Social Rented Housing: Surrey
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps his Department is taking to support local authorities with essential repairs in (a) social and (b) council housing in (i) Surrey and (ii) Surrey Heath constituency.
Answered by Matthew Pennycook
All registered providers of social housing are obliged by law to maintain the structure and exterior of their properties, and to keep in repair and proper working order sanitation, water, gas, and electricity installations.
All registered providers of social housing are also required to deliver the outcomes of the regulatory standards set by the independent Regulator of Social Housing. Under the Safety and Quality Standard, landlords must take all reasonable steps to ensure the health and safety of tenants in their homes and provide an effective and timely repairs service for the homes for which they are responsible.
As part of the new consumer regime facilitated by the Social Housing (Regulation) Act, the Regulator has begun carrying out regular inspections of large landlords to seek evidence they are delivering the outcomes of the standards. This has included a number of inspections of local authority registered providers with social housing stock in Surrey, resulting in consumer gradings between C2-C4. Some local authority registered providers in Surrey have only a small number of homes and therefore fall outside of the routine inspection programme.
The government has also introduced additional safety legislation to protect tenants from health and safety hazards through the introduction of Awaab’s Law which came into force for damp, mould and all emergency hazards on 27 October 2025.
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