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Council self-refers to regulator over fire and electrical safety concerns
A council in the south of England has referred itself to the Regulator of Social Housing over concerns it breached the Home Standard regarding electrical and fire safety, Inside Housing can reveal.
Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP) Council referred itself after it found 780 outstanding electrical safety inspections, with some properties never having been inspected. It also found 19 outstanding “high-priority” fire safety inspections and a number of issues found with recording cases.
The details emerged in a Housing Revenue Account compliance report, which is set to go before the cabinet today (12 January).
A review in the third quarter of 2021/22 revealed that 19 high-priority actions identified by fire risk assessments between 2016 and 2020 were still outstanding in Bournemouth. There were also 189 medium-priority actions outstanding.
The council found “inconsistencies” in the codes used for work orders to raise electrical safety inspections while undertaking improvement work to the monitoring and reporting of performance and the robustness of data collected in Bournemouth.
It also found missing data and cases not being recorded correctly when access was denied.
At the end of September 2021, 85.83% of domestic and communal properties in Bournemouth had a current satisfactory electrical safety inspection, with 780 outstanding inspections, including 249 relating to communal areas in flat blocks.
As of 17 December, there were 376 domestic and two communal outstanding electrical safety inspections, while 18 domestic properties and 64 communal areas had never been inspected.
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According to the report, the council’s electrical safety programme was “particularly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic as the work requires access to the whole of a property for a considerable period of time”.
BCP Council said it self-referred “in the spirit of openness and transparency”.
Karen Rampton, portfolio holder for people and homes at BCP Council, said: “We alerted the regulator immediately after identifying the issues, and the service director and I are tracking progress closely.
“We have provided the regulator with the statistics and our plan of action, and they have not required any further action as yet beyond what we are currently progressing.”
The council put an action plan in place after identifying several issues in late October, which included targeting resources, contracting additional subcontractors and refocusing its in-house team. It also now carries out weekly checks in communal areas and is carrying out a programme to reassure and prioritise the most vulnerable tenants and properties “as quickly as possible”.
Ms Rampton said the data issue in regards to raising works orders was identified as a “system error”, which is being rectified with new processes put in place.
“Since the issues were raised, we have already reduced the number of outstanding electrical safety inspections by almost 50%,” she said.
“The current number outstanding as of 7 January 2022 is 418, and we have already secured appointments with 169 of these to carry out work and 66 properties are with the housing management team to help prompt residents to make appointments with us.
“The aim is to clear the whole backlog by spring 2022 at the latest,” she added.
With regard to fire safety, Ms Rampton said the council is making “excellent progress with only nine actions now outstanding”, which are all due to be complete by the end of January.
She said: “Additional work began before Christmas 2021 with senior officers in housing requesting internal audit input in order to provide an independent review of all six compliance areas.
“Implementation of a new IT system to help manage fire safety has already commenced and the aim of internal audit input is to further identify lessons learned and robust procedures for the future.”
Following an investigation, the regulator will publish its decision on whether the council was in breach of the Home Standard or not.
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