Harlow Council has been given the lowest landlord consumer rating, C3, after an investigation by the Regulator for Social Housing (RSH).
RSH investigated Harlow Council after reviewing its tenant satisfaction results. The regulator found that Harlow Council only carried out risk assessments for 20% of its 9,100 social housing homes.
In addition, there were over 500 high risk fire safety remedial actions overdue and a further 1,500 medium risk actions overdue. The majority of the latter were over a year late.
Harlow Council has since employed an external consultant to develop a detailed improvement plan. RSH will continue engaging with the council throughout this.
“It is unacceptable that Harlow Council has failed to meet fire safety requirements. Providing safe, decent homes for tenants begins with robust data, and this must include fire risk assessments for every home that needs one,” said Kate Dodsworth, chief of regulatory engagement at RSH.
“We identified these failings by scrutinising the council’s TSM results. It is the landlord’s responsibility to notify us themselves of material issues. Our new proactive approach and expanded consumer remit is helping to bring issues to the surface earlier. We expect all providers to regularly review and evaluate their services to improve outcomes for tenants.”
Elsewhere, RSH published regulatory judgements on nine other landlords as part of a review into consumer standards only introduced in April 2024.
With C3 being the lowest consumer rating, C1 is the best and means the landlord is delivering the outcomes on consumer standards.
C2, however, means a landlord has some weaknesses they must address.
C2 ratings were given to Saxon Weald, Great Places Housing Group, Calido Homes, Bolton at Home, Rooftop Housing Group and Mossacre St Vincent’s Housing Group Limited.
The Havebury Housing Partnership was the only landlord reviewed with a C1 rating.
Across the board, ratings of 1 and 2 were maintained for governance and viability metrics for these landlords (rated in the same way as consumer standards).
An exception was Islington and Shoreditch Housing Association Limited which received a downgrade from G1 to G2 in terms of governance. The RSH is in responsive engagement on governance issues with this authority, meaning a consumer grade was not assessed.
