Broxtowe Council housing rating could be bumped up after ‘serious failings’

The authority, which owns and runs its more than 4,400-home housing stock, is continuing its work to improve its housing service following a damning report earlier this year.

In January 2026, the Regulator for Social Housing (RSH) graded the council as C3, meaning it did not meet the required standards for housing and that there were serious regulatory concerns in their social housing provision.

The RSH rating means the regulator deemed there were ‘serious failings’ by the landlord – the council – where it was revealed in its report that there were more than 3,000 overdue fire safety actions.

The assessment found that, while the 3,000 overdue fire remedial actions were assessed as medium risk, there was a lack of clarity about the length of time they had been open.

While a concerning grade, the C3 rating is not the most serious of the grades, which range from one to four, and the authority is hoping it could be bumped up to C2 within the year due to ongoing improvements.

In the council’s cabinet meeting on June 2, it was announced that its original 3,000 backlog in ‘outstanding’ fire safety actions now stood at 2,420 – a further decrease from the 2,750 reported in April.

These actions include improvements such as replacing common area doors and frames with ones that meet the regulatory standard, installing fire-resistant glazing and updating signs and notices.

Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, Coun Vanessa Smith (Brox All), portfolio holder for housing, said: “There are no urgent actions outstanding now, so everything that’s left would be medium or low risk and we have mitigations in place for things that might need more work that might take us a little bit longer.

"We’ve got safety mitigations in place.

“That outstanding number will never be zero, because as we go through a programme and fire inspections, there’ll be new things we need to do but what we need to do is make sure we’re completing all those actions within the time frame and that anything urgent gets dealt with immediately.”

Coun Smith added the authority is ‘hopeful’ it can be bumped up to a C2 rating ‘within the year’, but this is not yet guaranteed.

Speaking at the meeting on the council’s housing improvements update, Coun Philip Owen (Con) said the report was ‘a little light on actual figures’ and asked for clearer breakdowns on improvement statistics to be given.

He said: “It’s all very well saying ‘oh yes, everything’s fine’ but we were hearing that for years until the regulator came in and then we were told everything wasn’t fine.”

Coun Smith responded that quarterly reports on how the authority is performing in its improvement journey would be brought to the cross-party governance committee.

The regulator’s inspection also found that 37 per cent of the council’s homes had not undergone a condition survey in the last 18 months, with a target set for 100 per cent of the stock to be inspected before the end of 2026.

The council says it is continuing to complete these surveys and has 450 remaining.