Earlier this year, the way that social housing is regulated changed. To ensure that the Council meets these new exacting standards, we undertook a self-assessment and asked an independent organisation to give us their opinion. We agreed that there were areas in which we needed to do far more and as a result, we immediately put in place a comprehensive improvement plan and contacted the Regulator for Social Housing to share our findings with them. The Regulator has considered the documents that we shared with them and has assessed the Council as a C3 rating, which means that improvements are needed.  In doing so, they have noted our improvement plan, the constructive way in which we are working with them and the transparency of our approach.

We are working at pace to improve systems and processes for the delivery and oversight of health and safety requirements and repairs, we have commissioned a full housing condition survey and will improve our complaints handling resources and processes. Our priority is to ensure that risks to tenants are adequately managed and mitigated.

The Council is one of several local authorities who have been rated by the Regulator for Social Housing since the introduction of the new regime.

Today we have issued letters to all tenants, leaseholders and those in shared ownership homes to update them, we have also updated our website pages and added FAQs and will continue to keep our customers informed of progress : Compliance and building safety.

I am very pleased with the progress we are already making on our Compliance improvement work, and I quote from the Regulator in their August report:

“Overall WDC has made an impressive amount of progress with completing the actions within the Roadmap. This is largely due to the new and effective governance and assurance framework in place to ensure actions are completed and to provide oversight and scrutiny of progress. This is also due to assigning appropriate and dedicated resources to the project. As a result, it is now evident that property compliance, building safety and resident safety is a core strategic priority for WDC.”

Following this, I am confident that officers will continue to be proactive in driving through the necessary regulatory measures and processes to deliver the change required and reassure our customers that safety and property compliance is a core strategic priority for the Council at the heart of our housing service.