The Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) has said that Haringey Council breached the Home Standard, with the potential for serious detriment to tenants.
Following a self-referral, RSH confirmed the council breached health and safety requirements. It failed to complete a significant number of remedial fire safety actions, including 4,000 that were high risk, and it did not have up-to-date electrical safety reports for thousands of homes.
Through its investigation, the regulator also found that over 100 of the council’s homes had serious hazards – known as ‘category one’ hazards – and nearly 5,000 of its homes did not meet the Decent Homes Standard.
The RSH said the council was undertaking a full condition survey of its tenants’ homes and had put a programme in place to rectify these issues.
Kate Dodsworth, Director of Consumer Regulation at RSH, said: ‘Haringey Council put thousands of tenants at potential risk by failing to meet health and safety requirements for fire and electrical safety. Our investigation has also revealed that a significant number of Haringey Council homes do not meet the decent homes standard.
‘The council needs to act urgently to put things right for tenants, and we are monitoring it closely as it does this.’
In response, council leader Peray Ahmet and chief executive Andy Donald said: “Every single family and individual living in Haringey should expect to live in a warm, safe and well-maintained home. We owe it to everyone to provide the highest quality service we can to ensure we can achieve this.
‘That is why we took the decision to bring our housing management back under the direct control of the council back in June 2022 and that was strongly supported by our tenants.’
The council previously commissioned two independent reviews of its housing situation, highlighting areas where its housing provision was substandard and leading the council to refer itself to the regulator.
‘We fully understand that a well-maintained home is a foundation that every person living in this borough should be able to expect,’ said the statement from Ahment and Donald. ‘We are very sorry that our residents have not been receiving the quality of service that they should have done. What is important now is that we move quickly to change this.’
The council said it had taken measures including:
- All blocks that had a backlog of overdue fire risk assessments have been cleared
- Reduced the number of high-risk overdue fire safety actions by 1,274
- Reduced the number of domestic homes without a confirmed Domestic Electrical Installation Condition report in the last 10 years by 2,000 with the remaining homes prioritised to be completed by May 2023
Photo by Johan Mouchet