Haringey Council breached minimum housing standards with the “potential for serious detriment to tenants”, the social housing regulator has found.

After the council referred itself to the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) last year, on March 6 the watchdog confirmed that the council breached health and safety requirements.

Haringey had failed to complete a high number of remedial fire safety actions, including 4,000 that were deemed to be ‘high-risk’.

Up-to-date electrical safety reports were also missing for thousands of homes.

The regulator found that more than 100 of the council’s homes had serious hazards, and nearly 5,000 of its homes did not meet minimum standards for social homes.

Haringey Council apologised for past failings and said that it has already taken a number of actions to ensure the number of overdue actions comes down.

This has included clearing the backlog of overdue fire risk assessments in social housing blocks in the borough, as well as reducing the number of high-risk overdue fire actions by 1,274.

Kate Dodsworth, director of consumer Regulation at RSH, said: “Haringey Council put thousands of tenants at potential risk by failing to meet health and safety requirements for fire and electrical safety.

“Our investigation has also revealed that a significant number of Haringey Council homes do not meet the decent homes standard.

“The council needs to act urgently to put things right for tenants, and we are monitoring it closely as it does this.”

Haringey Council’s housing management company, Homes for Haringey, was brought back under the direct control of the local authority in June 2022, having previously been an arm’s-length management organisation.

At that point, Haringey Council leader Cllr Peray Ahmet and chief executive Andy Donald said the council wanted “to take immediate action” over the issues with its social housing stock. 

They added: “This is why we took the decision to refer ourselves to the Regulator of Social Housing. 

“We are very sorry that our residents have not been receiving the quality of service they should have done. What is important now is that we move quickly to change this.    

“The council has taken a series of actions to ensure the number of overdue actions starts to rapidly come down since we initially reported the figures to the Regulator in December. 

“We know we need to build trust with our tenants, build trust with our leaseholders and we will only be able to do this when they see real progress on these issues. 

“We are grateful to the Regulator of Social Housing for their expertise and advice and will work positively with them over the months to come.”