Sheffield Council passes gas safety action test - housing chair praises hard work of staff
Sheffield City Council’s actions to check that there are safe gas supplies to its 38,000 council homes have been approved by a watchdog.
The Regulator of Social Housing has now removed a regulatory notice relating to gas safety issued against the council’s housing service in 2023.
The council referred itself to the regulator in October 2022 after its annual gas safety checks fell behind during the pandemic.
Coun Douglas Johnson, who chairs the housing policy committee, said today (June 11): “The really good news is about the official regulator lifting the formal notice. It was put in place three years ago when there was a backlog of gas safety checks over Covid.
“They’re really satisfied that the council has dealt with this. It’s a really good success story, it shows the council housing services have really turned this around.”
Coun Johnson added: “Gas safety checks are really, really important. The council has to get into everyone’s home to check their boilers and gas fires each year.
“Sometimes that’s really difficult. There’s always going to be cases when tenants don’t want to let our staff in for all sorts of reasons.
Complex
“A lot of tenants of the council have very complex lives. We have vulnerable people, mental health issues, people suffering domestic violence.
“There are also people who are involved with sub-letting, modern slavery trafficking, all sorts of reasons like that why people don’t allow access or really don’t want officials from the council coming in.”
Coun Johnson said that all landlords have to carry out gas safety checks on their properties every year in order to keep tenants and their neighbours safe.
He said that as soon as one set of checks are done, the council has to start the process all over again.
Coun Johnson praised housing department staff for their hard work. He said the improvement is the product of several years of sustained work at all levels of the council and investment to ensure everything needed is in place.
“It’s a whole system and programme. It’s the same reason people are getting repairs done on time and they feel they can report repairs, there are more responsive arrangements and complaints about this have gone down.
“Tenant satisfaction is going up.”