Winchester City Council (24UP) - Regulatory Judgement: 30 April 2025
Published 30 April 2025
Applies to England
© Crown copyright 2025
This publication is licensed under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0 except where otherwise stated. To view this licence, visit nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3 or write to the Information Policy Team, The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, or email: psi@nationalarchives.gov.uk.
Where we have identified any third party copyright information you will need to obtain permission from the copyright holders concerned.
This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/winchester-city-council/winchester-city-council-24up-regulatory-judgement-30-april-2025
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 | April 2025 |
Reason for publication
We are publishing a regulatory judgement for Winchester City Council (Winchester CC) to confirm a consumer grade of C3.
This follows responsive engagement with Winchester CC about the consumer standards. This is the first time we have issued a consumer grade in relation to this landlord.
Summary of the decision
Our judgement is that there are serious failings in how Winchester CC is delivering the outcomes of the consumer standards and significant improvement is needed, specifically in relation to outcomes in our Safety and Quality Standard and the Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard. Based on this assessment, we have concluded a C3 grade for Winchester CC.
How we reached our judgement
We began our responsive engagement with Winchester CC following a self-referral to us in January 2025. Winchester CC identified a number of issues in relation to its landlord health and safety compliance, the information provided to tenants about landlord services, and performance information.
Our responsive engagement with Winchester CC included reviewing documents and information provided to us by Winchester CC, follow up meetings and discussions.
This regulatory judgement is based on a review of all the information we obtained during the responsive engagement process. In making our decision, we have considered how well Winchester CC is delivering against the Safety and Quality Standard and the Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard.
Summary of findings
Consumer – C3 – April 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 to ensure that all required actions arising from legally required health and safety assessments are carried out within appropriate timescales.
Following Winchester CC’s self-referral and through our subsequent engagement, we learned that Winchester CC does not have adequate systems and processes for the delivery and oversight of legal requirements relating to the health and safety of tenants. As a result, Winchester CC is unable to provide assurance that it is completing all required health and safety checks for all homes and communal areas in relation to fire safety (including fire doors), electrical safety, water safety, smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, and that remedial actions are being completed within appropriate timescales. In relation to asbestos safety specifically, at the time of the referral Winchester CC did not have an asbestos re-inspection programme and therefore, did not have valid asbestos surveys for common areas of the buildings in its communal blocks.
Winchester CC has provided evidence of some mitigations to manage risks as it resolves the issues. We will continue to seek assurance that it has appropriate arrangements in place for effectively managing and mitigating any relevant risks to tenants while it completes the necessary checks and all required actions arising from legally required health and safety assessments.
The Safety and Quality Standard also 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 tenants’ homes meet the requirements of the Decent Homes Standard (DHS).
Winchester CC reported that it does not have up to date information about the condition of the majority of its homes and is therefore unable to evidence the accuracy of its reported compliance with the DHS. At the time of the self-referral, Winchester CC did not have an up to date record at an individual property level of the condition of its homes. The last stock condition survey was completed more than 10 years ago. Winchester CC cannot evidence that it has a sufficient current understanding of its homes to deliver the relevant outcomes of the Safety and Quality Standard. We cannot be assured that Winchester CC is providing homes of decent quality to its tenants.
The Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard includes the requirement for landlords to provide tenants with accessible information about how it is performing in delivering landlord services and what actions it will take to improve performance where required. Winchester CC has not been able to demonstrate it consistently provides all tenants with accessible information.
Information must also be accurate, reliable, valid and a transparent reflection of its performance against the tenant satisfaction measures. Due to the issues set out above in relation to meeting the required outcomes of the Safety and Quality Standard, Winchester CC cannot be assured that the information it collected and shared with tenants for the relevant Tenant Satisfaction Measures was accurate.
Considering the breadth and significance of the issues across the relevant outcomes of the Safety and Quality Standard and the Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard, it is our judgement that there are serious failings in how Winchester CC is delivering the outcomes of the consumer standards and significant improvement is needed.
Winchester CC has engaged constructively with us since its self-referral and is taking steps to address the failures identified. This includes work to complete improvements to systems and processes for the delivery and oversight of legal health and safety requirements. It also has plans to complete a full stock condition survey of its homes.
We are engaging with Winchester CC as it continues to address the issues that led to this judgement 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 its improvement plan. 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 Winchester CC seeks to resolve these issues.
Background to the judgement
About the landlord
Winchester CC owns and manages around 5,200 general needs 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.