How Sheffield Council got its regulatory notice lifted

“Of course, councils have their governance role, but we also have a dual role of picking up casework for people in the areas we represent, so it’s quite different from a housing association board, where you have directors who are quite remote in a way,” he says. 

Mr Johnson adds that it can help with understanding patterns of complaints. The council has also focused on having a more positive culture.

“The council had to change five years ago in 2021 when it went to no overall control, and that was important because at the top level of council we all had to find new ways of working that we simply hadn’t done before.

“The only way to do that was to co-operate [between the political parties], he says, adding that the council has a “really good cohort of officers” that have joined in the intervening period. 

Mr Johnson says that when work is “constantly negative”, when there are a lot of bad stories in the local press, for example, “it’s actually quite a soul-destroying working environment, and it doesn’t bring out the best in people”.

“So that change in positivity has been really there to inspire and drive and motivate staff, but also set some standards for when staff were not living up to that.”

“The council had to change five years ago in 2021 when it went to no overall control, and that was important because at the top level of council we all had to find new ways of working that we simply hadn’t done before”

Operationally, the council has made major investment in data systems, cleansing data, and technology that schedules jobs. “With 2,000 [staff] and 38,000 homes, it’s a massive operation.”

The changes, including technology that improves scheduling for repair jobs, have led to a more efficient service, he says.

“We used to have it where we’d send someone out on the job to one side of the city, and then his next job was the other side of the city. That’s really inefficient.”

According to its latest housing performance report, repairs work in progress has reduced from 36,000 cases in January 2024 to around 16,000 by March 2026. 

Overdue repairs have fallen from 23,000 to 8,772 over the same period, while legal disrepair cases reduced from 1,028 to 471.

“The instant you get a letter in from a solicitor’s firm, look at what it says, you work out what are the jobs that need to be done, and you just focus on getting those done,” Mr Johnson says. 

Residents can now report repairs online, which frees up the phone lines for those without digital access. 

Better communication

Alongside this, the council is undertaking a stock condition survey of its homes. It surveyed 62% of its homes by the fourth quarter of 2025-26, and aims to reach 80% by March next year. 

It has increased focus on getting better access to homes through communication with tenants. It aims to understand why they are refusing access, rather than its historic approach of moving on to the next job. 

The local authority will use enforcement if all other avenues have failed. More than 200 homes are still overdue gas safety checks and this is largely down to access issues. 

Mr Johnson says the council is aware that a tenant may refuse access because of domestic violence or disability, and its new housing management data system is better at recording information in a more “systemic way”.

“Because what’s important is not that we just hold the information, but it’s available for people who are trying to arrange the appointment, and indeed to the person who’s going to come to the door.”

He adds: “If somebody is refusing access or [we’re] persistently not getting it, there are bound to be some complications, some complexity to their lives. Then we need to work around that.”

“We’ve had two years of improvement, and so we’re way ahead of where we were, but also we’ve still got a long way to go”

The council approved and published a new vulnerability policy for tenants this year, which aims to identify issues residents might be facing and help them sustain their tenancies.

Does Mr Johnson think the council will have done enough to get a compliant grade before the regulator’s next inspection?

“We’ve had two years of improvement, and so we’re way ahead of where we were, but also we’ve still got a long way to go,” he says.

He adds that the C1 grade is “nothing particularly glowing”, and that it simply means a social landlord is compliant with the standards.

Mr Johnson says it is better to look at things that measure what the council is “actually doing well”, such as the external report that was carried out on its improvement to the housing service, tenant satisfaction measures and tenant feedback, which is improving overall.

“And anecdotally, we just find there are far fewer stories in the press about people complaining about repairs,” he says.

As he says at the start of the interview: “People deserve to live in decent homes.”