Sheffield Council writes to government about ‘massive’ issue with private housing

Councillor Paul Wood, cabinet member for safety, raised concerns during a safer and stronger communities scrutiny meeting.

He told the committee about recently having to evacuate 127 people from a block of about 80 flats, which highlighted a bigger problem in the sector around checks.

He said: “When the building inspections are done now with these developments they are not being done by our council or officers and the building inspectors are not even visiting the sites to check this work is done, they’re relying on a developer sending it down to London on a CD or email. Then they’re being cleared down there and being given the OK to put people into these properties.

“This is a massive issue for Janet Sharpe, director of housing at the council, and I. We’ve raised it already with the secretary of state who said he was going to have a meeting with us but then they dissolved parliament so that’s now delayed but we will be following that up.

“In view of what’s happened in Bolton recently this is a major issue and I’m going to ask Janet to find out how many properties we’ve built in the city centre that we haven’t inspected because it’s been taken out of the local authority control and just passed to external companies.

“So I do respect the work the private sector does in providing accommodation but I do feel more and more that we do need some angle on being able to do regular checks on this, we need a better system than what’s in place at the moment to protect people who live in a lot of these private rented properties.”

In some parts of Sheffield the council has implemented selective licensing, which requires private properties to be checked by the council to ensure basic standards and safety measures are being met.

Some have called for this to be enforced citywide but others say this is not legally possible.

Coun Wood said he would be looking into some sort of system to keep check of those that are not currently being monitored by the council.