Rochdale Boroughwide Housing failed to carry out gas safety checks

Rochdale Boroughwide Housing

Rochdale Boroughwide Housing failed to carry out compulsory gas safety checks, it has been revealed.

Social Housing Regulator HCA (Homes and Communities Agency) has said that it considered “further action” after discovering that RBH left homes without the checks, which are legally required, meaning that the organisation also failed to meet the Home standard.

The damning report released this week says that there was a potential for “serious detriment” to RBH tenants and will later reveal whether or not it plans to “exercise any of its powers”.

RBH said it had identified 45 homes with out of date certificates in October last year after ending a management agreement with another landlord that had previously managed the properties. The organisation has since apologised for the mistake.

The HCA report reads: “The regulator has received evidence of failure to adhere to the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998 which state that gas safety checks should be undertaken annually by a gas safe engineer.

“The necessary inspections were overdue in a number of cases. This is clear evidence of a breach of the statutory obligation to carry out gas servicing and thus of the Home standard in respect of the requirement to meet all applicable statutory requirements that provide for the health and safety of the occupants in providers’ homes.

“The breach exposed a number of tenants to the potential of serious harm for lengthy periods. Notwithstanding the actions Rochdale Boroughwide Housing has taken, and is now taking, the regulator is of the view that it has failed to meet the Home standard.

As a registered provider, Rochdale Boroughwide Housing is required to comply with the consumer standards. There was a management contract with a long established tenant management organisation to deliver a full landlord service for a number of its homes.

Subsequently, the necessary inspections were overdue in a number of cases. The HCA says that this is “clear evidence” of a breach of the statutory obligation to carry out gas servicing and thus of the Home standard.

A spokesperson for Rochdale Boroughwide Housing said: “RBH apologises for the fact that 45 homes we own were found to have out of date gas safety certificates. These homes were all within the Cloverhall neighbourhood which had been managed by Cloverhall Tenants Association Co-operative (CTAC) since 1986.

“RBH ended the management agreement with CTAC in October 2015, due to ongoing concerns around the performance of CTAC in providing estate services. At this point, it became clear that CTAC was unable to make available gas safety certificates for all homes previously managed by CTAC.

“RBH immediately took action to ensure all homes had a valid gas safety certificate, with a team of gas engineers on site the next day. We notified the Regulator, our Board and local Councillors straight away and provided our action plan to the Regulator to deal with the issue”.

“All of these homes had gas safety certificates in place within three weeks of RBH being made aware of the issue and now that RBH is directly managing our homes in the Cloverhall neighbourhood our procedures will ensure that this does not happen again”.