Most of the “significant failings” in Brighton and Hove City Council’s housing will be dealt with by December, a leading councillor said.
Labour councillor Gill Williams, the cabinet member for housing and new homes, made the claim during discussions about the damning report published last month by the Regulator for Social Housing.
At the council’s cabinet meeting on Thursday (26 September), she said that council housing had suffered from years of underinvestment as finances were “cut to the bone”.
Many of the council-owned homes were ageing, out of date and in desperate need of modernisation, she added.
Councillor Williams said: “When we took over this administration, we undertook investigations into the conditions of our stock.
“It wasn’t a pretty picture to be quite honest with you and we knew that we were going to face enormous challenges.
“In the context of that, we now have this new regulatory regime that has been introduced, and quite rightly too, given some of the tragedies such as Grenfell.”
Councillor Williams said that lessons from the Grenfell Tower fire had informed the new regulatory regime – and it was proving to be a challenge to meet the standards under that regime.
She said: “We are not where we ought to be. What this judgment outlines is where we are not compliant – and we ought to be 100 per cent compliant and nothing else will be good enough.
“Where we are not compliant, what we need to do is get to that point of compliance and quite correctly so.
“We talk to the regulator often. We are guided by the regulator where we need to get to and what we need to do to get there.”
The council is spending £15 million from the Housing Revenue Account (HRA), which is funded by council tenants’ rents, to deal with the various issues raised by the regulator.
Shortcomings included
- electrical safety
- provision of smoke detectors
- water safety
- fire safety
The regulator said that 3,600 council homes out of about 12,100 did not have an electrical condition report.
And more than 600 homes required a water risk assessment while 500 were at least three months overdue for water safety repairs and improvements.
The “significant backlog” of 8,000 low-risk and low-priority repairs was also highlighted.
Councillor Williams said that most of the work would be completed by December, including the repairs backlog being addressed by employing more contractors.
The council’s scrutiny committees are also expected to monitor progress.
The Labour council leader Bella Sankey said that the council was taking the regulator’s findings very seriously.
Councillor Sankey said: “I know officers have been working incredibly hard to address the findings of the regulator.
“We now receive weekly briefings against all the key metrics to ensure we are making steady progress towards getting ourselves to a place that will be acceptable to the regulator and getting on top of those backlog of repairs that was inherited.”
Some of these issues have accumulated over many years, including the previous Labour-led administration. Can we expect resignations & sackings if progress is not made? Also, what provisions are being made to ensure that this never happens again?
Probably avoiding another COVID pandemic would be a major start to that, Ann.
It’s so disingenous to try and deflect blame to others before this current administration. Labour councillors keep talking about inheriting this problem, but the actual judgement issued to the council by the Regulator for Social Housing said that the majority of the 8,000 lower risk repair backlog were raised with them in 2023 – so largely within the timeframe this current administration came into power.
As for scrutiny, with Labour making up the majority of seats on scrutiny panels, they are essentially marking their own homework. Hopefully the regulator will keep close tabs on the council, as there is nothing in the language councillors are using that fills me with hope that they are being properly accountable and taking their share of responsibility. They still seem to just be deflecting blame, and trying to play down what dangerous homes they have allowed residents to remain living in.
If this administration are intent on blaming administrations before them, they may do well to remember that the council has been Labour run for the majority of the last decade, as has been the case for the last 30 or so years – the council’s more often than not been Labour run – so they can look to themselves for failings, as well as just finger pointing at others.
I think you make a very strong argument why we need to be attending things like area panels as residents often, because that provides an additional layer of accountability and scrutiny that is free from being biased towards the council, and, in further answer to Ann, helps to prevent reoccurrence.
Effective Resident Representatives are worth their weight in gold.
So, BHCC insists that private landlords comply with certain standards, yet the Council itself doesn’t meet these standards! What a complete shower of shyte our Council is!
Tu quoque is a weak argument. Whilst BHCC have plenty to work on, that doesn’t detract from their responsibilities of ensuring slumlords aren’t allowed to exist.
People in glass houses doesn’t really work here, if you pardon the pun.
As I have stated before; a tu Quoque is entirely relevant and appropriate in this case and you really should take that on board Benjamin. All of your comments on this subject, including those earlier today, amount to deflection and an abrogation of responsibility on the part of the council. To suggest that some form of residents representative group take responsibility for accountability is not going to get to the root of these long standing failings. If the council cannot police themselves in this field, what prospect is there that will do so with others?
Boring Benjy is a Council apologist. A sort of troll on Mogadon
I respectfully disagree Atticus; we’ve had very interesting chats on our respective viewpoints and I enjoy our discussions. I firmly believe an entity, person or organisation, can be good at one aspect and poor at another, although I can see your point that there is some overlap in this case, and confidence has been shaken because one aspect is failing, therefore it’s not an unreasonable leap of logic to consider the other might also be suffering.
I actually would want to advocate for these standards to be improved. I think residents generally poorly attend forums like the Area Panels and Citywide Conference to help encourage the council with some resident-led direction to enhance accountability. However, it doesn’t remove or diminish the responsibilities of the council as landlords, and I would hate to think that my musing comes across as suggesting that.
1 rule for Government properties, plenty of rules for private properties, all mis-managed by the same Government.
Ironically, there are indeed different standards for council properties. Typically speaking, it’s harder to get a council property up to standard compared to private. It was one of the reasons the Kubic couldn’t be used immediately once purchased.
Roll on 2030 – 6 years to get all council hosuing stock improved EPC rating of at least C. Ed Milliband insists ALL councils will meet the target. Will cost millions.
Seems like a good goal though, if unrealistic, don’t you agree?