Decision - Improving Housing Services: Response to the Regulator of Social Housing Ruling

Brighton and Hove Cabinet Decided 26 Sep 2024 · effective 5 Oct 2024 approved Key decision GET /api/coverage

Decision maker

Cabinet

Report author

Martin Reid

Published

27 Sep 2024

Reference

7292

As published

the council's own words, unedited

This report provides an update on the council's response following the Regulator of Social Housing's C3 ruling. The report emphasises our commitment to transparency and outlines the steps we are taking to address the regulator's concerns.

1) Note the Regulator of Social Housing Regulatory Judgement, following responsive engagement with the Council, that there are serious failings in how the Council is delivering on the standard of Safety and Quality, and that significant improvement is needed. 2) Note the update on progress on actions being undertaken toward Safety & Quality compliance to address the Regulator's concerns, meet our statutory and regulatory obligations, and improve housing services for our residents. 3) Agrees Overview & Scrutiny oversight arrangements as set out in section 6 of this report.

Parsed from the document

gpt-5.6-luna-2026-07-09 · 7556/1436 tokens · 12194ms · parsed 9 Sep 2026 15:33

Everything below was read out of a PDF by a model It is useful and it is not authoritative. The document it came from is linked in the rail, and where the two disagree the document is right.

The report responds to the Regulator of Social Housing’s C3 judgement, which found serious failings in Brighton & Hove City Council’s delivery of safety and quality standards. Cabinet was asked to note the judgement and progress on improvements, and agree regular Overview & Scrutiny oversight of the Council’s compliance programme.

Recommendation

Cabinet should note the Regulator of Social Housing’s judgement and the serious failings identified, note progress on actions addressing the concerns and statutory obligations, and agree Overview & Scrutiny oversight arrangements.

Financial impact

The 2024/25 HRA budget includes a revenue budget of £2.689m and capital budget of £14.714m for Health & Safety works; approximately £50m investment provision across capital and revenue was included for the Health & Safety compliance response, with a current forecast overspend against the specific budgets.

Ward affected

city-wide

Decision maker

Cabinet

Date in document

26 Sep 2024

Stakeholders named

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Council tenants and residentsPeople living in council homesOverview & Scrutiny CommitteesRegulator of Social HousingEast Sussex Fire and Rescue AuthorityHealth and Safety ExecutiveBuilding Safety Regulator

Next steps

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Continue the Corporate Housing Building Safety Programme and address fire, water, gas, electrical, lifts, asbestos, smoke detection and routine repairs issues.
Complete the second-phase fire risk assessments for all buildings by the end of December 2024.
Continue intensive engagement with the Regulator of Social Housing and provide regular progress updates.
Retender the water safety contract and procure additional contractor capacity for water risk assessments and remediation actions.
Continue electrical testing, smoke detection installation and the routine repairs backlog reduction programme.
Include the Council’s response to the judgement as a regular item on the Place Overview & Scrutiny Committee agenda and invite People Overview & Scrutiny members to attend.
Review HRA budgets and provide an update in the 2025/26 budget paper.

Precedents

not built

"Decided elsewhere" is not built Finding the same decision in other councils needs semantic matching over decision text, which is part of the search rewrite. Until then, the council's own decisions list is the way through.