A council says it has already made a raft of improvements after a regulator said it had found “serious failings” in how it manages its housing stock.
In January, the Regulator of Social Housing said Broxtowe Borough Council “failed to meet the outcomes” of a series of new consumer standards which were introduced in April 2024.
Some of the most serious problems included more than 3,000 overdue remedial actions relating to fire safety, and a lack of accurate and up-to-date information on tenants’ homes, including potential hazards.
Cllr Milan Radulovic (Broxtowe Alliance), the leader of the council, said he was “extremely disappointed” with the C3 rating, which is the second-worst rating a social housing provider can receive.
At a cabinet meeting on Tuesday (3 February), he said he believed the rating was “unfair” and that “there was an awful lot of good in the housing regulation report”.
However, Cllr Philip Owen (Con) branded the report “an embarrassing humiliation”.
“Housing, you have always said, has been one of your landmark policies,” he said.
“The reason you don’t want the housing stock to go to an arm’s-length company or a housing association is because this council can do so much better.
“[The regulator] wasn’t disappointed. They didn’t say, ‘oh, it don’t look very good’. ‘Significant improvement’ and ‘serious failings’ is what they said.
“I’ve heard not a word of apology from any elected member responsible tonight.”
Darren Ibell, the council’s assistant director for asset management, said the report provided a “really good health check” for the authority and said work had already started to remedy the problems.
“Grenfell Tower happened nearly 10 years ago now, in 2017, and it all reminds us how important fire safety is at the top of our agenda for our housing customers,” he said.
“Of course, it is disappointing that we found ourselves being pulled up in terms of the amount of actions we’ve still got to resolve within our housing stock.
“When I came into the council 13 months ago, we were in a position where asset management and development had suffered a significant amount of churn in terms of management. We had quite a churn in staff and, as a result, fire safety was not in the position it should have been.
“Thirteen months ago, we had no contractors whatsoever procured to deliver any work in relation to fire. We now have five all procured, all working on our stock.
“This week alone, one of our contractors has completed 163 fire actions in our stock. That just shows you, in a week, what can be achieved over a short period of time.
“Fire risk assessments were poor, inconsistent, and had lots of gaps. We’ve completed a full review of all our fire risk assessments across every block where we have shared spaces. We are working towards the actions generated.”
He added that there were 3,117 fire safety-related actions, but that they were all low- to medium-risk.
Cllr Greg Marshall (Broxtowe Alliance), the deputy leader of the council, added: “The point here is that this is a joint endeavour with councillors and officers.
“Nobody is happy about this situation. I have got a lot of confidence in the response from Mr Ibell and the team, and he’s set out how that is going to accelerate. Nobody here is complacent about anything. Nobody is happy or gleeful about this.”
