Decision

Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council (00BP) - Regulatory Judgement: 26 November 2025

Published 26 November 2025

Applies to England

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	November 2025

Reason for publication

We are publishing a regulatory judgement for Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council (Oldham MBC) following an inspection completed in November 2025.

This judgement confirms a consumer grade of C3. This is the first time we have issued a consumer grade in relation to this landlord.

Summary of the decision

From the evidence and assurance gained during the inspection, we have concluded that there are serious failings in Oldham MBC delivering the outcomes of the consumer standards and significant improvement is needed, specifically in relation to the outcomes in the Safety and Quality Standard and the Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard. Based on this assessment, we have concluded a C3 grade for Oldham MBC.

How we reached our judgement

We inspected Oldham MBC as part of our planned regulatory inspection programme. We considered all four of the consumer standards: Neighbourhood and Community Standard, Safety and Quality Standard, Tenancy Standard, and the Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard.

The majority of Oldham MBC homes (98%) are managed via two separate Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contracts with Inspiral and Oldham Retirement Housing Partnership (ORHP) as the managing partners. As part of the inspection we observed a full Council meeting, a meeting of the Inspiral PFI Joint Board, and an ORHP Community Voices meeting. We met with engaged tenants, officers, representatives from managing partners and relevant councillors. We also reviewed a wide range of documents provided by Oldham MBC. 

Our regulatory judgement is based on all the relevant information received during the inspection as well as analysis of information received through routine regulatory returns and other regulatory engagement activity.

Summary of findings 

Consumer – C3 – November 2025

The inspection has identified serious concerns in relation to Oldham MBC’s awareness of its responsibilities as a landlord. During the inspection, Oldham MBC were unable to provide evidence-based assurance that all elements of the consumer standards were being delivered. This has been driven, in part, by how Oldham MBC has operated the two PFI agreements in place for the management of the majority of its homes. Oldham MBC does not consistently assure itself that the required outcomes are being delivered for its tenants. We observed some areas to be wholly reliant on exception reporting, and others where assurance provided was insufficiently robust. 

We found limited evidence that information relating to the delivery of the consumer standard outcomes for Oldham MBC’s tenants is reported to or considered by senior officers or councillors, including through member scrutiny. While information obtained from managing partners by Oldham MBC provided some limited assurance on some outcomes for tenants, it is clear that this information was not routinely made available or considered by Oldham MBC. 

The Safety and Quality Standard requires landlords to have an accurate, up-to-date and evidenced understanding of the condition of its homes that reliably informs its provision of good quality, well maintained and safe homes for tenants. Landlords must also ensure that their tenants’ homes meet the requirements of the Decent Homes Standard (DHS). Less than half of Oldham MBC’s homes have had a stock condition survey in the last five years. Although a further 56% of homes were subject to a standalone survey for hazards in 2024/25, and Oldham MBC reports that all its homes are decent with construction or significant refurbishment taking place within the last 15 years, as a result of the gaps in stock condition survey coverage, Oldham MBC is not fully assured on the condition of all its homes and the basis of its reported compliance with the DHS.

The Safety and Quality Standard also requires Oldham MBC to provide an effective, efficient and timely repairs and maintenance and planned improvements service for its tenants. Although reported repairs performance is generally good, with negligible numbers overdue and relatively high levels of tenant satisfaction, oversight of communal repairs is particularly limited, and for homes that are not managed through arrangements, repairs performance data was not actively recorded or monitored prior to the inspection.  

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 ensure that all actions arising from required health and safety assessments are conducted within appropriate timescales. Health and safety compliance is reported at or around 100% in most areas, but Oldham MBC has not been able to evidence its assurance around this. PFI managing partners submit reports which provide reassurance on some compliance areas, but this does not cover all expected areas. Oldham MBC is also not robustly assured on the quality of the compliance information supplied to it by managing partners, and there is a lack of consistent reporting on the completion, tracking and oversight of remedial actions. We have concluded that Oldham MBC’s lack of effective knowledge and control of health and safety performance is a serious failing.

The Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard sets out the outcomes that landlords must deliver about being open with tenants and treating them with fairness and respect so that tenants can access services, raise complaints, influence decision making and hold their landlord to account. Through our meeting observations and other inspection activities, we found serious failings in Oldham MBC delivering some of the required outcomes in this area.

There are serious failings in relation to engagement with tenants. Oldham MBC is unable to demonstrate that tenants’ views are taken into account in its decision-making about how landlord services are delivered, and it is not assured that tenants’ views are being consistently considered by all of its managing partners. Around two thirds of tenants have some opportunities for influence, although Oldham MBC was unable to demonstrate meaningful outcomes as a result. For the remaining third of tenants, there have been no meaningful opportunities in place for tenants to influence their landlord for several years. Engagement structures for these tenants were paused during the 2020 pandemic and Oldham MBC has failed to ensure that these activities were reinstated or replaced since then. For all tenants, we noted a lack of meaningful opportunities to effectively scrutinise performance which is compounded by the limited and inconsistent nature of performance information shared.  

While we have some assurance that the needs of tenants are understood and inform service delivery, this is inconsistent across different managing arrangements, and we have seen limited evidence that Oldham MBC undertakes any assessment to ensure equitable outcomes for its tenants or any action to improve fairness, which we consider a weakness.

While complaint handling performance is generally good, we note that Oldham MBC has a particularly low number of complaints and we identified indicators of potential under-reporting. While we have seen evidence of a complaints process which appears to be in line with expectations, we are not fully assured that all complaints are being accurately recorded and therefore dealt with appropriately. We consider this to be a weakness. 

In relation to the Tenancy Standard, we have identified weaknesses in the delivery of outcomes relating to tenure and mutual exchange. Oldham MBC lacks assurance that tenancies are being appropriately managed in line with the specific expectations of the Tenancy Standard, particularly the timely conversion of introductory tenancies, provisions relating to renewal of flexible tenancies, and maintaining security of tenure for existing social housing tenants. We also found that in 2024 Oldham MBC had identified that its tenancy agreements no longer met legal requirements and required updating, but there has been no progress in delivering this review.  Oldham MBC was unable to demonstrate that required outcomes relating to mutual exchange were consistently delivered for all of its tenants.

The Neighbourhood and Community Standard requires landlords to work in partnership with appropriate local authority departments, the police, and other relevant organisations to deter and tackle anti-social behaviour and hate incidents in the neighbourhoods where they provide social housing. We found evidence that relevant outcomes were generally being delivered for tenants, but there are some weaknesses in assurance, and the Council has acknowledged the need to strengthen its assurance specifically around outcomes for tenants.

Overall, it is our view that Oldham MBC was not adequately assured on outcomes for its tenants and has not fully recognised the significant gaps in its assurance and the implications for its tenants. Oldham MBC has worked constructively with us through this process and has demonstrated that it is willing to resolve the issues.

We are engaging with Oldham MBC as it addresses the issues set out in this judgement. Our engagement will be intensive, and we will seek assurance that Oldham MBC is making sufficient change and progress. 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 Oldham MBC seeks to resolve these issues.          

Background to the judgement

About the landlord

Oldham MBC owns 2,083 social housing homes within Greater Manchester.

Oldham MBC does not manage any of its homes directly. The vast majority (2,045) are subject to PFI arrangements across two separate contracts, with the remaining 38 homes spread across two non-PFI schemes.

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..

Further information

• Regulating the standards
• Regulatory standards for landlords