293 high-risk fire safety fixes were overdue in Basildon council homes in June, and one tenant in two is satisfied. The first scorecard since the C4 grade.

Basildon Council had 293 high-risk fire safety repairs overdue across its homes at the end of June. That is one of the figures in the first standalone performance report on its housing service, which councillors will question on Tuesday evening.

The report covers April to June 2026. It is the first since the Regulator of Social Housing gave the council a C4 grade in April, the lowest it can give a landlord.

The council owns around 10,750 homes, according to the regulator’s judgement of 15 April 2026. The report’s own summary is blunt: “Overall performance is not at target except for water safety checks.”

The safety checks

Every safety measure in the report has a target of 100%. At the end of June, only water safety checks were there.

Check June 2026
Gas safety checks completed 93.98%
Electrical inspections completed 87.39%
Asbestos safety checks completed 91.11%
Lift safety checks completed 98.15%
Smoke detector compliant 99.34%
Carbon monoxide detector compliant 99.23%
Fire risk assessments completed 100%
Water safety checks completed 100%

Gas checks were at 98.06% in January, before the inspection findings were published. They fell to 93.63% in April and have stayed around 94% since. Asbestos checks rose from 64.20% in May to 91.11% in June.

All figures are from the Housing Services Performance Report for Quarter 1 2026/27, published with the committee papers.

Fire safety work still waiting

A fire risk assessment lists the work a block needs. The report tracks how many of those jobs are past their deadline, week by week.

  • High risk: 254 overdue on 26 May, rising to 323 on 16 June, then 293 on 30 June.
  • Medium risk: 3,716 overdue on 26 May, down to 2,532 on 30 June.
  • Low risk: 17 overdue on 26 May, up to 76 on 30 June.

The report names overdue high-risk actions as “a significant compliance issue”. It says outstanding fire actions have been cut by 50% in the current quarter, July to September, but gives no figures for that period yet.

Repairs and complaints

The council’s target is to finish 90% of routine repairs within 28 days. It managed 60.03% in April, 69.03% in May and 77.87% in June. Emergency repairs were attended within 24 hours in 99.21% of cases in June.

Around 2,771 repair jobs were still in progress at the end of June.

Complaints taking the longest have slipped. The share of second-stage complaints answered within the Housing Ombudsman’s timescale fell every month this year, from 100% in January to 68.4% in June.

The council also paid out on disrepair claims. Damages to tenants came to £17,044 across April to June, and legal costs to £71,844, from the monthly figures in the report.

At the end of June, 586 damp and mould cases were showing as overdue. The council says its contractor reports 409 of those as finished, but they have not been closed until it is “confident the issues have been resolved”.

What tenants think

The council’s 2025/26 tenant survey shows satisfaction below the national average on all 12 measures. Overall satisfaction fell from 54.1% to 51.8%. The national average for 2024/25 was 71.8%.

Paired bar chart of 12 tenant satisfaction measures. Basildon Council's 2025/26 result is below the 2024/25 national average on every one: overall satisfaction 51.8% against 71.8%, repairs service 46.7% against 73.6%, time taken on last repair 44.7% against 69.5%, home well maintained 49.5% against 71.9%, home is safe 64.6% against 77.6%, listens and acts 40.7% against 61.6%, keeps tenants informed 47.8% against 72.0%, treats tenants fairly 56.3% against 77.9%, complaint handling 21.7% against 35.5%, communal areas 58.4% against 66.7%, positive for neighbourhood 42.9% against 64.6%, anti-social behaviour 46.4% against 59.5%.
Basildon tenant satisfaction against the national average. Chart by Basildon Today
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The biggest falls on the year were in being kept informed and being treated fairly, both down 9.6 points. Satisfaction with complaint handling fell to 21.7%. Two measures improved: the time taken on repairs, and communal areas.

The council has appointed IFF Research to run this year’s survey independently.

Where the figures are better

The report is not all red.

  • Temporary accommodation: 829 households were in temporary accommodation at the end of June, down from 869 in January. The council puts the saving at around £748,000 a year.
  • Hotel and bed and breakfast spending: down from £771,604 in January to £484,210 in June.
  • Anti-social behaviour: 96.55% of tenants were satisfied with how their case was handled.
  • Domestic abuse: between 95% and 97% of clients were made safe each month from April to June, against a target of 80%.

The pressure on housing has not eased, though. Households owed the main homelessness duty had spent an average of 947.8 days in temporary accommodation by June, around two and a half years. The housing register had 3,835 households on it, up from 3,629 in January.

How the council says it is fixing it

A separate recovery plan update to the same meeting says the work is “broadly on track”. It reports:

  • 25 of 27 urgent compliance actions finished by 31 July, with the other two moved into a longer plan
  • 14 of 266 long-term safety actions completed and 250 in progress
  • 11 of 76 actions on the other consumer standards completed
  • an independent audit of its stock condition data, due to finish by the end of October
  • a first formal Tenant Board meeting planned for 3 November, depending on a consultation

An external audit by TIAA into the compliance failures has reported. The update says its initial findings point to “wider organisational and systemic issues, rather than being attributable to individual officer errors”.

Why the regulator stepped in

The regulator found “very serious failings” when it published the C4 grade on 15 April. It said the council could not show it was meeting legal health and safety requirements, did not have accurate information on the condition of homes, and was failing to engage tenants.

The regulator also said an external review in March 2025 had found problems, and the council did not refer itself. It called that “itself a very serious failing”.

What it means for you

If you rent from Basildon Council:

  • Let the gas engineer in. The council has added staff to deal with homes where it cannot get access for checks. A missed annual gas check is a safety risk to you and your neighbours.
  • Report damp and mould in writing, and keep a note of the date. The report says autumn and winter bring more cases.
  • If a complaint stalls, you can take it to the Housing Ombudsman once the council’s process is finished.
  • The meeting is public. Housing Scrutiny Committee meets at 7pm on Tuesday 6 October in the St George’s Suite at the Basildon Centre. The agenda and papers are online.

The council is also using the courts against tenants for anti-social behaviour. It evicted two households in September after closure orders.

For how many council homes stand empty and the length of the waiting list, see our earlier report on Basildon’s empty council homes. The cost of the recovery work shows up in the council’s budget forecast.

Sources