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London housing association breached Home Standard over electrical and asbestos safety failings
A London housing association has become the latest landlord to breach the Regulator of Social Housing’s (RSH) consumer standards following electrical and asbestos safety failures.
Shepherds Bush Housing Group (SBHG), which owns around 4,700 homes in west London, has today been hit with a regulatory notice over the issues, having self-referred to the RSH in October.
It has identified around 200 communal areas in its buildings where there is no evidence that an electrical safety inspection has been carried out and is unable to find electrical safety certificates for more than 900 homes, the notice said.
This lack of information means it is “unable to determine if there were remedial actions that should have been addressed” and so “lacks assurance that its properties are maintained in a safe condition”, the report added.
SBHG also discovered that asbestos surveys were not carried out for around 300 communal areas, the notice said, meaning it does “not have assurance that this risk is being properly managed”.
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The RSH concluded that the issues met the “potential for serious detriment to tenants” test because of the “seriousness of the issues, the duration for which tenants were potentially exposed to risk, and the number of tenants potentially affected”.
It is now reviewing SBHG’s regulatory grading for governance. The association’s current rating is ‘G1/V2’ – indicating the highest possible score for governance and compliance with the regulator’s financial viability tests.
Part 1.2 of the RSH’s Home Standard requires social landlords to meet all statutory requirements on the health and safety of tenants in their homes.
SBHG has been deemed to have breached the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 requirement to ensure electrical installations are in working and safe condition and the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 requirement to carry out asbestos management surveys in communal areas of buildings.
The association has increased resources to remedy the electrical and asbestos safety failings and put an action plan in place to carry out the necessary checks.
The notice said SBHG “has provided the regulator with assurance that it is working to rectify these failures as a priority”.
Matt Campion, chief executive of SBHG, said: “The safety of our residents is our primary concern. Because of this we increased the robustness of our governance and assurance in relation to our landlord compliance functions.
“This led to us discovering historic areas of non-compliance. As soon as these issues came to light, in October, we self-referred to the regulator.
“We immediately set in place a business-wide plan and processes to address this and minimise the risk of it happening again. The regulator acknowledges our programme of work to address the issues.
“The board approved funding to bring forward outstanding work, and additional resources around governance and risk management.
“We have a plan in place to complete all outstanding surveys and inspections by the end of March 2020. We will work closely with the regulator as we do this.”
SBHG is now the 11th social landlord – which include six councils – to have been issued a regulatory notice for breaching the Home Standard on safety grounds since August.
