Decision

West Northamptonshire Council (5130) - Regulatory Judgement: 27 November 2024

Published 27 November 2024

Applies to England

Our Judgement

	Grade/Judgement	Change	Date of assessment
Consumer	C3 Our judgement is that there are serious failings in the landlord delivering the outcomes of the consumer standards and significant improvement is needed.	First grading	November 2024

Reason for publication

We are publishing a regulatory judgement for West Northamptonshire Council to confirm a consumer grading of C3.

This follows responsive engagement with West Northamptonshire Council about the Safety and Quality Standard. This is the first time we have issued a consumer grade in relation to this landlord.

Summary of the decision

Our judgement is that there are serious failings in how West Northamptonshire Council is delivering the outcomes of the consumer standards and significant improvement is needed, specifically in relation to outcomes in our Safety and Quality Standard. Based on this assessment, we have concluded a C3 grade for West Northamptonshire Council.

How we reached our judgement

We began our responsive engagement with West Northamptonshire Council following its self-referral to us in September 2024. It had identified an issue within its housing service in relation to data quality and landlord health and safety compliance.

Our responsive engagement with West Northamptonshire Council included reviewing documents and information provided to us by West Northamptonshire Council, along with follow up meetings and discussions with West Northamptonshire Council.

This regulatory judgement is based on a review of all the information we obtained during the responsive engagement process. In making our decision, we have considered how well West Northamptonshire Council is delivering against the Safety and Quality Standard.

Summary of findings 

Consumer – C3 – November 2024 

The Safety and Quality Standard requires landlords to identify and meet all legal requirements that relate to the health and safety of tenants in their homes and communal areas, and to ensure that all required actions arising from legally required health and safety assessments are carried out within appropriate timescales. It also requires landlords to take reasonable steps to mitigate any identified risks to tenants.

Following West Northamptonshire Council’s self-referral and through our subsequent engagement with West Northamptonshire Council, we learned that it does not have adequate systems and processes in place for the delivery and oversight of legal requirements relating to health and safety of tenants. As a result of this, West Northamptonshire Council is unable to provide assurance that it is completing all necessary health and safety checks in relation to fire, electrical, water, asbestos, lifts and smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, and that any remedial actions are being completed within appropriate timescales. The lack of assurance means that the extent and materiality of these issues is currently not clear to West Northamptonshire Council, and the council is unable to evidence that it is effectively mitigating the risks posed to tenants.

Considering the breadth and significance of the issues across the relevant outcomes of the Safety and Quality Standard, it is our judgement that there are serious failings in how West Northamptonshire Council is delivering the outcomes of the consumer standards and significant improvement is needed.  

West Northamptonshire Council has engaged constructively with us since its self-referral and is taking steps to address the failures identified. This includes work to complete improvements to systems and processes for the delivery and oversight of legal health and safety requirements. As part its ongoing work, West Northamptonshire Council has commissioned an external review of building safety and data compliance and has developed an improvement plan to carry out the required health and safety checks.

We are engaging with West Northamptonshire Council as it continues to address the issues that led to this judgement and we will seek evidence that gives us the assurance that sufficient change and progress is being made, including ongoing monitoring of how it delivers its improvement plan. Our priority will be that risks to tenants are adequately managed and mitigated. We are not proposing to use our enforcement powers at this stage but will keep this under review as West Northamptonshire Council seeks to resolve these issues.

Background to the judgement

About the landlord

West Northamptonshire Council is the single unitary council responsible for the areas of Daventry, Northampton and South Northamptonshire. It owns 11,517 social housing properties and provides predominantly general needs accommodation, with some supported / sheltered accommodation.

West Northamptonshire Council has a management agreement in place with Northamptonshire Partnership Homes.

Our role and regulatory approach

We regulate for a viable, efficient, and well governed social housing sector able to deliver quality homes and services for current and future tenants.

We regulate at the landlord level to drive improvement in how landlords operate. By landlord we mean a registered provider of social housing. These can either be local authorities, or private registered providers (other organisations registered with us such as non-profit housing associations, co-operatives, or profit-making organisations).

We set standards which state outcomes that landlords must deliver. The outcomes of our standards include both the required outcomes and specific expectations we set. Where we find there are significant failures in landlords which we consider to be material to the landlord’s delivery of those outcomes, we hold them to account. Ultimately this provides protection for tenants’ homes and services and achieves better outcomes for current and future tenants. It also contributes to a sustainable sector which can attract strong investment.

We have a different role for regulating local authorities than for other landlords. This is because we have a narrower role for local authorities and the Governance and Financial Viability Standard, and Value for Money Standard do not apply. Further detail on which standards apply to different landlords can be found on our standards page.

We assess the performance of landlords through inspections and by reviewing data that landlords are required to submit to us. In Depth Assessments (IDAs) were one of our previous assessment processes, which are now replaced by our new inspections programme from 1 April 2024. We also respond where there is an issue or a potential issue that may be material to a landlord’s delivery of the outcomes of our standards. We publish regulatory judgements that describe our view of landlords’ performance with our standards. We also publish grades for landlords with more than 1,000 social housing homes.

The Housing Ombudsman deals with individual complaints. When individual complaints are referred to us, we investigate if we consider that the issue may be material to a landlord’s delivery of the outcomes of our standards.

For more information about our approach to regulation, please see Regulating the standards.

Further information

• Regulating the standards

• Regulatory standards for landlords