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Dear Resident,
Yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of Newham Council’s Housing Service being given a C4 rating by the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) against its consumer standards.
Since then, the Council has undertaken a huge Housing Services Improvement Programme aimed at addressing the key failings identified by the RSH and providing a better service for residents.
In the stories below you can see how much progress we have made, but the Council and I fully accept that we have to make further strides so that you can see and feel the improvement in your service.
But to illustrate our progress, I am pleased that the proportion of properties that have had an electrical condition test within the last 10 years has risen from 60% at the time of the inspection to 94% now. 90% of repairs are now completed in our target times, and we can now confidently say that 99% of homes have working carbon monoxide detection and 94% have working smoke alarms. We’ve also put your voice at the heart of the changes to the service, with a new Resident Involvement Strategy launched last month, co-designed with you, which I’m looking forward to implementing with you in the weeks and months ahead.
The C4 rating served as a wake-up call for the Council, and it was clear that the rating – and your feedback - reflected significant and serious failings in the management and delivery of our Housing services. We were right to apologise to you at the time and to commit to making deep and swift improvements to address the failings and to move towards an excellent service for our tenants and leaseholders. You deserve to live in safe, decent homes, to receive excellent landlord services and to be involved in shaping housing services to meet your needs.
Mayor of Newham Rokhsana Fiaz OBE said: “Last year, I made it clear that our residents deserve much better following the C4 rating from the regulator about the Council’s housing services. I know that everyone at the Council is committed to making improvements swiftly and assuring our tenants and residents continually that progress is being made for them.”
“Through openness and transparency, I’m pleased that a year on we can show that change is happening, though there’s much more still to do. I want our residents to experience Housing services that they can be proud of and I am demanding that the Council provides quality housing services because our tenants deserve it. Every Newham tenant and leaseholder has to be confident they are living in a safe and secure home, that’s we’re we heading and a year on we are proving it."
Best wishes,
Cllr Blossom Young
Cabinet Member for Council Housing Improvements |
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Transparency and resident engagement |
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Turning up the volume on tenants’ voices
We’ve got some great news! The Newham Housing Resident Involvement Strategy that was co-produced with over 100 tenants has been approved by Newham Council's Cabinet on 16 September. We can now get to work to make sure that you are better involved in making decisions about your homes, blocks and estates, and how Newham’s housing service is run.
As a result of your feedback, the new Strategy is better tailored to the needs and expectations of all our tenants and leaseholders have more ways to have your say on the services you receive.
The plan is built on five main ideas that guide how it will reach its goals. These are: - Transparency and accountability
- Listening and responding
- A voice for local communities
- Supporting collaboration
- Being inclusive of all residents.
Read more about the new Newham Housing Services Resident Involvement Strategy
View the Resident Involvemnt Strategy Press Release on our website |
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Understanding you and your homes better
We now have a better understanding of our tenants, our homes, blocks and estates.
Over 8,758 (39%) of our homes now have a current stock condition survey and at the current rate that we’re improving this will reach over 50% by December 2025. This is scheduled to reach 95% of homes by December 2026 and should reach 100% by March 2027.
A new Care and Support Team has rolled out vulnerability screening across our 84 high rise blocks so that we can understand the needs of our most vulnerable tenants. We have also carried out the research needed to inform a new Diverse Needs Strategy which will help services to be more responsive to individual needs. This strategy is currently being developed and is expected to complete in Spring 2026, so look out for more information in future newsletters. |
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Bringing you a better repairs service
In the inspection of our Housing Services in May 2024, the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) found that we were taking too long to complete many repair jobs within homes. There were an estimated 2,646 repair jobs not completed on time, 49% of all jobs. Since then, through our improvement plans, we’ve been working hard to fix this by clearing the backlog and crucially, at the same time, making sure that new repair jobs are finished within a set time. By the end of August 2025, the number of repair jobs not finished on time dropped significantly to 460, 13% of all jobs.
All repairs that were not carried out on time at the point of inspection are now complete and 90% of new repairs are now completed in the target time.
We’ve made good progress, but we know that there is more work to do. We are committed to getting that overdue repairs down to 5% by the end of March 2026. We’re also making significant changes to the repairs reporting service as we know your experience of telling us about repairs issues, and how we respond to them, needs to improve.
Visit our website to find out more and for more statistics from our Housing service. |
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We are committed to being more transparent with you about our Housing Services performance. So from today we’ve published data on our website about key performance indicators related to building safety and compliance. We will update these monthly.
You can find more by visiting our website and below is the performance at the end of August 2025. |
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Copyright © 2025 London Borough of Newham, All rights reserved. |
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Our mailing address is: London Borough of Newham, Newham Dockside, 1000 Dockside Road, London, E16 2QU. |
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