Regulatory Notice: Woking Borough Council (14 December 2023)
Published 14 December 2023
Applies to England
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RSH Regulatory Notice
- Provider: Woking Borough Council
- Regulatory code: 43UM
- Publication date: 14 December 2023
- Reason for publication: Consumer Standards
- Regulatory route: Reactive Engagement
Other providers included in the judgement
None
Regulatory Findings
The regulator has concluded that:
a) Woking Borough Council (the Council) has breached the Home Standard; and
b) As a consequence of the breach, there was the potential for serious detriment to the Council’s tenants.
The regulator will work with the Council as it seeks to remedy the breach and will continue to consider what further action may need to be taken.
The issue
Following a self-referral from the Council, and our further investigations, we identified it was not meeting all landlord health and safety testing requirements. We requested further information from the Council to understand its statutory health and safety compliance performance in more detail.
Our investigation
As a registered provider, the Council is required to comply with the consumer standards, including the Home Standard. The Home Standard requires registered providers to meet all applicable statutory requirements that provide for the health and safety of tenants in their homes.
In respect of fire safety,[footnote 1] the Council has a statutory duty to regularly assess the risk of fire and to take precautions to prevent the risk of fire. The Council had completed fire risk assessments for the majority of blocks that required one. However, our investigation found that there were more than 400 overdue high risk remedial actions from those fire risk assessments. Around half of these actions were very high priority and should have been completed within 24 hours and the remainder within 30 days. The remedial actions were overdue by between one and six months. The Council is developing a plan to complete these actions promptly.
The Council was required by 1 October 2022 to ensure it was compliant with new regulations for the installation of carbon monoxide and smoke detectors.[footnote 2] The Council reported that whilst it had commenced this programme of works, it was unable to confirm whether almost a quarter of its properties had smoke detectors installed. The Council also lacked assurance as to whether 8% of required properties had a carbon monoxide detector installed.
The regulator considered the case as a potential breach of parts 1.2 of the Home Standard and has concluded that the Council does not have an effective system in place to allow it to meet its responsibilities to statutory health and safety compliance across a range of areas.
Complying with statutory health and safety requirements are fundamental responsibilities of all registered providers because of the potential for serious harm to tenants. The Council has demonstrated to the regulator that it now understands its responsibilities and is completing the work it needs to undertake in relation to ensuring the required statutory health and safety actions are completed. However, taking into account the seriousness of the issues and the number of tenants potentially affected, the regulator has concluded that the Council has breached the Home Standard and that there was a risk of serious detriment to tenants during this period.
Our engagement
The Council has started to put in place a programme to rectify these failures. The regulator will work with the Council as it continues to address the issues that have led to this situation, including ongoing monitoring of how it delivers its health and safety programmes. We will continue to keep our use of statutory powers under regular review through our engagement with the Council.
Section 198A of the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008 (as amended) states that the regulator’s regulatory and enforcement powers may be used if a registered provider has failed to meet a consumer standard. In order to use regulatory or enforcement powers, as well as the failure to meet the standard, there should also be reasonable grounds to suspect that the failure has resulted in a serious detriment to the provider’s tenants (or potential tenants) or that there is a significant risk that, if no action is taken by the regulator, the failure will result in a serious detriment to the provider’s tenants (or potential tenants).
About our Regulatory Notices
Regulatory notices are issued in response to an event of regulatory importance (for example, a finding of a breach of the Rent Standard or of a consumer standard that has or may cause serious harm) that, in accordance with its obligation to be transparent, the regulator wishes to make public. More detail about Regulatory notices is set out in Regulating the Standards.