Decision

Ashford Borough Council (29UB) Regulatory Judgement: 9 August 2024

Published 9 August 2024

Applies to England

Our Judgement

	Grade/Judgement	Change	Date of assessment
Consumer	C3 Our judgement is that there are serious failings in the landlord delivering the outcomes of the consumer standards and significant improvement is needed	First grading	July 2024

Reason for publication

We are publishing a regulatory judgement for Ashford Borough Council (Ashford BC) to confirm a consumer grading of C3.

This follows responsive engagement with Ashford BC about the Safety and Quality Standard and the Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard. This is the first time we have issued a consumer grade in relation to this landlord.

Summary of the decision

Our judgement is that there are serious failings in how Ashford BC is delivering the outcomes of the consumer standards and significant improvement is needed, specifically in relation to outcomes in our Safety and Quality Standard and Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard. Based on this assessment, we have concluded a C3 grade for Ashford BC.

How we reached our judgement

We began our responsive engagement with Ashford BC when it made a self-referral to us in March 2024. It had identified issues in relation to several areas including its understanding of its stock quality, the decency of its homes, landlord health and safety compliance and how it addresses complaints.

Our responsive engagement with Ashford BC included reviewing documents and data provided to us by Ashford BC, along with follow up meetings and discussions with Ashford BC. Our judgement is based on all of the relevant information we obtained during the responsive engagement process. In making our decision, we have considered how well Ashford BC is delivering against outcomes of the Safety and Quality Standard and the Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard.

Summary of findings 

Consumer – C3 – July 2024

The Safety and Quality Standard requires landlords to identify and meet all legal requirements that relate to the health and safety of tenants in their homes and communal areas, and to ensure that all required actions arising from legally required health and safety assessments are carried out within appropriate timescales. The Safety and Quality Standard also requires landlords to have an accurate, up to date and evidenced understanding of the condition of their homes that reliably informs their provision of good quality, well maintained and safe homes for tenants and to ensure that their tenants’ homes meet the requirements of the Decent Homes Standard.

From Ashford BC’s self-referral and through our subsequent engagement with Ashford BC, we learned that it does not have adequate systems and processes in place for the delivery and oversight of legal requirements relating to tenant health and safety and its data about its homes is of poor quality. As a result of this, there are serious failings in how Ashford BC is meeting health and safety requirements, including overdue electrical safety checks, fire remedial actions that have not been completed and smoke and carbon monoxide detection that has not been installed in some homes.   

Through our responsive engagement, Ashford BC reported that it has not carried out a full stock condition survey for over 10 years and the information it holds on the condition of its homes is incomplete and out of date. As a result, Ashford BC is unable to accurately report its current levels of compliance with the Decent Homes Standard, and is unable to evidence the overall quality of its homes.

The Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard includes the requirement for landlords to provide information so tenants can use landlord services, understand what to expect from their landlord, and hold their landlord to account. It also requires landlords to ensure complaints are addressed fairly, effectively, and promptly.

During our engagement, we found that Ashford BC provides limited meaningful opportunities for tenants to influence and scrutinise its strategies, policies and services, with no activities arranged to facilitate this. This means that tenants lack opportunities to influence decision‑making about how services are provided. We also found that complaints are not being recorded consistently. As a result, we are not assured that Ashford BC is addressing complaints from its tenants promptly and effectively.

Considering the breadth and significance of the issues across the relevant outcomes of both the Safety and Quality Standard and the Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard, we have concluded that there are serious failings in how Ashford BC is delivering the outcomes of the Consumer Standards and significant improvement is needed.  

Since its self-referral, Ashford BC has engaged constructively with the regulator, and is taking steps to address the failures. This includes work to complete improvements to systems and processes for delivery and oversight of health and safety checks, commissioning a full stock condition survey to ensure it holds accurate data on the condition of its homes, improving complaints handling resources and processes, and developing a tenant engagement strategy. Ashford BC commissioned an external review before its self-referral and has developed an improvement plan to address the failings.

We are engaging with Ashford BC as it continues to address the issues that led to this judgement. Our engagement will be intensive, and we will seek evidence that gives us the assurance that sufficient change and progress is being made, including ongoing monitoring of how it delivers its improvement programme. Our priority will be that risks to tenants are adequately managed and mitigated. We are not proposing to use our enforcement powers at this stage but will keep this under review as Ashford BC seeks to resolve these issues.

Background to the judgement

About the landlord

Ashford BC is a local authority in Kent which owns and manages approximately 4,800 social housing homes.

Our role and regulatory approach

We regulate for a viable, efficient, and well governed social housing sector able to deliver quality homes and services for current and future tenants.

We regulate at the landlord level to drive improvement in how landlords operate. By landlord we mean a registered provider of social housing. These can either be local authorities, or private registered providers (other organisations registered with us such as non-profit housing associations, co-operatives, or profit-making organisations).

We set standards which state outcomes that landlords must deliver. The outcomes of our standards include both the required outcomes and specific expectations we set. Where we find there are significant failures in landlords which we consider to be material to the landlord’s delivery of those outcomes, we hold them to account. Ultimately this provides protection for tenants’ homes and services and achieves better outcomes for current and future tenants. It also contributes to a sustainable sector which can attract strong investment.

We have a different role for regulating local authorities than for other landlords. This is because we have a narrower role for local authorities and the Governance and Financial Viability Standard, and Value for Money Standard do not apply. Further detail on which standards apply to different landlords can be found on our standards page.

We assess the performance of landlords through inspections and by reviewing data that landlords are required to submit to us. In Depth Assessments (IDAs) were one of our previous assessment processes, which are now replaced by our new inspections programme from 1 April 2024. We also respond where there is an issue or a potential issue that may be material to a landlord’s delivery of the outcomes of our standards. We publish regulatory judgements that describe our view of landlords’ performance with our standards. We also publish grades for landlords with more than 1,000 social housing homes.

The Housing Ombudsman deals with individual complaints. When individual complaints are referred to us, we investigate if we consider that the issue may be material to a landlord’s delivery of the outcomes of our standards.

For more information about our approach to regulation, please see Regulating the standards.

Further information

• Regulating the standards

• Regulatory standards for landlords