Council's Fire Safety Record Questioned as Grenfell Report Released

Ealing Borough remains on regulator's watch list

The borough has been monitored by the watchdog for over two years. Picture: Ealing Council

September 5, 2024

Ealing Council’s fire safety record has come under the spotlight as the final report into the Grenfell tragedy is released this week.

The borough is one of seven across London which is currently on the Regulator of Social Housing’s (RSH) watch list over concerns about adherence to statutory requirements for fire safety according to the Architects’ Journal (AJ).

Ealing has been monitored by the watchdog since 2022 when it admitted it was putting its social housing tenants at risk saying it had ‘no assurance’ that it had complied with statutory requirements for fire safety .

An RSH regulatory notice was published in May 2022 after Ealing self-referred itself to the regulator. The watchdog’s fire safety audit found 'a significant number of council properties were recorded as not having an in-date Fire Risk Assessment (FRA) and there was no process to record and track FRA remedial actions’.

The ‘co-regulatory’ approach, requires council to inform the RSH of any issues which could affect its ability to deliver housing to the regulator’s standards. The RSH confirmed to the AJ that the regulatory notice for Ealing is still live, ‘meaning the issues have not been resolved yet’.

The RSH more recently has said Ealing had improved its processes and undertaking remedial works for its properties including working with external consultants as part of a recovery programme. The notice said the regulator would continue to work with and monitor with the council, rather than taking enforcement action. It would only do this if it felt a landlord was not prepared to fix any problems and their underlying causes.

Ealing Council said factors including the Covid-19 pandemic had played a 'substantial part' in its failure to complete annual safety checks, with lockdown and social distancing rules making it impossible to check the homes of some residents who were isolating, leading to a backlog

Ealing has 10,597 council houses and it rents an additional 3,243 from the private sector. Tenant survey results recently showed that less than half of tenants are satisfied with the repair service. The service is perceived as slow, poor quality (especially in communal areas) and has a lack of responsiveness to issues raised.

Despite the final Grenfell report highlighting the role that unsafe cladding played in the fire, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) figures show that remediation work has not yet started on more than half of housing blocks not meeting the required standards across the country. As of the end of July, remediation work had yet to start on 2,331 residential buildings over 11m tall metres out of the 4,630 identified as being unsafe.

Dame Judith Hackitt, chairman of the Independent Review of Building Regulations, said that it was ‘really concerning’ that ‘so many people are living with uncertainty and fear about the buildings they are in’. She said there was ‘urgent’ need to replace unsafe cladding and secure existing homes and this must come before building new ones.

An RSH spokesperson said, ‘‘All landlords must provide safe and decent homes for their tenants, and meeting health and safety requirements is non-negotiable. Accountability is crucial to how we regulate and we expect any landlord that is not delivering the outcomes of our standards to refer themselves to us. Surfacing issues as quickly as possible means things can be put right promptly.

‘When a landlord fails to meet the outcomes in our standards, they must put things right for tenants and we continue to engage with them closely as they do this.’

Councillor Jon Ball, Housing and Development including the Local Plan said: “Liberal Democrats say that it is shocking to see Ealing Labour being the only West London borough which has these fire risks being monitored. This is very serious matter and shows that Ealing Labour are failing its vulnerable residents. Ealing Liberal Democrats have challenged whether the programme will complete in time for Winter 2024. This coupled with the removal in the Winter fuel allowance for over 79% of previously eligible households across the borough shows how poorly Ealing Labour treats those most in need just as utility companies are putting up bills.”

Councillor Gary Malcolm, Leader of the Opposition said, “From a leadership and risk management perspective Ealing Labour have showed a long-standing neglect across its portfolio of responsibilities to its residents. They have relied on external consultants for a significant period to lead the remediation process demonstrating a lack of investment in its own workforce and an inability to ‘learn lessons’ and ‘they are not out of the woods yet’. “

“In addition, the Labour-run Ealing Council has borrowed substantial funds at preferential government rates and yet this has resulted in hardly any building taking place, despite substantial demand over recent years, leaving residents abandoned to the turmoil of the market. ”

An Ealing Council spokesperson said, “In January 2022, we undertook an internal audit of our building safety work, which highlighted some improvements that needed to be made. We found that we needed to be more robust in a number of areas and could not consistently provide the assurance required on record keeping, compliance checks, and follow up actions. Because of this, in February 2022 we voluntarily referred ourselves to the Regulator of Social Housing. We take residents’ safety extremely seriously, so referring ourselves at the time was the sensible action to take. The referral led to the regulator placing us under an improvement notice. We are now working to complete the remaining actions, to make sure our housing service once again delivers the highest possible safety standards. We have taken a joint approach with the regulator which aims to remove the notice when both parties are satisfied that its ambitions have been achieved. The last remaining aspects of the improvement programme are likely to be completed within the next three months.”