Significant progress has been made to address a huge number of outstanding fire safety works in council homes across Broxtowe, a senior councillor says.
Earlier this year, in January, the Regulator of Social Housing said Broxtowe Borough Council had “failed to meet the outcomes” of new consumer standards.
The most significant problem was that there were more than 3,000 outstanding repairs and upgrades relating to fire safety.
The council was given a C3 rating, the second-worst rating possible, which means there were “serious failings” and “significant improvement” was needed.
In total, there were 3,117 fire safety-related actions, but they were all low to medium risk.
An £8 million “active and passive fire protection works scheme” is now being delivered across its housing stock, which has helped bring the total number of outstanding actions down to 2,240.
The number of overdue actions has also decreased from 124 to 117.
Progress on the improvement work was discussed at a cabinet meeting on 30 June.
Broxtowe Alliance member Cllr Vanessa Smith, portfolio holder for housing, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “[The regulator] will tell us when they think we might be ready for another inspection.
“The meetings we are having with them are very positive. Everything is moving in the right direction.
“We’ve made significant progress on our fire safety. Of those actions, very few are overdue at this point.
“We will never get to zero because we will have more inspections, but the important thing is that we will be on top of it. The 3,000 was not acceptable.
“None of our overdue or outstanding actions are high risk, and they relate to things like fire doors and alarms, but that work is progressing at pace.”
Another concern raised by the regulator was the lack of accurate and up-to-date information on tenants’ homes, including potential hazards.
Cllr Smith said attention is now being turned to the diverse needs of the borough’s council tenants to make sure tenant data is up to date so their current needs are met.
She said a tenant influence panel, under which meetings are held each month to explore the issues they face in greater depth, is “one of our strengths”.
The first phase of Awaab’s Law came into force at the end of October, requiring social landlords to take urgent action to fix dangerous homes or face the full force of the law, the Government said.
It follows the death of two-year-old Awaab Ishak, who died in December 2020 from a respiratory condition caused by prolonged exposure to mould in his Rochdale home.
The home was managed by social housing provider Rochdale Boroughwide Housing (RBH) at the time.
Council documents say that, although there have been challenges, the number of outstanding damp and mould cases has been reduced by 55 per cent over the last four months.
“The real task will come in the winter when it gets colder and damper,” Cllr Smith added.
“We’ve put plans in place, we’ve got extra resources. We have an officer who deals with those cases and makes sure we do things on time.
“One of the things we approved [at cabinet] was some restructuring in the repairs team. We had an interim post for damp and mould, and we are looking to make that permanent.”
During the meeting, Conservative councillor Philip Owen said he was pleased greater detail had been provided, but raised concerns over electrical non-compliance and other “trivial issues”.
“Currently, 99 properties are overdue, which is still a significant number,” he said.
The report from the council also noted problems with administrative support and the absence of key colleagues in other areas of housing, reducing operational oversight.
By Joe Locker, Local Democracy Reporter