Official: HMOs Safer Than Council Houses

Portsmouth City Council have been admonished by the Social Housing Regulator for 'serious failings' after admitting over 1,000 outstanding fire safety remedial actions and not having current EICRs on over 85% of them (that is about 13,260 homes).

What Was The Issue?

 The regulator summarised his findings, "Our judgement is that there are serious failings in the landlord delivering the outcomes of the consumer standards and significant improvement is needed."

"Portsmouth CC reported that it does not have up to date information about the condition of the majority of its homes and is therefore unable to evidence the accuracy of its reported compliance with the DHS. At the time of the self-referral, less than 40% of its homes had been surveyed within the last five years, more than a third had been surveyed more than ten years ago, and nearly 10% had no record at all. Additionally, stock condition surveys undertaken prior to 2024 did not include an assessment of hazards using the Housing Health and Safety Rating System. While Portsmouth CC has taken a number of steps to improve the information it holds, it cannot currently evidence that it has a sufficient understanding of its homes to deliver the relevant outcomes of the Safety and Quality Standard, and we cannot be assured that Portsmouth CC is providing homes of decent quality to its tenants."

"In terms of fire safety, Portsmouth CC reported that all required Fire Risk Assessments (FRAs) had been undertaken but that following an internal change in how remedial actions are recorded and reported on, it had identified over 1,000 outstanding fire remedial actions, of which a small number were high risk."

See the full report here:Portsmouth City Council (00MR) - Regulatory Judgement: 29 January 2025 - GOV.UK

Why Is It Important?

 This is not a bureaucratic oversight as some councillors would wish it to be portrayed – Portsmouth has 15,600 council homes, so 85% not having a current EICR equates to around 13,260 homes. One home with an out of date electrical installation may be a small risk, but multiply that by over 13,000 and the risk of fatality must be high. Any property which has not had its electrical installation updated in the past 5-10 years probably needs to have RCD protection added, you can assume that earth bonding will be inadequate, some properties will have plastic consumer units under wooden stairs and others will need arc fault protection.

Couple that with 'over 1,000 outstanding fire remedial actions' – that is issues their processes have identified and which they know need fixing where PCC "also identified that some high risk actions had been overdue for 12 months or more." Sadly, this is the level of negligence which endangers tenants lives and which, if found in a private landlords property would instantly result in a massive fine from PCC.

And if EICR's have not been undertaken, identified fire risks have not been remedied and most properties have never had an HHSRS inspection – can we assume that gas safety certs are up to date / servicing has been undertaken? We assume not and will be raising an FOI hoping that it proves this concern is unfounded.

We have to wonder about the double standards operating here. It is OK for PCC to put thousands of tenants at risk – all they get is a mild admonishment from the regulator, but any private landlord who commits any one of these offences in just one property gets slapped with the 'must be rectified within 14 or 28 days' and a massive fine.

We did ask deputy council leader, Cllr. Darren Sanders for comment as he has been responsible for the housing portfolio during this period as well as the introduction of the Additional HMO Licensing scheme and its extension to Mandatory HMO Licensing, both of which we have commented on many times before - but as yet, he has not responded.

How Can We Help?

We have three suggestions:

1. After discussion, Portsmouth private landlords are happy to accept the suspension of the Additional Licensing scheme for as long as necessary so that the skilled inspectors there can be freed to perform the 13,000+ inspections required and to manage the associated remedial works which will be needed to make Portsmouth's council tenants safe (or at least as safe as Portsmouth's HMO tenants).
2. PCC obviously needs a compliance system to track and manage these issues and to avoid the same problems recurring. We are informed that PCC spent several hundred thousand pounds on the system used for HMO licencing and that has such capabilities, but we also know it is cumbersome, hard to use and buggy. We are therefore happy to make available one of the effective private sector compliance tools we use ourselves such as SAFE2 (but others are available). This will hopefully allow PCC to quickly reach a point where they at least understand their problem and can start to afford the levels of compliance commonplace in the private sector.
3. Not so much a suggestion, but several members have argued that we need to sue PCC for the reputational damage their actions have caused to other landlords in the city. Whilst that is an option, we hope that our help with options 1 and 2 above will be enough.