More than half of social renters in England have had a problem with their home in the last three years, says housing charity Shelter, which called for urgent government action to “prevent further tragedies”.
Five million people said they had dealt with electrical hazards, gas leaks and faulty lifts – with one in ten forced to report an issue more than ten times for it to be resolved.
Experts at Shelter are worried the new building safety regulator proposed by the government won’t go far enough to protect the health and wellbeing of social renters.
Shelter chief executive Polly Neate said: “Tinkering with the current system just isn’t good enough when people have lost trust in it to keep them safe. That’s why we are calling on the government to establish a new consumer regulator, which inspects social landlords and listens to groups of tenants when they say something isn’t right.”
Two years on from the Grenfell Tower fire, the housing charity is standing with bereaved families and survivors’ group Grenfell United to demand a tough new regulator that ensures the safety of tenants and proactively inspects social landlords.
Twenty flats were destroyed and ten were damaged in a six-storey block of flats in East London last week. Residents said their concerns about fire safety in the building were dismissed by the housing association just a month before.