News / Housing
Serious safety failures hamper progress in getting new council housing
Serious failures in keeping tenants safe and a backlog of repairs will slow Bristol’s progress in getting new council housing.
The new council leader, Green councillor Tony Dyer, said shocking compliance issues revealed in July will have major knock-on effects.
The government’s regulator of social housing found a huge backlog of repairs in half of the council homes in Bristol.
is needed now More than ever
There are thousands of overdue fire safety actions and lingering questions over monitoring carbon monoxide.
Bristol’s largest landlord is the council, with more than 27,000 homes across the city.
Due to the new focus on addressing failures highlighted by the regulator, less money is available for buying houses and flats and turning them into new council housing.
Councillors on the strategy and resources policy committee were updated on council housing on Monday.
As well as building new homes, the council is trying to buy flats and houses to turn into council housing and had a target this year of 150 acquisitions.
The project is falling well behind target and only 75 homes are likely to have been bought by next March, the end of the financial year.
These homes will mostly be used for normal social housing, with some kept for temporary accommodation for homeless people.
Labour councillor Tim Rippington said: “If we could deliver those 150 homes that would provide far more savings in the general fund.
“That’s going to be a drag on what we were hoping to save by putting homeless people and children in care into some of these houses.”
One obstacle is the compliance issues facing the council’s housing stock.
These will be expensive to fix and mean there is less money in the housing budget to spend elsewhere, like on buying properties to turn into new council housing.
Dyer said: “We haven’t been keeping good records of the standard of accommodation that we provide to council tenants, and we haven’t been providing fire and electrical safety checks.
“We haven’t been monitoring carbon monoxide, and we haven’t been properly monitoring removal of asbestos from community areas.
“We’re now in the middle of a programme to fix that problem, which we have to do as quickly as possible.
“But the money to do that needs to come from the housing revenue account, because it’s a ringfenced account, and I will prioritise our existing council tenants’ safety.
“We want to deliver new council homes, it was in our manifesto, and we’ll try to do that to the best of our ability.
“But we inherited a situation where our monitoring of social housing was not to the standard expected by the Regulator of Social Housing.
“You have to accept that there will be some changes to our housing revenue account, because of the situation we inherited.”
After the damning verdict, the council wrote to every tenant in the city to apologise and Dyer also issued an apology during a full council meeting.
He called on Labour, the party that was in power until May, to “stand up and apologise” too.
Dyer added: “One of the first actions I took was to stand up in front of the council and the entire city and apologise for the state of play in regard to the failure of the council to ensure that we abide by social housing regulations.
“I stood up and apologised and you know full well that happened under the previous administration.
“I have yet to see a single Labour councillor stand up and apologise to council tenants. I look forward to seeing that happen very soon.”
Main photo: Paul Box
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