Improving building safety in council homes

The number of overdue repairs across the city’s council homes has decreased by more than 7,000 since last summer.

In June 2024, the total number of routine repairs over 28 days stood at 9,653, reflecting historic backlogs built up during and after the pandemic. By October 2025, this had reduced to 2,479.

It is one of a number of improvements to safety and quality compliance in council housing outlined in a Cabinet report updating on our response to the Regulator of Social Housing’s (RSH) C3 Regulatory Judgement in August last year.

Improving building safety

As well as repairs, the report sets out the progress across 4 key areas of safety compliance – fire, water, electrical and smoke detection.

Fire safety continues to be a key area focus in council homes. Following the completion of updated fire risk assessments across all our blocks, the total of live fire-risk-assessment (FRA) actions across the housing stock peaked at 8,268 in December 2024.

Since then, we have completed more than 5,000 fire safety tasks, with the total number outstanding reduced to 2,918 by October 2025. The vast majority of those are low-risk actions, with 14 high-risk and 32 medium-risk actions outstanding.

We are continuing to work closely with the East Sussex Fire & Rescue Service to update our FRAs and anticipate all remaining fire safety actions will be completed by April 2026.

Electrical safety was also identified as an area of concern due to the number of overdue inspections and incomplete records. As of October 2025, 93% of our homes have been inspected within a compliant 5-year domestic testing programme, compared to just over half at the time of the RSH judgement.

We’ve also now carried out water safety assessments on more than 90% of our buildings and, as of September 2025, had 2,695 overdue actions identified. We have recruited a new water safety specialist and are beginning a new programme of work looking water tanks this month.

We recognise that we are not yet where we need to be on water safety, and improving oversight and performance in this area remains a key priority.

Following our smoke detection inspection and installation programme, we now have 99.4 per cent of homes confirmed with working smoke alarms. We expect to complete the remaining homes by the end of this year and have introduced an annual testing process across all homes.

Listening to tenants

Our ‘Creating Great Homes Together’ programme has involved residents and staff in co-designing service improvements. We’ll use the feedback gathered through the workshops and consultation to inform priorities in an improvement plan to shape how we deliver and communicate services at the neighbourhood level.

We’re also continuing to engage residents on progress since the RSH judgement through updates on safety and quality, performance and planned next steps at the quarterly Area Panel meetings.

These sessions provide a standing forum for scrutiny and for tracking progress against the themes raised by the regulator, with questions captured and fed back into shaping how we deliver our housing services.

Progress being made

Councillor Gill Williams, Cabinet Member for Housing, said: “Improving safety and quality has been a key focus across our council homes. Our goal is to be a great landlord.

“There’s been a lot of work done over the last few years and it’s good to see progress being made – not only in performance but more robust systems in place to ensure the long-term quality of council housing in the city.

“There is still a lot more to do to meet tenant expectations and be where we want to be. We’re committed to keeping this focus to make sure we’re providing homes our tenants are proud to live in.”

The full RSH report and more information on the actions we are taking are available on our Regulator of Social Housing webpages.

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