Southend-on-Sea City Council (00KF) - Regulatory Judgement: 24 September 2025
Published 24 September 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 | September 2025 |
Reason for publication
We are publishing a regulatory judgement for Southend-on-Sea City Council (Southend-on-Sea CC) following an inspection completed in September 2025.
The regulatory judgement confirms a consumer grading 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 Southend-on-Sea CC delivering the outcomes of the consumer standards and significant improvement is needed, specifically in relation to the outcomes in our Safety and Quality Standard. Based on this assessment, we have concluded a C3 grade for Southend-on-Sea CC.
How we reached our judgement
We inspected Southend-on-Sea CC 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.
Southend-on-Sea CC have an Arm’s Length Management Organisation (ALMO), South Essex Homes, to manage its homes. During the inspection we observed a board meeting for the ALMO, (comprising tenants, officers and elected members), a Strategic Partnership Board meeting between Southend-on-Sea CC and South Essex Homes and a complaints review panel meeting. We met with tenants, officers, the leader of Southend-on-Sea CC and the Deputy Leader of Southend-on-Sea CC who is the Cabinet Member for Planning and Housing. We also reviewed a wide range of documents provided by Southend-on-Sea CC.
Our regulatory judgement is based on all the relevant information looked at during the inspection as well as analysis of information received through routine regulatory returns and other regulatory engagement activity.
Summary of findings
Consumer – C3 – September 2025
The Safety and Quality Standard 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. Through our inspection we found serious failings in Southend-on-Sea CC delivering this required outcome.
In respect of electrical safety, at the time of the inspection, Southend-on-Sea CC provided us with information showing that between 21% and 49% of communal areas and between 16% to 26% of homes did not have a valid electrical installation condition report undertaken within Southend-on-Sea CC’s five-year programme. Since this time Southend-on-Sea CC has advanced its programme of testing and as at the end of August 2025, reported 91.5% compliance in both domestic and communal electrical safety.
In respect of fire safety, there are around 2,500 open fire safety improvement and remedial actions programmed for completion over the next 5 years. Whilst we have been provided with details of mitigations in place, Southend-on-Sea CC was not able to fully satisfy us with the assurance we sought regarding these actions during our inspection
Southend-on-Sea CC acknowledged that it needs to make improvements to its data management and systems to improve the accuracy of data reported in relation to health and safety. It has plans to make improvements.
The Safety and Quality Standard also 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 and to ensure that their tenants’ homes meet the requirements of the Decent Homes Standard (DHS). Southend-on-Sea CC does not have up to date information on the condition of most of its homes, with around 40% of homes having been surveyed within the last five years, 20% between 5 and 10 years and 40% surveyed more than 10 years ago. A full, physical stock condition survey is underway and due to be completed in March 2027. Since our inspection, Southend-on-Sea CC reports that by the end of August 2025, 65% of homes have now been surveyed within the last five years. We will continue to engage with Southend-on-Sea CC as it completes this work.
The Safety and Quality Standard also requires Southend-on-Sea CC to provide an effective, efficient and timely repairs and maintenance and planned improvements service for its tenants. At the time of the inspection more than 900 repairs cases were overdue. Southend-on-Sea CC acknowledges that this area requires significant improvement and is working to deliver the actions in its repairs service improvement plan.
Taking into account the significance of the issues across a number of health and safety areas, the fact Southend-on-Sea CC does not have an up-to-date understanding of the condition of all its homes, the failings in the council’s repairs and maintenance service and the lack of accurate data, we have concluded that there are serious failings in Southend-on-Sea CC delivering the outcomes of the Safety and Quality Standard and it must make fundamental changes so that improved outcomes are delivered for tenants. We will work with Southend-on-Sea CC to ensure that any relevant risks to tenants are adequately managed and mitigated as a priority, while it undertakes the improvements required.
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 (ASB) and hate incidents in the neighbourhoods where they provide social housing. We saw evidence that Southend-on-Sea CC works with partner organisations and has a clear approach to how it deters and tackles ASB and hate incidents, as required by the standard. There are weaknesses in the monitoring and reporting of ASB cases and hate incidents, and learning from cases, and Southend-on-Sea CC recognise that improvements are needed in these areas.
The Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard sets out the outcomes 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 weaknesses in Southend-on-Sea CC delivering the required outcomes in this area.
Southend-on-Sea CC holds information about protected characteristics and languages spoken by its tenants and other household members. The data held averages 74.9% across these categories, but it was unclear how up to date this data is. Whilst Southend-on-Sea CC has plans to improve the data held, we saw no evidence that the information collected is used to inform service delivery and ensure equitable outcomes for tenants.
We identified weaknesses in Southend-on-Sea CC’s complaints handling and saw evidence that it is not meeting targets for completing stage one and stage two complaints. Southend-on-Sea CC has made changes to improve its complaints handling system and processes, but these have not yet delivered improved outcomes for tenants. Southend-on-Sea CC also recognises that further improvements are needed to the reporting and oversight of complaint handling. We will continue to monitor these improvements through ongoing engagement with Southend-on-Sea CC.
Southend-on-Sea CC has been engaging constructively with us. It understands the issues it needs to address and is taking action to rectify the failures identified. These include work to complete outstanding health and safety checks and arising remedial actions, gain a better understanding of the condition of its homes, new systems and validation of data, improvements to its repairs service and improvements to complaints handling processes.
We are engaging with Southend-on-Sea CC as it continues to address the issues set out in this judgement. Our engagement will be intensive, and we will seek assurance that Southend-on-Sea CC is making sufficient change and progress, including ongoing monitoring of how it delivers its improvement programme. 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 Southend-on-Sea CC seeks to resolve these issues.
Background to the judgement
About the landlord
Southend-on-Sea CC owns around 6,000 general needs homes. In 2005, Southend-on-Sea CC set up South Essex Homes as an Arm’s Length Management Organisation to manage its homes.
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