Today (26 March 2025) the Regulator of Social Housing published the findings from its latest quarterly survey on the fire safety of 11 metre plus buildings in the social housing sector.
Of the 17,391 relevant buildings reported, 99.9% had fire risk assessments undertaken and 1,897 (10.9%) were reported as currently having a life critical fire safety defect relating to the external wall system.
79.4% of relevant buildings with a LCFS EWS defect are expected to be remediated within five years.
Landlords must ensure that tenants are safe in their homes. A key aspect of this is delivering remediation programmes underpinned by robust and accurate systems, processes and data.
Since 14 June 2017 a total of 2,578 buildings have been identified as having an EWS-related LCFS defect, with 818 (31.7%) of these buildings having been remediated historically and 137 buildings having work completed but awaiting a new building works assessment.
RSH will continue to monitor the performance of landlords in remediating 11 metre plus buildings and the progress they are making against their plans.
Will Perry, Director of Strategy at RSH, said
Boards and councillors have a responsibility to keep their tenants safe and remediate their buildings.
We expect all landlords to take this responsibility with the utmost seriousness. They must continue to work at pace to address any fire safety risks in buildings, progressing permanent solutions and putting in place any necessary interim measures.
This quarterly survey is just one of the ways we monitor fire safety. We also look at how landlords ensure health and safety through our proactive inspections and other regulatory engagement, and we take action if there is an unacceptable risk to tenants.
Notes to editors
-
The data referred to in this publication were reported in the Q4 2024/2025 survey, which ran from 25 March 2025 to 23 April 2025, with data being reported as at 31 March 2025.
-
The majority of relevant buildings reported (85.1%) have been assessed to have no outstanding or historic† EWS related LCFS defects in any building works assessment since 14 Jun 2017.
-
Landlords reported that work had already started or is complete on 21.0% (399) of affected buildings.
-
29.1% (433) of landlords reported being responsible for at least one relevant building in this quarter. The majority of these were large landlords (those with 1,000 or more units).
-
18.1% (344) of affected buildings have a completion date that is beyond ten years or is unclear from the survey response.
-
LCFS are defined as defects, shrinkages, faults or other failings in a building that give rise to fire safety risks identified by a Fire Risk Appraisal of External Wall construction or a fire risk assessment (or equivalent) undertaken to industry standards.
-
We advise caution in interpreting data changes over time as they may be influenced, at least in part, by a change in the number of reported buildings and their assessment status at each quarter end.
-
For general enquiries email enquiries@rsh.gov.uk. For media enquiries please see our Media Enquiries page.
