North West Leicestershire District Council handed ‘C2’ grade for consumer regulation

A district council in the East Midlands has been awarded the second highest grading for consumer regulation.

North West Leicestershire District Council (NWLDC), which manages 4,000 homes, was awarded a C2 grading by the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) following an inspection. This means that it is meeting the outcome of the consumer standards, although there are “some weaknesses” and “improvement is needed”.

RSH said 81% of NWLDC’s homes have had a full stock condition survey in the past five years and 87% of homes meet the Decent Homes Standard.

It said NWLDC reported some overdue checks and actions across fire and electrical safety, but this position has now improved.

“Overall, we received assurance that NWLDC is currently meeting the legal requirements that relate to the health and safety of tenants in their homes and communal areas.”

RSH said NWLDC’s repairs service needs to improve as it is not meeting its targets relating to tinmely completion of repairs.

>>See also: ‘Having housing stability improves your life chances’: Chan Kataria reflects on his 40 years in social housing

RSH said it saw evidence that NWLDC has an effective approach to tackling anti-social behaviour and hate crime. It also said saw evidence suggesting NWLDC has appropriate proedures to ensure its tenant management policy is applied.

RSH said: “Through our inspection NWLDC demonstrated a respectful and positive culture towards tenants, and engaged tenants told us that they felt listened to and that their work was having a positive impact on outcomes for tenants.”

It said however NWLDC was not able to provide clear evidence of how it proactively uses tenant data to inform service delivery and acknowledges that it needs to develop its approach to this. It said it demonstrated learning from complaints although this had not yet led to improved outcomes for tenants.

It also said it has “limited assurance” that the quality and range of information NWLDC makes available to tenants meets regulatory expectations.

RSH also today results from its stability checks – an annual exercise in which the regulator looks at providers’ latest accounts and business plans and considers whether their published viability grading is still accurate.

The regulator published stability check outcomes for 22 providers (see below). All the landlords were found to have a compliant viability grading of either V1 or V2 and all were unchanged from previous judgements.