Decision

Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council (00CS) - Regulatory Judgement: 30 October 2024

Published 30 October 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	October 2024

Reason for publication

We are publishing a regulatory judgement for Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council (Sandwell MBC) to confirm a consumer grading of C3.

This follows responsive engagement with Sandwell MBC 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 Sandwell MBC 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 Sandwell MBC.

How we reached our judgement

We began our responsive engagement with Sandwell MBC in June 2024, following information provided to us as part of Sandwell MBC’s Tenant Satisfaction Measure (TSM) return. Elements of the return were flagged as indicative of a failure to deliver the outcomes of the Safety and Quality Standard.

Our responsive engagement with Sandwell MBC included reviewing documents and information provided to us by Sandwell MBC, along with follow up meetings and discussions with Sandwell MBC. This regulatory judgement is based on a review of all of the relevant information we obtained during the responsive engagement process. In making our decision, we have considered how well Sandwell MBC is delivering against outcomes of the Safety and Quality Standard.

Summary of findings 

Consumer – C3 – October 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. It also requires landlords to take reasonable steps to mitigate any identified risks to tenants.

Information provided by Sandwell MBC showed that, at 31 March 2024, it was only able to evidence that required asbestos management surveys or re-inspections had been carried out on around 2% of relevant buildings.

Through our subsequent engagement with Sandwell MBC, we identified that Sandwell MBC does not have adequate systems and processes in place to ensure that all required actions arising from legally required health and safety assessments are carried out within appropriate timescales. Sandwell MBC has failed to ensure it is meeting health and safety requirements with asbestos re-inspections not being completed and an absence of monitoring on the completion of remedial actions arising from electrical safety inspections.

Sandwell MBC reported that, although electrical safety inspections had been completed for 96% of its homes, it is unable to monitor or report on the completion of remedial actions arising from those inspections. Sandwell MBC also reported, that although asbestos surveys were completed through 2022 and 2023 for all required buildings, no re-inspections had since been completed and it did not have a register of which buildings required re-inspection. The absence of a re-inspection register was highlighted to Sandwell MBC in September 2023 by an external contractor, but no substantive action to put one in place was taken at the time.

The gaps in information held by Sandwell MBC mean that the extent and materiality of these issues is not clear to Sandwell MBC or to us and therefore Sandwell MBC is unable to effectively mitigate the risks posed to tenants by the outstanding works.

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

Sandwell MBC reported that it has more than 14,000 overdue repairs, with over 90% of these yet to be assigned for completion, and that it needs to undertake further work to confirm that this information is accurate. A relatively small number of these overdue repairs are considered to be either emergency or urgent repairs and are up to 12 months overdue. As a result, Sandwell MBC is failing to provide an effective, efficient and timely repairs service to its tenants.

The Safety and Quality Standard also requires Sandwell MBC 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.

Sandwell MBC reported that it had commenced a stock condition survey programme in 2024. However, through our responsive engagement Sandwell MBC reported that it holds information on the condition of 5% of its homes and therefore does not have an accurate, up to date and evidenced understanding of the condition of its homes to inform the provision of services for tenants. In addition, Sandwell MBC is also unable to accurately report how many of its homes meet the requirements of the Decent Homes Standard. Given the absence of up-to-date stock condition survey data and taking into account the limited sample of stock condition surveys undertaken to date, Sandwell MBC 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 Sandwell MBC is providing homes of decent quality to its tenants. 

Considering the breadth and significance of the issues across the relevant outcomes of the Safety and Quality Standard, it is our judgement that there are serious failings in how Sandwell MBC is delivering the outcomes of the Consumer Standards and significant improvement is needed.

Sandwell MBC has engaged constructively with us and is taking steps to address the failures identified. This includes work to collate an asbestos re-inspection register and undertake re-inspections where required; put in place a system and procedures to allow monitoring and oversight of electrical safety remedial actions; to continue with the stock condition survey programme that began in January 2024 to ensure it holds accurate and up to date information on the condition of its homes, and to address the backlog of overdue repairs.

We are engaging with Sandwell MBC as it continues to address the issues that led to this judgement 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 any 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 Sandwell MBC seeks to resolve these issues.

Background to the judgement

About the landlord

Sandwell MBC is a local authority in the West Midlands which owns around 27,900 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