Arun District Council has been downgraded by the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) after around 2,500 open and overdue repair cases were found among its properties.
In addition, an investigation found nearly 1,000 overdue fire risk assessment remedial actions and over half of its homes did not have smoke detectors installed.
Arun District Council does not expect to reach compliance in the latter issue until May 2027.
The RSH also found evidence of the council not enabling tenants to scrutinise performance, and that it was failing to take prompt and appropriate action around anti-social behaviour and hate incidents.
The regulator reports that Arun District Council “understands the issues” and is “taking action to rectify” these.
These failures have seen the RSH downgrade Arun District Council to C4.
Regulatory judgements were also issued against six other social landlords.
This included an inspection of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea which found the landlord needed to improve its understanding of tenants’ homes at an individual level, and undertake required work to ensure tenants’ homes meet the Decent Homes standard.
As a result of these issues, RSH has given the council a C3 grade. The latter is now engaging with the former to rectify these issues.
Elsewhere, L&Q and Saxon Weald were both downgraded to G2, meaning both landlords still meet governance requirements overall but need to improve some aspects of their arrangements to support continued compliance.
“Social landlords need to have a strong understanding of their tenants’ homes and ensure that all homes are of a decent standard,” said Kate Dodsworth, chief of regulatory engagement at the RSH.
“Equally, boards must maintain oversight and robust financial governance in order to provide good quality homes and services to tenants.
“We will continue to keep social landlords under close scrutiny through our inspection programme and wider regulatory engagement.”
