Council Response to Regulatory Judgement

Redditch Borough Council is redoubling improvement efforts in its housing services following a critical report from the Regulator of Social Housing.   

The council received a C3 consumer grade, its first under the new national inspection framework, indicating serious failings in some tenant services and the need for significant improvements.   

As the council already has improvement plans in place, no enforcement action is currently proposed, and the council will continue working with the Regulator to demonstrate progress and deliver better outcomes for tenants.

The judgement follows a July outcome of an inspection that assessed performance against the four new consumer standards in social housing: 

• Safety & Quality
• Neighbourhood & Community
• Transparency, Influence, & Accountability, and

Key concerns included delays in addressing fire and water safety issues, such as outdated signage and a backlog of fire door replacements to new higher standards, some outstanding for over a year. The council had identified the same issues and had already tripled funding for precautionary fire safety work as well as accelerating improvement programmes.  

The repairs service had nearly 3,000 overdue jobs and missed performance targets. A back-office admin clean-up closed 1,200 of those as already-completed job tickets, removing 40% of the nominal backlog. Meanwhile, the council had already made moves to address the remaining genuine delays, by hiring additional staff, including launching new caretaking and damp and mould teams, and introducing modern job-tracking systems. 

The Regulator also found that tenants were not sufficiently involved in decision-making and lacked access to performance information. New engagement initiatives, including scrutiny panels and policy review groups, are now being put in place, with details in a refreshed annual report being delivered to all council properties.  

Councillor Bill Hartnett, Portfolio Holder for Housing, said: “We take this judgement very seriously. It confirms the importance of the issues we’re already tackling. And we are not alone. We have joined most councils in receiving a ‘C3’ grade from the Regulator as the sector adjusts to the new rules, and we are now redoubling our improvement efforts to ensure high quality housing for our tenants.

“There is no cause for alarm. The Regulator recognises our commitment to resolving these issues and we’re already acting. Adding more staff and services, speeding up precautionary fire door replacements, removing outdated water supplies, rolling out new tenant panels, reporting more information to the Executive Committee, and more. All of this is detailed in our new and improved annual report, now being delivered to tenants.”   

A link to the full judgement on the Regulator of Social Housing website is available here.