Find out information about the upcoming Regulator of Social Housing inspection.
The Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) will inspect our landlord services in the week beginning Monday 19 October 2026.
A team from the RSH will be looking at how well the council ensures residents live in safe, well-maintained homes and feel safe within their communities.
The inspection team will assess the council’s landlord service against benchmarked standards setting out the expectations for social landlords in areas such as safety, quality of homes, neighbourhood management and resident engagement.
It will be the first visit since a report 2 years ago outlined a number of areas for improvement for the council in its role as a landlord for social housing and the first inspection looking across all standards since the introduction of new, enhanced consumer regulation process in 2024.
Since the regulatory judgement, we have taken steps to tackle a number of issues, and our latest figures show significant progress in safety and quality compliance areas, including electrical safety, smoke alarm compliance, water safety, reducing the repairs backlog and fire safety action management.
Compliance performance has improved significantly, with 98.9% of homes now holding a valid 5-year electrical certificate, 89.9% of communal areas electrically compliant, 99.9% of homes having a working smoke alarm, and 97.6% of buildings covered by a valid water risk assessment.
The council is 100% compliant with fire risk assessments across our council housing blocks and fire safety remediation actions have reduced substantially, with live FRA actions down to 252.
We are aware that challenges remain, particularly around repairs where, following work promoting the introduction of Awaab’s law to residents, we have seen an increase in demand.
These improvements have been reflected in an increase in tenant satisfaction levels highlighted in the council’s annual Survey of Tenants and Residents.
A total of 1,002 residents gave their views during the annual survey, which is carried out by an independent market research company.
The survey focused on how happy council tenants are with the way the council maintains council homes and delivers key housing services.
Almost three quarters (71%) of tenants who took part said they were ‘very satisfied’ or ‘fairly satisfied’ with housing services overall, up from 67% the year before.
Satisfaction improved in all but one of the 12 measures in the survey.
The biggest improvements were with the repairs service (up from 68% to 77%) and listening to and acting upon tenants’ views (up from 53% to 63%).
We’re proud of these improvements but we know we need to do more on dealing with anti-social behaviour and handling complaints.
Following the inspection, the regulator will consider the evidence before finalising the judgement, which is expected at the end of January 2027. We will share the full feedback from the inspection as soon as it is published.