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A Merseyside housing association’s grading has been placed under review after the regulator found it potentially put “hundreds of tenants” in harm’s way through fire safety failings.
In a regulatory notice published today, the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) said 14,000-home landlord Knowsley Housing Trust (KHT) failed to meet safety standards, causing “potential for serious detriment” to its tenants.
The RSH is considering using its enforcement powers against the association.
The probe began after KHT informed the regulator that it had been handed enforcement notices for three tower blocks by Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service in November last year, having ignored warning letters.
The RSH then found that KHT “had a number of high-risk fire safety actions outstanding following fire risk assessments” of other blocks.
These unsolved issues “potentially affected hundreds of tenants for a number of months”, the RSH said.
An internal audit carried out by KHT “indicated a systemic failure in relation to statutory compliance and concluded that the KHT board lacked assurance of compliance with statutory health and safety requirements”.
KHT has now “provided assurance” to the regulator that the outstanding fire safety work has been completed and has carried out a “root cause analysis” to find the reason for the failures.
However, the RSH has concluded that the association breached the Home Standard “because a large number of tenants were potentially exposed to an unknown risk of danger from fire over a long period of time”.
KHT’s current regulatory grading, published in November 2016, is ‘G1 V1’ – the highest possible grading for governance and financial viability. The association’s chair, Helen White, is chair of the Regulatory Board for Wales.
Meanwhile, Bob Taylor, chief executive of KHT and its parent company First Ark Group, has brought forward his retirement by several months.
Mr Taylor, who has held the post for 14 years, announced his decision to retire at the end of 2018 in March. However, last week Mr Taylor stepped aside to be replaced by an interim chief executive.
Ian Munro, former chief executive of New Charter, was announced as the interim chief executive on Monday.
A spokesperson for KHT said: “The regulator has recognised that we have taken considerable action to resolve these matters and that we have now completed all of the outstanding actions, however it did find we had breached the home standard.
“Our number one priority throughout the entire process has been the safety of our residents and we have had mitigating measures in place during the period of outstanding actions.
“We now have new teams in place who are monitoring our approach to fire safety and statutory compliance to ensure they are as robust as is possible, and have concluded a further internal audit to identify any further areas of improvement we can make.”