Wandsworth Council Pledges to Improvements to Housing Services
Aiming to increase low rating given by regulator last year
Winstanley and York Road Estate, Battersea. Picture: Facundo Arrizabalaga/MyLondon
September 18, 2026
Wandsworth Council has pledged to fix the borough’s housing services, after inspectors found serious failings last year. The Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) slapped the authority with a ‘C3’ rating – the second lowest possible score – for failing to meet health and safety standards in February last year.
The regulator found tenants waiting more than 12 months for fire safety works and left in properties without electrical safety tests, after inspecting the council’s housing stock for the first time in November 2024. The council’s Labour administration at the time said it was taking swift action to address failings to meet consumer standards identified by the RSH.
Conservative Council Leader Robert Morritt told a council meeting on Tuesday (15 September) work was ongoing to provide residents with “confidence that homes are safe, that they’re well maintained and properly managed, that tenants and leaseholders rightly expect accurate records, timely inspections, effective repairs and a housing service that puts them first”.
Councillor Morritt said: “I want to apologise to every tenant and leaseholder for the level of service they have received over the last few years. It’s less than they had a right to expect, and it won’t be fixed overnight, but fix it we will, and the ambition of this administration is to deliver a ‘C1′ rating.”
He said the authority was carrying out Wandsworth’s housing improvement and transformation plan, approved under Labour in January, to improve compliance and resident engagement, while it was hiring a new director of housing, inspecting estates and hosting new developer forums.
The leader warned Wandsworth faced trade-offs and the administration’s preference was to focus on existing stock than building new homes, but said it wanted to see the “right developments come forward in the right places”.
Councillor Morritt added he wanted to see “tenants and leaseholders treated in a better and… sometimes less dismissive manner”.
The RSH said in February last year that while none of the 1,800 outstanding fire safety works it had found were classed as high risk, they were all more than 12 months overdue. The regulator was reassured the council was meeting legal requirements in other areas of health and safety, but said many of the tests for water safety, asbestos management and lift maintenance had been completed only months before.
The inspection revealed nearly 80 per cent of communal areas across the council’s housing stock, and around 40 per cent of properties, had not had an electrical safety test. It also found evidence the council did not have up-to-date information on the condition of most of its homes, along with weaknesses in how well the authority took tenants’ views into account when making decisions and how it communicated that it had considered their feedback.
Labour Opposition Leader Simon Hogg agreed “only the highest standards will do for our leaseholders and tenants, that culture change is crucial, and that we must stand up for our renters”, but said the group differed from the Conservatives in tactics and principles.
The Conservatives have axed plans to build new council homes on the Lennox estate in Roehampton and Ashburton estate in Putney since taking control of the authority, along with three smaller schemes on Tyneham Close, Lavender Hill and the Fitzhugh Estate.
Councillor Hogg said: “The regulator was right to mark down the service that we inherited and transformed too slowly, but we’re clear on our vision – more council homes, renters’ rights, an end to rough sleeping and an improvement plan written with tenants in the room.”
He added: “We will support every home that gets built, we’ll support every repair that’s done properly and we’ll support the improvement plan that we helped to write, but we won’t support a housing policy that cuts council homes, ignores renters and then wonders why the housing crisis does not improve.”
The administration will put together a new temporary accommodation strategy over the coming months.
Charlotte Lilywhite - Local Democracy Reporter
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