Concerns over Sheffield council home gas checks – councillor speaks about “insanely dangerous” situation
Concerns have been raised about gas and electric supply safety checks on Sheffield council homes.
The situation was discussed at a meeting of Sheffield City Council’s housing policy committee yesterday, where members looked at housing repairs performance figures and targets.
Coun Paul Turpin said: “We’ve been going over these for literally years. They haven’t improved at all.
“The reasons we’ve been given for the last several years why we haven’t managed to have a gas safety check on every home is getting access. I believe things are being done and a strategy in order to gain access.
“Whatever has been done to try and do this, it clearly isn’t working. You just can’t underestimate how insanely dangerous this is and also how much trouble Sheffield City Council got in over this.
“If one flat has a gas explosion in a block, that is taking out the rest of the block. These tests have to be up to date within a year, all of them, and you can see the target, 100 per cent – 99.5 per cent is the highest on this chart.
“It just hasn’t improved at all in three years.”
Unacceptable
He added: “With the electrical safety certificates – when the law changed whereby local authorities had to have a certificate that was less than five years old, we realised that the council hadn’t been keeping up with them and there was a massive backlog.
“Last year we procured I think two businesses – it was something like £20 million to get private companies to bring the council’s housing stock up to date in terms of electrical safety certificates and that also hasn’t improved whatsoever.”
New council director of housing James Clark said he agreed it is unacceptable that the council is out of compliance with its gas and electricity safety certificates for the reasons Coun Turpin described.
“At one point we were in a completely poor position in terms of gas certificates – I believe thousands of overdue safety checks. We’re in a much improved position now – 215, I believe.” He agreed that number is still unacceptable.
Mr Clark said that what he had seen over his first eight weeks in the job made him confident that the council is now running “a really tight ship” on gas safety certification.
He said the council is looking at legal action to gain access to some homes. He said that there had been significant access issues with those tenants but now none are overdue by more than a year and the number is expected to come down in the next six to 12 months.
Regulator
On electrical safety, the aim is to prioritise homes that have not been checked for 10 years first and then get all the checks in place on a five-year cycle by 2027. Mr Clark said they are “cracking through hundreds and thousands at a time”.
He said the regulator of social housing is monitoring the council’s progress after it issued a regulatory notice two years ago. Work is taking place to show that the council now has the right systems and culture in place.
Coun Turpin asked if the council should consider removing gas from properties where there is a major problem gaining access and installing electric hobs and air source heat pumps.
Mr Clark said the council would face the same issues of gaining access to do more intrusive work. He said the tenants often have an underlying vulnerability such as extreme poverty.