Improvements after Kirklees Council puts tenants at risk of ‘serious detriment’

It was revealed last March that the local authority had breached health and safety requirements in its homes and had self-referred to the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) – the public body that regulates registered providers of social housing in England.

The local authority was aware of a “considerable” backlog of works, with the RSH finding it had put tenants at risk of "serious detriment”.

Among the regulator’s discoveries were 20,000 overdue fire safety actions – 200 of which were considered “high risk” – and 1,500 damp and mould repairs that had not been completed in tenants’ homes.

The council had also told the RSH that it has had a “consistently high number” of homes with unresolved cases of damp and mould since December 2022.

RSH gave assurance the local authority understood its responsibilities and was taking action to complete the overdue fire safety actions and address reports of damp and mould.

The two bodies began working together to remedy the breach going forward, with the council set to invest £117m in fire safety in its housing stock by 2031.

Now, progress of this work is showing, with a report to be presented to cabinet on Tuesday showing from an initial backlog of more than 1,800 damp, mould and condensation cases in March 2024, the open caseload has been reduced to 532 cases as of June 16, 2025.

As for fire safety, by June 16, a total of 505 out of 860 fire risk assessments had been completed since November 2024, from which 4,724 fire safety actions have been identified, with remediation works ongoing.

Improvements have been made to governance, recruiting more staff, investing in new IT systems and engaging new external partners.

Councillor Moses Crook, deputy leader of Kirklees Council and cabinet member for Housing, said: “Self-referring to the regulator was an important step in getting us back where we needed to be, after bringing our Homes and Neighbourhoods service back in house.

"Since then, the changes we’ve made for the better have been transformative – but I want to be completely transparent about the fact that there’s still improvement needed and work to be done.”