East Suffolk Council (5070) - Regulatory Judgement: 30 July 2025
Updated 30 July 2025
Applies to England
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Our Judgement
| Grade/Judgement | Change | Date of assessment | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Consumer | C3 Our judgement is that there are serious failings in the landlord delivering the outcomes of the consumer standards and significant improvement is needed. |
First grading | July 2025 |
| Rent | Our judgement is that the landlord has addressed the issues in the Regulatory Notice dated 25 May 2022 relating to rent setting | New Judgement | July 2025 |
Reason for publication
We are publishing a regulatory judgement for East Suffolk Council to confirm a consumer grading of C3 and to confirm the removal of its regulatory notice.
This follows responsive engagement with East Suffolk Council which focussed on the Safety and Quality Standard.
This is the first time we have issued a consumer grade in relation to this landlord. However, a regulatory notice was published in May 2022 as a result of East Suffolk Council not meeting the intended outcomes of the Home Standard that was in place at the time. We also did not have assurance that East Suffolk Council was previously compliant with the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016 (the Act) in respect of a significant number of its social rent and affordable rent tenancies.
The matters raised in the regulatory notice have been considered as part of our on-going engagement with East Suffolk Council following the publication of the regulatory notice, and the responsive engagement.
Summary of the decision
From the evidence and assurance gained as part of the responsive engagement it is our judgement that there are serious failings in how East Suffolk Council is delivering the outcomes of the Safety and Quality Standard, and significant improvement is needed. Based on our assessment, we have concluded a C3 grade for East Suffolk Council.
East Suffolk Council has provided evidence that it has addressed the issues relating to the Rent Standard that were summarised in the regulatory notice dated May 2022.
How we reached our judgement
Following the publication of the regulatory notice in May 2022 we carried out responsive engagement with East Suffolk Council that focussed on how it was addressing the issues that led to the regulatory notice.
Most recently, as part of our ongoing engagement, East Suffolk Council provided further information that indicated potential additional issues in relation to stock quality and decency, alongside the ongoing issues relating to health and safety. The council subsequently made a self-referral to the regulator about these issues.
Our current responsive engagement with East Suffolk Council has focused on the Safety and Quality Standard and included reviewing documents and information provided to us by East Suffolk Council, along with follow up meetings and discussions. Our regulatory judgement is based on a review of all the relevant information we obtained during the responsive engagement process, including East Suffolk Council’s self-referral.
This Regulatory Judgement replaces the previous Regulatory Notice for East Suffolk Council.
Summary of findings
Consumer – C3 – July 2025
The Safety and Quality Standard requires landlords to have an accurate, up to date and evidenced understanding of the condition of their homes that reliably informs their provision of good quality, well maintained and safe homes for tenants, and to ensure that their tenants’ homes meet the requirements of the Decent Homes Standard (DHS).
East Suffolk Council commenced a programme of stock condition surveys in August 2023, however, around a quarter of homes have yet to be surveyed. As such, we have limited assurance that the council has an accurate, up to date and evidenced understanding of the condition of its homes. Through our responsive engagement with East Suffolk Council, we also identified that decency had not been effectively monitored, due to poor data integrity within the council’s asset management system. East Suffolk Council has now validated its stock condition survey and has identified that around 50% of its homes do not meet the DHS. Additionally, our responsive engagement identified that the resolution of hazards (as identified under the Housing Health and Safety Rating System) and damp and mould cases have not been fully tracked, due to the absence of policies and processes. This information demonstrates that East Suffolk Council is failing to ensure that tenants’ homes meet the standard set out in the DHS.
The Safety and Quality Standard also requires landlords to identify and meet all legal requirements that relate to the health and safety of tenants in their homes and communal areas, and that all required actions arising from legally required health and safety assessments are carried out within appropriate timescales.
In May 2022, following a self-referral from East Suffolk Council, we concluded that it did not have an effective system in place to allow it to meet its statutory health and safety responsibilities across a wide range of areas. Whilst progress has been made, with the council taking steps to improve its approach to managing health and safety compliance, this work had not been concluded and an external assurance review completed in May 2025 identified a number of related issues that needed to be addressed to support the council in delivering the required outcomes of the Safety and Quality Standard. The issues identified included gaps in policies, issues with data integrity across a wide range of health and safety areas, and a lack of oversight over the timeliness of implementing remedial actions across all areas of compliance. East Suffolk Council has acknowledged its current challenges regarding data assurance and is implementing the improvements identified through its external review. However, we continue to lack assurance that the council is taking all reasonable steps to ensure the health and safety of its tenants in their homes and associated communal areas and we will continue to engage with East Suffolk Council as it addresses these matters.
East Suffolk Council has been engaging constructively with us and has put an improvement plan in place to rectify these failures. This includes completing its current stock condition survey programme, developing a fully-costed investment plan to address non-decency, and implementing a new compliance management system. East Suffolk Council has also developed and implemented a new procedure and tracker for managing hazards and damp and mould cases and is working to resolve these issues.
We are engaging with East Suffolk Council on an ongoing basis, including to confirm that it is taking reasonable steps to deliver its improvement plan, as it continues to address the issues that led to this situation. Our engagement with the landlord will continue to be intensive and we will seek evidence that gives us the assurance that sufficient change and progress is being made, including ongoing monitoring of how it delivers improvement. Our priority will be that risks to tenants are adequately managed and mitigated. We are not proposing to use our enforcement powers at this stage but will keep this under review as East Suffolk Council seeks to resolve these issues.
Rent – July 2025
Based on the evidence gained from our responsive engagement, it is our judgement that we have appropriate assurance that East Suffolk has addressed the issues relating to the Rent Standard set out in the regulatory notice dated May 2022.
Since publication of the regulatory notice in May 2022, East Suffolk Council has undertaken a comprehensive review of rent setting and successfully delivered an action plan to address historic errors. We now have assurance that it is meeting the outcomes required under the Rent Standard and therefore this matter is no longer being addressed through our ongoing regulation.
Background to the judgement
About the landlord
East Suffolk Council is a district authority in the county of Suffolk. East Suffolk Council owns and managed around 4,300 social and affordable rent homes, the majority of which are general needs, with around 350 supported housing properties.
Our role and regulatory approach
We regulate for a viable, efficient, and well governed social housing sector able to deliver quality homes and services for current and future tenants.
We regulate at the landlord level to drive improvement in how landlords operate. By landlord we mean a registered provider of social housing. These can either be local authorities, or private registered providers (other organisations registered with us such as non-profit housing associations, co-operatives, or profit-making organisations).
We set standards which state outcomes that landlords must deliver. The outcomes of our standards include both the required outcomes and specific expectations we set. Where we find there are significant failures in landlords which we consider to be material to the landlord’s delivery of those outcomes, we hold them to account. Ultimately this provides protection for tenants’ homes and services and achieves better outcomes for current and future tenants. It also contributes to a sustainable sector which can attract strong investment.
We have a different role for regulating local authorities than for other landlords. This is because we have a narrower role for local authorities and the Governance and Financial Viability Standard, and Value for Money Standard do not apply. Further detail on which standards apply to different landlords can be found on our standards page.
We assess the performance of landlords through inspections and by reviewing data that landlords are required to submit to us. In Depth Assessments (IDAs) were one of our previous assessment processes, which are now replaced by our new inspections programme from 1 April 2024. We also respond where there is an issue or a potential issue that may be material to a landlord’s delivery of the outcomes of our standards. We publish regulatory judgements that describe our view of landlords’ performance with our standards. We also publish grades for landlords with more than 1,000 social housing homes.
The Housing Ombudsman deals with individual complaints. When individual complaints are referred to us, we investigate if we consider that the issue may be material to a landlord’s delivery of the outcomes of our standards.
For more information about our approach to regulation, please see Regulating the standards.