Southwark Council has only done legally obliged electrical safety checks on a quarter of the necessary homes, a senior staff member has said.
The senior council officer made the admission at the Overview and Scrutiny Committee (OSC) meeting on Monday, July 15.
But asked how this had been allowed to happen, the officer said “I cannot tell you” and “I don’t wish to speculate on reasons”.
The council is now embarking on a rapid, eighteen-month catch-up programme of electrical checks, expected to cost £4 million.
This comes one month after the Labour-run authority referred itself to the Regulator of Social Housing over its failure to conduct adequate checks on its council homes.
Speaking at the OSC meeting, Cllr Victor Chamberlain, leader of the Liberal Democrat opposition, said it was “another housing scandal”.
Since July 20, 2023, social landlords including Southwark Council have been legally required to produce Electrical Installation Condition Report tests on their properties every five years.
But Southwark Council has failed to do so, only completing tests at roughly 10,000 of 38,000 relevant properties, a council officer said.
The council has now accelerated its programme in a bid to deliver all tests within the next eighteen months.
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This will cost around £4 million and require 60 electricians working in tenants’ homes every day.
Committee members persistently asked how this had been allowed to happen. A senior council officer said “I cannot tell you what the reasons for that was [sic]… I don’t wish to speculate on reasons”.
Committee chair Cllr Ian Wingfield quickly intervened, saying “members need to feel assured.. that this type of thing won’t happen again”.
“We will be coming back to this,” he added.
Cllr Chamberlain said he was “concerned how we got to this stage”, especially after tragedies like Grenfell.
He added: “We’ve had the current leader of this council say that fire safety is of high priority for this council when he was the cabinet member [for housing].
“But when he was the cabinet member this testing didn’t happen.”
Cllr Sarah King, the housing cabinet member, responded by saying “electrical safety checks were taking place” in high-priority homes.
But she admitted that an audit found the “speed and the plan” for completing all the tests was neither “thorough enough” nor “good enough”.
She also said the data the council had gathered did not make clear where the tests had taken place.
Cllr King added that she could not say why the situation was allowed to arise because she was not the cabinet member for housing at the time.
The Liberal Democrats previously asked the Regulator of Social Housing to investigate the ‘poor condition of housing’ in Southwark.
The suggestion was put to a vote in March, but Labour councillors unanimously voted against it.
Council Leader Kieron Williams previously said in a statement: “I apologise for this delay. We have started a major programme to do the required tests.
“In the meantime, we are making this self-referral to, and working with, the Regulator of Social Housing, as the independent organisation responsible for driving improvements in social housing through robust regulation.”
I moved i to a renovated house in a terrace in 1981. By the time I had left in 2017 I had one check! Used to worry me as all flooring was floor boards.
I lived in Southwark from 1984 to 2020 and only once in that time did we have an electrical check, part of this may be because my dad bought our home in late 1988!