Housing association downgraded over fire safety

St Vincent’s Housing Association’s (SVHA) governance rating has been downgraded to a “G2”, meaning it is compliant with regulatory standards but needs to make improvements.

The downgrade by the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) today follows a regulatory notice issued to the housing association last month, following a “failure to implement a large number of outstanding high-risk actions from fire risk assessments”.

Today, the HCA said: “SVHA needs to strengthen its operational control arrangements to ensure adherence to all relevant health and safety legislation and regulatory requirements.”

Following an internal audit, St Vincent’s referred itself to the regulator to inform it of the problems with reporting recommendations from fire risk assessments conducted from September 2015 to July 2016.

“The internal auditors reported that the problems were not only a result of staff performance and that the system of control was in need of improvement,” the HCA said.

“Based on the information provided we have concluded that there was a failure of operational internal controls and procedures need improvement in order to ensure continued compliance with the Governance and Financial Viability Standard.”

St Vincent’s retained its “V1” financial viability grading – the highest possible rating.

A spokesperson for SVHA said it has worked “extremely hard to bring its assessments up to date.” She added: We are grateful to the HCA for their guidance on this issue and we will be working hard to improve in this area. We want to assure all of our customers and stakeholders that health and safety is an absolute priority for the organisation.”

The HCA published 30 further ‘strapline’ judgements today – meaning the gradings are unchanged – following a number of annual stability checks.