Decision

London Borough of Hackney (00AM) Regulatory Judgement: 09 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 the London Borough of Hackney (LB Hackney) to confirm a consumer grading of C3.

This follows responsive engagement with LB Hackney 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 LB Hackney 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 LB Hackney.

How we reached our judgement

We began our responsive engagement with LB Hackney when it made a self-referral to us in June 2024 after an external review gave an overall rating of ‘no assurance’ in relation to its health and safety compliance, asset and data management and assurance framework. We also received a separate individual referral in June 2024 raising concerns around LB Hackney’s data, stock quality, and repairs and maintenance service.

Our responsive engagement with LB Hackney about these issues included reviewing documents and data provided by LB Hackney, with follow up meetings and discussions with LB Hackney. 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 LB Hackney 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 LB Hackney to us during our engagement demonstrates that it is failing to ensure that it meets a number of legal requirements in relation to health and safety.

LB Hackney has failed to ensure that it is meeting gas servicing requirements. LB Hackney has reported to us that it has over 400 homes that have not received a gas safety inspection within the statutory timeframe. Similarly, it has failed to ensure that it is meeting electrical safety requirements, reporting that it has over 15,000 homes without a current electrical safety certificate of which, around 7,000 have never had an electrical safety inspection. Additionally, LB Hackney has reported to us that it does not have evidence of a current electrical safety certificate for over 200 communal areas.

LB Hackney was unable to provide assurance that smoke detectors were fitted in almost 9,000 homes and that carbon monoxide detectors were fitted in over 400 homes.

LB Hackney lacks assurance in relation to the quality of the data it holds and cannot evidence that all required checks and remedial actions have been completed. LB Hackney was unable to provide assurance that health and safety requirements are met for asbestos (170 properties), water safety (80 blocks) and lift safety checks (90 inspections) due to outstanding inspections/surveys.

The Safety and Quality Standard also requires LB Hackney to have an accurate and up to date understanding of the condition of its homes. LB Hackney reported its last stock condition survey was carried out in 2018-19 which included internal surveys of around 10% of its homes. LB Hackney reported information on surveys carried out in 2019-20 was lost in a cyber-attack in 2020. While surveys restarted in 2023-24, these did not include an assessment for hazards under the Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS). LB Hackney is procuring a specialist contractor to undertake new surveys.

Given the absence of up-to-date stock condition survey data and taking into account the limited sample of stock condition surveys undertaken in 2018-19, LB Hackney has been unable to provide evidence that it has a sufficient understanding of its homes to deliver the outcomes in the Safety and Quality Standard and we cannot be assured that LB Hackney is providing homes of decent quality to its tenants. 

The Safety and Quality Standard also requires LB Hackney to provide an effective, efficient and timely repairs, maintenance and planned improvements service. LB Hackney reported to us that it has more than 1,400 open damp and mould cases, including more than 500 cases that are overdue, and over 600 cases identified as severe.

LB Hackney also reported almost 1,800 overdue repair orders dating back to October 2023.  A lack of an effective system to manage these repairs means LB Hackney is unable to determine whether some of these repairs have been completed. Additionally, performance information shared for April to June 2024 indicated LB Hackney has not been meeting its service standards for emergency or urgent repairs, with around one-third of these being overdue.

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

We are engaging with LB Hackney as it continues to address these issues that led to this situation. 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 LB Hackney seeks to resolve these issues.

Background to the judgement

About the landlord

LB Hackney owns around 21,500 general needs social housing homes, including 137 high rise buildings.

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.