Adur District Council reports 'breach of regulatory standards' as not all homes had safety checks in place and smoke alarms fitted

Adur District Council has said it is to work with the national social housing regulator to ‘tackle health and safety issues with its homes’.

The council contacted the Regulator of Social Housing in February after ‘carrying out a review’, which ‘identified health and safety issues in some of its properties’.

The review highlighted that not all of the council homes had up-to-date fire, electrical and asbestos safety checks, and that some did not have smoke alarms. The council also ‘did not have the data to confirm’ its properties met the Decent Homes Standard.

The council referred itself to the regulator and suggested that because of these issues, it ‘believed it could be in breach of the national Home Standard’. This has since been confirmed by the regulator, in writing, to the council.

Carson Albury, Adur’s Cabinet Member for Adur Homes and Customer Services, said: “Everyone living in our properties deserves to have a good, safe and secure home and we are committed to working with the regulator and our residents to make this a reality.

“I’m grateful to the regulator for the speed with which it has reviewed our referral and we welcome its scrutiny as we work to resolve our issues.

“We have been, and will continue to be, open and transparent with the regulator about the challenges that have developed in our social housing.”

The council said it ‘understands the work it needs to do’ and has ‘created a new programme of health and safety checks and property surveys’.

Staff from the regulator will now work with the council as it ‘tackles the identified problems’.

The regulator has since published a notice on its engagement with the council, ‘as happens with all such cases of this kind’.

A district council spokesperson added: “Much of the housing managed by the council was built more than 50 years ago and needs a lot of investment to bring it up to standard. However, years of rent restrictions imposed by the government means there has been, and continues to be, insufficient funding to pay for the work required in Adur.

“The council accepts that this has meant it has not invested and improved our homes in the way it should have done for a number of years.

“The council will continue to carry out repairs and improvement work on its properties, focusing on prioritising health and safety issues.”

The council said it has written to all of its tenants and leaseholders explaining the situation – ‘apologising for not having always provided a good service’ and ‘committing to working hard to do better’.

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