‘Considerable work’ to be done to bring Nottingham council’s housing stock up to standard

A review of Nottingham City Council’s current compliance with the Regulator of Social Housing’s new consumer standards has found that there is ‘considerable work to be undertaken’.

According to the report, over half (53%) of the council’s homes have a ‘medium to high confidence rating’ in terms of policies, procedures and evidence being in place to meet the four updated consumer standards.

The review, which was conducted using a Housing Quality Network (HQN) toolkit, has assigned red, amber and green (RAG) ratings to outstanding actions to be undertaken against different areas of the standards.

Red means that confidence is low in relation to that area of the standard, amber is medium and green is high.

Under the safety and quality standard, the council has identified 34 actions to be taken that are in the red, 11 of which relate to repairs, maintenance and planned improvements.

For health and safety, there are 23 actions to be taken, of which nine received medium confidence (amber) ratings and 14 have low confidence (red) ratings.

Other areas where the council’s housing stock has higher numbers of amber and red ratings are engagement with tenants, complaint-handling and safer neighbourhoods.

>> See also: Evolution or revolution? What the Regulator of Social Housing’s new consumer standards mean for RPs

>> See also: Local authority self-refers to the regulator for potential consumer standards breach

In regard to the competence and conduct standard and professionalisation, there are 15 red-rated actions to be taken.

In the report, which is due to be discussed in the housing development and scrutiny committee on 15 April, the council noted that “many of the outstanding actions are relatively quick and simple to resolve”.

However, it added: “There are some more significant tasks being addressed, including a 100% stock condition survey, establishment of the Housing Action Board to better engage with residents and an independent review of the Council’s compliance systems to confirm that it is keeping homes safe”.

The review has been used to develop an action plan. Progress towards implementation of these actions will be monitored and routinely reported to the housing and development scrutiny committee.

In November last year, Nottingham City Council issued a Section 114 notice in response to a predicted £23m in-year budget deficit.

In December 2021, the council was also forced to issue an s114 notice after unlawfully diverting £14.3m from its housing revenue account between 2011 and 2021.

The HRA contains a local council’s rental income and is ring-fenced for expenses such as repairs. The money was instead used to fund general council services.

With inflation, the cost of the repayments now totals between £49m and £51m.