Electrical testing of council homes

It's now a legal requirement for social landlords, including councils, to carry out electrical safety checks on all properties they own or manage. This includes council homes. We also have a legal requirement to install and regularly check smoke alarms in our council homes.

As part of our commitment to improve council housing in the borough, we've been reviewing all of our services.

This is to check we're doing everything possible to help keep homes safe and well maintained.

We identified the need to carry out a large programme of electrical tests across many of our council homes. We also identified the need to install smoke alarms across many council homes.

We're responsible for carrying out these tests called Electrical Installation Condition Reports and for installing smoke alarms. We're now carrying out work to complete all the electrical checks and install smoke alarms at the same time. This is now more than 30% complete and is set to be completed by March 2026.

We know that for many tenants they may not have had the best service from the council in the past.

This programme of work is one part of action we're taking to improve homes and services to tenants.

It includes:

• setting up a new tenant-led repairs improvement board
• a damp and mould service
• rolling repair action days on estates
• appointing new leadership in the housing department

To make sure we're getting external oversight of our work we've referred ourselves to the Regulator for Social Housing, in relation to overdue electrical tests and smoke alarms.

These are an independent organisation responsible for setting standards and pushing for improvements in the social housing sector. We'll be working closely with them.