A regulatory notice has been served to Kirklees Metropolitan Borough Council (MBC) after the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) identified 20,000 outstanding fire safety actions.
Following a self-referral by the council for the regulator to inspect its social housing stock, in a notice published on 6 March 2014, RSH concluded that the West Yorkshire council had “failed to deliver the outcomes of the consumer standards”.
Inspectors found that while fire risk assessments had been completed for all blocks that required one, more than 20,000 fire remedial actions from the fire risk assessments were overdue. Of these overdue remedial actions, more than 200 were “high-risk actions”. In addition to the outstanding fire safety work, inspectors counted over 1,500 damp and mould repairs that were yet to be completed in tenants’ homes.
As stated in the notice, RSH considered the case as a “potential breach of part 1.2 of the Home Standard”, thus concluding that “Kirklees MBC did not have an effective system in place to allow it to meet its statutory health and safety responsibilities in relation to fire safety”.
In an update also published in March, the council said it was working with the regulator to improve fire safety for all its tenants; however, the fire safety work required was expected to cost more than £115 million:
“It is not possible to fund all this work in one go, and we also need to ensure we invest in other work needed to improve and maintain the quality and safety of homes.
“Virtually every social landlord in the country needs to carry out a lot of work, so demand for contractors, materials, and labour is high and this sometimes limits what we can do. We are lucky to have our own in-house contractor, Property Services. They carry out a lot of fire safety work in homes, but there are some works that are very specialised and for those we need external contractors.
“We have made progress with fire safety improvement work across a number of council properties; this is ongoing work that we plan to wrap up by 2031. We just need to ensure we are rolling out this work across our housing stock at the quickest pace we can, while ensuring they are of the right quality and delivered in the right way.”
The council has already listed the risk management and mitigation measures it has implemented for tenants living in six-storey blocks, retirement living schemes, low-rise blocks, and high-rise blocks. Such measures in its high-rise residential blocks include waking watches, weekly fire alarm and emergency lighting tests, and temporary simultaneous evacuation arrangements until works are completed.
Responding to the regulatory notice, Councillor Moses Crook, the Cabinet member for Housing, said: “Tenant safety is our top priority which is why we referred ourselves to the regulator for these issues. We are aware that we need to get through a considerable backlog of works and want to assure tenants that they remain safe because of the risk management we already have in place.
“Over the next few months, we will be recruiting more staff to help increase the pace of delivery across both damp, mould, and condensation and fire safety improvements.
“We have several programmes of work already in delivery to resolve actions identified through fire risk assessments and are developing further schemes to address the remainder. For some blocks this means we will be undertaking large-scale refurbishment works and for others it means renewals and small-scale improvements to homes and communal areas. We continue to prioritise actions and work based on the level of risk to tenants and the wider public.
“In addition to this, our safety measures are robust and include 24/7 waking watch and CCTV monitoring in high-rises, prompt repairs and up-to-date alarm systems. In all homes, from 6-storey buildings to low-rises, we reinforce safety measures with regular checks and immediate actions after any fire incident. We will be investing over £117 million on fire safety improvements across council housing by 2031.”
Chief of Regulatory Engagement at RSH, Kate Dodsworth said: “All landlords must meet health and safety requirements and provide an effective repairs service for tenants. Kirklees Council failed to do this, and it is now working to put things right.
“The council referred itself to us and has engaged constructively. We expect all other social landlords to do the same when they find or suspect a problem, so issues can be resolved promptly.”