The Social Housing sector, which provides 4.4 million homes across England, faces a myriad of Health and Safety issues. With the coronavirus pandemic expecting to further increase the 1.6 million households already recorded on local housing registers, it is vital that housing providers stay on top of their Health and Safety requirements to ensure that tenants are kept safe, and buildings remain secure.
What are the current risks facing the sector?
Compliance with statutory requirements
Social Housing landlords have a duty of care under Health and Safety legislation to their own employees, tenants, visitors, volunteer, and members of the public who may use or be in the vicinity of their premises. With such a wide remit, managing Health and Safety needs to encompass all roles and work tasks that these individuals undertake.
It is a basic minimum to provide assurance that tenants are safe. But it is imperative for social housing providers to do whatever necessary beyond this to demonstrate health and safety risks are being managed effectively. This includes identifying, managing, and reporting on risks to ensure effective oversight by the governing body.
Good Health and Safety management helps to prioritise areas of concern and improvement correctly and ensure funding goes to the areas carrying the highest residual risk.
Understanding statutory responsibilities
Social housing providers must also demonstrate an understanding of their statutory responsibilities, for example in areas such as gas, electric, asbestos, legionella, and lift safety. It is vital that Boards understand how legal requirements are changing. You can read more about the revisions to the Fire Safety Act here.
A Health and Safety policy is the key document that all other specific policies and procedures come under including all housing compliance and employee health and safety. Any organisation within the UK or operating under UK law with five or more employees, requires a written health and safety policy. However, those organisations with less or more than five employees would need to evidence what they have put in place and, how they would demonstrate employees have understood what is required of them if nothing is documented.
Poorly implemented control systems in relation to governance
Ensuring good quality data on health and safety issues is paramount to keeping tenants safe and confirming compliance with statutory obligations. The regulator will act wherever it finds breaches of standards which cause potential or actual serious harm to tenants.
What can I do to mitigate the risks to ensure that tenants are kept safe?
1. Involve all employee role and work task
Health and Safety Management is a holistic area, that encompasses buildings, people and the systems used to manage health and safety on a continual basis. Managing health and safety within social housing needs to encompass all roles and work tasks that employees undertake.
2. Prepare for all situations and outcomes
The Social Housing sector needs to prepare for all situations, including all health and safety outcomes, similarly to what they currently do for fires for example alarms in place, and/or risk assessments carried out etc.
3. Undertake a risk assessment
A vulnerability assessment of your social housing premises and facilities, or a full health and safety health check - will show how compliant you are with the relevant regulations. Going forward this will allow you to identify areas that you will need to focus on to improve your health and safety rating. This may include introducing a dedicated alarm system, ensuring that you have adequate lighting for safe access and exit, and making sure that if a building contains asbestos, its location and condition has been provided and explained to the management and facilities teams.
How do I get started?
At Pennington Choices, we’ve worked with nearly half of all social housing providers across England providing health and safety services to clients of different sizes. Our expert and qualified Health and Safety Consultants can assist you to ensure you are compliant with both The Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 and The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999. We can help you keep your tenants and buildings safe.
