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Association which developed electrical safety code slammed for putting tenants at risk

A housing association involved in developing an electrical safety code of practice has been slammed for electrical safety issues by the regulator.

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Picture: Getty
Picture: Getty
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Association involved in developing electrical safety code of practice slammed for electrical safety issues by the regulator #ukhousing

Magenta Living, which owns 12,800 homes, breached the Home Standard and put the safety of “a significant number of tenants” at risk by failing to address electrical safety issues, the Regulator of Social Housing said in a notice.

This was despite Magenta being part of a group of housing associations which developed a code of practice on electrical safety and presented it to parliament in January.

Magenta has kept its governance rating of G2, to which it was downgraded in August last year, meaning that it is still compliant on this but the regulator expects it to improve.


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The notice said: “With regard to electrical testing, the regulator concluded that ML [Magenta Living] had failed to have effective systems in place and an appropriate programme of planned work to identify electrical safety risks and had therefore breached the Home Standard.

“The external review highlighted that weak data management was a significant contributing factor in this case. There was also insufficient oversight and reporting of electrical safety and limited separation of responsibility for identifying, delivering, checking and reporting on compliance activity.”

Magenta reported itself to the regulator after identifying these issues but the regulator still confirmed that the standard had been breached because of how serious the problems were and how many homes were affected.

It said that there was the potential for serious harm “because of the large number of tenants that could have been exposed to risk of danger arising from unsafe electrical installations”.

Nevertheless, it said it was not planning to take any enforcement action because it has been assured that Magenta has now completed remediation of the safety issues.

A spokesperson for Magenta said: “Magenta Living takes its landlord responsibilities extremely seriously. As soon as we realised that we had a potential issue with our electrical safety testing process we immediately set up a programme of re-inspection and repair to ensure all outstanding electrical work was completed.

“Magenta Living is committed to demonstrating the highest standard of governance and we therefore reported this issue to the regulator. We have also taken external advice to independently review our updated management systems to ensure we deliver best practice in electrical safety going forward. We are pleased that the regulator has been assured that the breach of the standard is being remedied as they have concluded in the regulatory notice.”

The regulator previously downgraded Magenta, which was formed through a stock transfer from Wirral Council in 2005, over stress-testing, saying it hadn’t included a wide enough range of risks and scenarios.

It also told the association “to improve reporting on loan covenant compliance and subsidiary finances to allow the board to manage its affairs with greater diligence and foresight”.

Update: at 14.03 on 18.4.19 This story was updated to include a comment from a Magenta spokesperson.

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