Court of Common Council
THURSDAY 5 MARCH 2026
Question posed to the Chair of the Community and Children’s Service Committee concerning a recent judgement of the Regulator of Social Housing:
Given that the Corporation has been formally downgraded to C3 by the Regulator of Social Housing for serious failings: Who specifically is accountable for these breaches of tenant safety, and what specific timeline and measurable milestones will you set to ensure that all overdue fire and electrical safety remedial actions are completed, that 100% of homes meet the Decent Homes Standard well before 2035, and how will tenants be regularly informed of progress?
– Alderwoman Liz King (Cripplegate)
Watch from 41:56
transcript
41:56 | Alderwoman Liz King (Cripplegate)
Given that the city of London Corporation has been formally downgraded to C3 by the Regulator of Social Housing for serious failings, who specifically is accountable for these breaches of tenant safety and what specific timeline and measurable milestones will you set to ensure that all our overdue fire and electrical safety remedial actions are completed, that 100% of the homes meet the decent home standard well before 2035, and how will tenants be regularly informed of progress?42:36 | Deputy Helen Fentiman (Aldersgate, Labour) – Chair Community and Children’s Services Committee
As members at our December meeting, you’ll recall that we acknowledge many years of historic neglect in the maintenance of our homes and we made a commitment to invest an additional 211 million over the next 10 years as referenced in the Chair of Finances speech today. This will be spent over the next 10 years to address safety, quality compliance, and to achieve decent homes. This inspection is new and given the condition of our homes and the need to make rapid progress, we self-reported to the regulators. The C3 rating is our first under this framework and is attributable to that neglect. We fully accept the seriousness of that rating.However, inspectors also acknowledge that we understand the issues to be addressed, recognizing the pace and commitment to achieve full regulatory compliance over the next three years. This is the progress that our residents deserve to see. Through officer diligence and hard work, 79% of our homes have now had an up-to-date stock condition survey. And from a starting point of 33%, overdue electrical safety checks are all on track now to be completed by April – we have already achieved 91% compliance. Accountability for the breaches of quality and safety of consumer standards rests with the City of London as landlord.
Officers are developing improvement action plans alongside and working closely with the Regulators to ensure people live in decent, safe and well-maintained homes. Progress on this will be subjected to detailed scrutiny by the Housing Management and Almshouses Subcommittee and the independently chaired Housing Improvement Board, alongside regular meetings with the Inspectors. The outcome of the inspection commitment to improve was shared with tenants in a letter and email dated 25th of February. And as you’d expect, our focus is now very firmly on delivery, assurance, and demonstrable improvement for tenants. We look forward to sharing updates on progress with residents via letters, newsletters, and other regular updates.
45:01 | Alderwoman Liz King
As we’ve been hearing today about the dire state of our financial circumstances, proper management of and accountability for our housing estates and all our activities is a key driver for improving our financial position. I’m concerned about the repeated failure of the management and the oversight by all of us members of our housing estates to perform their basic management functions. We have seen this before with the failure to register our high-rise blocks of flats with the Building Safety Regulator which has again delayed the refurbishment works on the Golden Lane Estate. We need to see accountability and who is accountable for this chronic mismanagement of our housing estates?45:49 | Deputy Helen Fentimen
There is no doubt and we have absolutely recognized the failures in our services historically. I think the point that I’m trying to make today, and the point that I’ve made on many occasions in this Court, is that those failings have been recognized. They’ve been recognized in full. Recognition of that was in self-referral to the Regulator and we were not pleased to do that but it was the right thing to do given the state of our homes. As I’ve said it’s the City of London as the landlord who is accountable for these issues.These issues aren’t just happening instantly in the last year or two, it’s history over 20 years or more of neglect in our estates. I hope that members see that the new determination under the executive leadership of Judith Finley and the new team that she has recruited is turning that around. It’s been a monumental task. The work is continuing and I’m pleased to say that the Chairman of Finance referenced the capitalization agreement with Government that will add significant support to our housing team to address some of these issues. One of the first things that we will do is appoint a health and safety team who can very properly address outstanding health and safety issues. We are all concerned about this, and it is imperative that we continue to work at pace to deliver our decent home standards.
47:34 | Chief Commoner Henry Pollard (Dowgate)
Could the Chair please advise the Court what is being done to ensure that we have sufficient homes for those who need them in the future?47:49 | Deputy Helen Fentimen
This is really important because alongside the repairs and maintenance, the refurbishment of our existing stock, we also have a responsibility to be building new homes and in particular social homes, socially rented homes. I’m really pleased that we were able to open our Black Raven Court this week, 66 new homes. That was a development in partnership with London Borough of Islington. Next week we open another 110 homes in Sydenham Hill in partnership with Lewisham. They will open next week and later on this year we will complete a development in York Way, again in Islington, with a further 91 homes. We are also working on additional projects in Southwark. We’ve been working closely with the GLA who are the recipients of substantial sums of money from Government to build new homes. GLA have been very supportive of us and the City. They’re being supportive of our emerging plans and I hope to be in a position in the future to be able to report the conclusion of that work with a further number of new homes.49:06 | Deputy Marianne Fredericks (Tower)
While we’re busy congratulating ourselves for acknowledging the problems, I think we need to put it into context. Our tenants have been waiting since 2000 for new windows. The Decent Homes program was due to be completed in 2010 and now some of our homes won’t be completed until 2035. This C grading is a devastating validation of how badly we have managed our housing. And perhaps now we really should look to having a grand Committee for Housing to really take up the repairs and ensure that decent homes are completed way before 2035, and our tenants have windows that are fit for purpose and they’re living in warm damp-free homes. For those of us who raise this time and time again, we have been put down and shut down. We really must grasp the nettle now, and I think a Housing Committee, a grand Housing Committee, is the only way forward or the next rating I think will be even worse.50:22| Deputy Helen Fentimen
I have to say again that we there is no doubt that we have not delivered as well as we should on our housing stock over a number of years. However, we have in recent years spent £110 million already in a refurbishment program where substantial numbers of our social housing homes have already received new windows. Now, that is not about being complacent and saying that we’ve done that. We have an enormous amount to do, but the £211 million in addition to the £110 that has been approved, will help us continue to make substantial progress. But it’s not just about windows. It’s about heating, it’s about damp and mould, it’s about redecoration. It’s a whole range of things that we are trying to put right in this program.I think that members will be aware that this Court agreed some time ago that, under the auspices of Policy and Resources Committee, we would have a working party to consider the governance arrangements for housing. We agreed that that would first meet in March and the date for this month has been set. Court elected the members for that working party. It will start its work later this month, it will continue its work in April and we have one year to make proposals back to Policy and Resources and then to this Court for the final resolution of the governance arrangements for the future.
52:05 | Deputy John Fletcher (Portsoken)
Chairman, do you agree with me that as you just mentioned, the housing governance working group is about to start and unlike the member Marian Frederick’s, it would be folly to prejudge the outcome of that working group.52:27 | Deputy Helen Fentimen
Thank you. Absolutely right, Deputy Fletcher, there is no prejudgment on the outcome of that working party. It has a year to consider its position. We need to understand what it is we’re trying to fix. We need to understand the context of the governance arrangements that are fit for purpose for the City of London. It’s not about fit for purpose in any other local authority in London or anywhere else in the country, it’s about what’s fit for purpose in governance terms for this place, this City of London. The group will consider a raft of information, it will take external advice as and when is requested by the working party, and I have said we will make recommendations to Policy and Resources and then to this Court in the year we have available to complete this work.53:23 | Deputy Anne Holmes (Farringdon Within)
I am in agreement with what the Chair of Community and Children’s Services has said. This is a very long growing problem we’ve got and I am assured by many of the comments she’s made about safety. What I’d like to ask, however, is she more recently referred to heating and damp. Heating and damp are very serious issues. Damp and mould, particularly where young children are concerned, can be a life-threatening condition. What I would like is some confident appraisal of when we think homes will be safe in terms of heating and dampness as well as electricity, because I think those things are crucial and we absolutely can’t be waiting till 2039 when we’re talking about babies being teenagers.54:27 | Deputy Helen Fentimen
I absolutely agree. Damp and mould is a significant concern wherever it occurs in any of our homes. It is a problem and we have to address it. Part of the stock condition survey is assessing exactly where that it is, how many homes have damp and mould, and we regularly have reporting on the number of homes that are affected. Be assured that whenever it is reported, the estate management teams visit the residents, work with the residents to try to eliminate the damp and mould in and offer advice for ongoing reductions of damp and mould. We take our Awaab’s Law that brought this to sharp relief nationally very, very seriously. The requirements of that law are being expanded in the very near future and we are already doing work to understand what the expansion of the requirements might mean and how we need to adjust the work that we are undertaking and make sure that all of those requirements are met through our work and the refurbishment program.– (auto-generated transcript provided by YouTube, with minor corrections and tidying up)
