first homes being surveyed in the coming weeks. Over the next three years this will see all our homes being visited and a full internal and external inspection undertaken to check their conditions and see what work needs to be done.
- Electrical testing - all social landlords are required to undertake electrical safety checks. Best practice and the standard that the regulator expects landlords to work towards - which we support - is every five years. Before the Covid pandemic we had a regular programme of 10 year electrical checks. Since the pandemic there was a delay in restarting the programme of regular electrical checks. Some of the data was also lost as a result of the cyber attack meaning we are not able to confirm when some properties were last inspected, these are therefore treated as not having certificates. We are currently developing a programme of work to get to the point where all homes receive an electrical check every five years.
- Smoke alarms - all landlords, both social and private, must ensure there is at least one smoke alarm on each floor of a home. As a result of the cyber attack information on some alarms was lost. While currently we don't have the data to fully confirm if all our homes have smoke alarms, we know approximately 55% of our homes do. We will be carrying visits to our homes over the coming months to ensure every home has an alarm and ensure this information is updated each year. If anyone living in one of our homes doesn’t have a smoke alarm on each floor of their home, please contact the council’s repairs contact centre on 020 8356 3691 and we will arrange for one to be installed as soon as possible.
- Carbon Monoxide Detectors - Carbon monoxide detectors are checked as part of the annual gas servicing programme. For the Council to be able to provide total assurance on this we need to be able gain access to homes to carry out the annual gas servicing. As with the gas servicing, we have a programme of works to visit those properties we currently haven’t been able to access in the coming weeks to confirm they have carbon monoxide detectors.
- Repairs - we are committed to providing a quality repairs service to our tenants, and while over the last 12- 18 months we have made significant strides we recognise there is still more to do. Like many social landlords, we have an ageing housing stock needing significant investment but we have seen chronic underfunding at a national level which has impacted on our ability to provide safe, warm affordable homes. However, we recognise there are things we can always do better, we have cleared the backlog of over 7,000 repairs that built up during the Covid pandemic and we are working to clear the current repairs that are overdue. We have made a commitment to attend to all plumbing leaks by the end of the following working day, with the vast majority being addressed the same day. We are also increasing our capacity to undertake more work and have recruited over 30 additional repairs staff and we are increasing our support contractor capacity.
- Damp and mould - we have improved the way we manage our damp and mould cases by speeding up inspections and prioritising cases based on the severity of mould and any health conditions that tenants or members of their households may have. To increase our ability to respond to damp and mould cases we have appointed specialist ventilation contractors and we are increasing the number of contractors that we have in place to support us in completing work to address damp and mould.
“We have never hidden the fact that we need to improve the service we provide to the people living in our homes. We have made strides towards this and we are seeing improvements in both performance and resident satisfaction, but we fully acknowledge there is still more to do.
As one of the biggest social landlords there are huge challenges in delivering high quality services - including a national shortage of council and affordable homes, overcrowding and years of national underinvestment in council housing.
However, I can reassure everyone that we take our responsibilities extremely seriously. We know the positive impact well maintained, safe and warm housing can have on people’s lives.
While we fully acknowledge and accept the regulator’s findings, since submitting our self referral we have improved in all the five areas and we are now compliant with the fire risk assessment of communal areas. For the remaining areas we have improvement plans in place to ensure compliance by the end of August.
Our satisfaction surveys have shown that residents are seeing the benefits of the steps we are taking - but while there is still a long way to go we are not going to waver on our work to continually improve the service, which I and everyone working across housing are committed to. We will take on board the regulator’s comments and findings to bolster the plans we already have in place.”
Obviously the report’s findings are disappointing, however, we will continue to work with the regulator and all of our residents and Tenant Resident Associations throughout our improvement journey.
Cllr Clayeon McKenzie, Cabinet Member for Housing Services and Resident Participation