Decision

Warwick District Council (44UF) - Regulatory Judgement: 13 September 2024

Published 13 September 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	September 2024

Reason for publication

We are publishing a regulatory judgement for Warwick District Council (Warwick DC) to confirm a consumer grading of C3.

This follows responsive engagement with Warwick DC 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 Warwick DC 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 Warwick DC.

How we reached our judgement

Warwick DC made self-referrals to us in November 2023 and July 2024 after it commissioned external reviews that identified concerns with its health and safety compliance information, concerns around stock quality information, reliability of information, repairs and maintenance service performance and complaint handling.

Our responsive engagement with Warwick DC about these issues included reviewing documents and information provided by Warwick DC, with follow up meetings and discussions with Warwick DC. 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 Warwick DC is delivering against outcomes of the Safety and Quality Standard and Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard.

Summary of findings 

Consumer – C3 – September 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.

From Warwick DC’s self-referral and through our subsequent engagement with Warwick DC, the information provided to us demonstrates that it is failing to ensure that it meets legal requirements in relation to health and safety. It has reported to us a lack of assurance in the quality of its information, and it cannot evidence that all required checks and remedial actions have been completed. Warwick DC has identified over 1,600 overdue fire remedial actions. In relation to smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, Warwick DC has not been able to evidence that it is meeting its legal requirements.

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. At the time of the self-referral, Warwick DC reported its last stock condition survey was completed in 2016. While surveys have now restarted, Warwick DC has reported inaccuracies with the new information when validating the surveys.

Given the absence of up-to-date stock condition survey information and taking into account the reported inaccuracies with the information it does hold, Warwick DC has been unable to provide evidence that it has a sufficient understanding of its homes to deliver outcomes in the Safety and Quality Standard and we cannot be assured that Warwick DC is providing homes of decent quality to its tenants.

The Safety and Quality Standard also requires Warwick DC to provide an effective, efficient, and timely repairs, maintenance, and planned improvements service. We found that Warwick DC does not have adequate systems and processes in place for the delivery and oversight of repairs and it has a low level of confidence in the reported information on repairs performance. As a result, we are not assured that Warwick DC is providing an effective, efficient and timely repairs service for tenants.

The Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard requires landlords to ensure complaints are addressed fairly, effectively, and promptly. Through our engagement with Warwick DC, we identified that complaints are not being recorded consistently. As a result, we are not assured that Warwick is addressing complaints from its tenants promptly and effectively and there was limited evidence that Warwick DC has a process in place to learn from complaints and use them to improve services.

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 Warwick DC is delivering the outcomes of the consumer standards and significant improvement is needed.

Warwick DC has engaged constructively with us, and is taking steps to address the failures. This includes work to improve systems and processes for the delivery and oversight of health and safety requirements and repairs, commissioning a full stock condition survey and improving complaints handling resources and processes. Warwick DC has developed an improvement plan to address the failings.

We are engaging with Warwick DC 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 plan. 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 Warwick DC seeks to resolve these issues.

Background to the judgement

About the landlord

Warwick DC owns and manages more than 5,500 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