Decision

Brighton and Hove City Council (00ML) 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	August 2024

Reason for publication 

We are publishing a regulatory judgement for Brighton and Hove City Council (Brighton and Hove CC) to confirm a consumer grading of C3.  

This follows responsive engagement with Brighton and Hove CC about the Safety and Quality 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 Brighton and Hove CC is delivering the outcomes of the consumer standards and significant improvement is needed, specifically in relation to outcomes in our Safety and Quality Standard. Based on this assessment, we have concluded a C3 grade for Brighton and Hove CC.   

How we reached our judgement 

We began our responsive engagement with Brighton and Hove CC in October 2023 after we were made aware of media coverage in relation to the landlord that suggested that the landlord had a backlog of repairs. 

During the period of our engagement, Brighton and Hove CC provided further information which indicated potential additional issues with its landlord health and safety compliance. 

Our responsive engagement with Brighton and Hove CC about these issues included reviewing documents and data provided by Brighton and Hove CC, with follow up meetings and discussions with Brighton and Hove CC. This regulatory judgement is based on all the relevant information we obtained during the responsive engagement process. In making our decision, we have considered how well Brighton and Hove CC is delivering against outcomes of the Safety and Quality Standard. 

Summary of findings   

Consumer – C3 – August 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 information provided by Brighton and Hove CC to us during our engagement with it demonstrates that it is failing to ensure that it meets a number of legal requirements in relation to health and safety. Brighton and Hove CC has failed to ensure that it is meeting electrical safety requirements. It has reported to us that it has around 3,600 homes without a current electrical condition report. Additionally, Brighton and Hove CC has reported to us that it has completed a sample check of communal electrical safety certificates and lacks assurance on their validity. As a result, it is retesting all communal areas, reporting that it does not have evidence of a current electrical safety certificate for over 600 communal areas. Similarly, Brighton and Hove CC cannot evidence that it is meeting the legal requirements concerning smoke detectors for all of its homes. 

Through our responsive engagement, we have also learned that Brighton and Hove CC has more than 600 properties where a water risk assessment is required but has not been completed. Brighton and Hove CC also reported more than 500 overdue water safety remedial actions that were overdue by at least 3 months, although none were reported to be urgent. Relating to fire safety, Brighton and Hove CC has identified over 1,700 medium and low-risk fire remedial actions, the majority of which are overdue by at least 2 years.  

The Safety and Quality Standard requires landlords to provide an effective, efficient, and timely repairs, maintenance and planned improvements service for the homes and communal areas for which they are responsible.  

The information provided to us by Brighton and Hove CC during our engagement with it demonstrates it is failing to provide an effective, efficient, and timely repairs service. Brighton and Hove CC reported a backlog of around 8,000 low risk, low priority repairs, the majority of which were raised in 2023 however some date back to 2021. Brighton and Hove CC also shared its performance data in relation to the completion of routine repairs which shows that it has been consistently below its target timescale for more than a year. 

Taking into account the breadth and significance of the issues across the relevant outcomes of the Safety and Quality Standard, we have concluded that there are serious failings in how Brighton and Hove CC is delivering the outcomes of the Safety and Quality Standard and significant improvement is needed.  

We are engaging with Brighton and Hove CC as it continues to address the issues that led to this situation. Our engagement includes ongoing monitoring of how it is delivering its health and safety programme and its recovery plan for its repairs and maintenance service. Our engagement with the landlord will be intensive and we will seek evidence to give us the assurance that sufficient change and improvement is being made. Our priority will be that any relevant 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 Brighton and Hove CC seeks to resolve these issues. 

Background to the judgement 

About the landlord 

Brighton and Hove CC owns around 12,100 social housing homes. It provides predominantly general needs accommodation, with some supported/sheltered accommodation. 

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.