Latest news with #AuditCommission
South China Morning Post
09-05-2025
- South China Morning Post
Report a window into department weakness in Hong Kong
To say that some public safety measures are implemented half-heartedly by the Hong Kong government is perhaps no exaggeration. A case in point is the mandatory window inspection scheme introduced following a series of fatal accidents caused by panes of glass falling from high-rises years ago. Advertisement Continuous weak enforcement has resulted in non-compliance remaining commonplace. The scale of the problem has been put into perspective by the latest value-for-money report from the Audit Commission. It is disturbing to learn that more than 26,600 notices issued by the Buildings Department to homeowners regarding window inspections have not been addressed, of which 43 per cent have exceeded the compliance deadline by an average of 6½ years. Penalties have also been ignored, with almost half of the 4,208 tickets issued for failing to follow statutory notices left unpaid and not referred to the court for further action, the commission said. Advertisement Since 2012, owners of buildings that are at least 10 years old or more, and who receive statutory notices, have to appoint qualified professionals to inspect and conduct necessary repairs to windows within nine months.
South China Morning Post
30-04-2025
- South China Morning Post
Hong Kong auditor finds over 26,600 window inspection notices ignored
Over 26,600 notices issued by building authorities to homeowners for window inspection have not been addressed, of which 43 per cent have exceeded the compliance deadline by an average of 6.5 years, Hong Kong's Audit Commission has found. Advertisement According to the commission's investigation report, released on Wednesday, concerning the Buildings Department's mandatory window inspection scheme, almost half of the 4,208 penalty tickets issued for failing to comply with the statutory notices were also unpaid, and were not referred to the court for settlement. 'The Director of Buildings should issue warning letters and fixed-penalty notices for non-compliant mandatory window inspection scheme statutory notices in a timely manner,' the commission said in the report. 'The director should refer warranted unpaid fixed-penalty notices to the court.' Hong Kong authorities have recorded 445 incidents of windows falling from buildings between January 2017 and December 2024. Advertisement Implemented in June 2012, the inspection scheme requires owners of buildings aged 10 years or older who have received statutory notices to appoint qualified professionals to inspect and conduct necessary repair for their property's windows within nine months. If owners fail to comply with the notices within the stipulated time, the department will issue a warning letter within one month. If the owners still do not rectify the situation and lack a reasonable explanation, they will be served with a fixed penalty ticket of HK$1,500.
RTHK
30-04-2025
- RTHK
Window checks urged amid 26,000 non-compliance cases
Window checks urged amid 26,000 non-compliance cases Between 2017 and 2024, 445 windows fell from heights. File photo: RTHK The Audit Commission has urged the Buildings Department to expedite follow-up actions on non-compliant cases as part of a regulatory regime aimed at ensuring the safety of windows in buildings Under the Mandatory Window Inspection Scheme implemented in 2012, owners of buildings aged 10 years or above who receive statutory notices must appoint a qualified person to inspect all windows in buildings. The commission noted that more than 26,000 such notices have been met with non-compliance as of the end of last year, with some of them overdue for action by up to almost 12 years. Between 2017 and 2024, there were 445 incidents involving windows that fell from height. Of these, 131 owners had been issued with statutory notices before the incidents happened, with 25 of them not having taken action to be in compliance by the time their windows fell. The director of audit urged the department to come up with measures to get building owners to cooperate and carry out inspections and repairs. 'The Audit Commission has recommended that the Director of Buildings closely monitor for compliance in line with statutory notices under the inspection scheme and take appropriate follow-up actions in cases of non-compliance [in particular, those cases in which fallen window incidents occurred],' it said. It also urged the department to intensify prosecutions and enforcement actions in such cases. Another issue flagged up in the report was the selection of target buildings to be issued with statutory notices. The department has developed a scoring system under which buildings with higher potential risks will be chosen as target buildings. However, the commission found, 11 buildings were excluded from being targeted in 2023 despite having incidences of falling windows before that, with the number of such buildings rising to 20 last year. The department said those buildings were not selected after factors such as the causes of the falls and whether previous statutory notices had been complied with had been taken into account. The commission said the Buildings Department should inform the selection panel of its considerations and make improvements to the selection mechanisms. In response, the Director of Buildings has said he agrees with the audit recommendations.
The Guardian
22-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Action needed: social housing providers must be made accountable for the treatment of their tenants
On the tree-lined north London street where I live, scaffolders arrived seven years ago. Metal poles were erected around a housing association property next door to me, owned by the social housing provider Peabody, to allow for external refurbishment work to be carried out. But today, that scaffolding still stands – and those repair works have never been carried out. 'This is yet another example of Peabody's casual neglect of their residents. They do not respond to emails from me or senior council officers and have also ignored an enforcement notice served on them by planning officers,' the chair of Islington council's planning committee, Martin Klute, recently told the Islington Tribune. Peabody owns more than 5% of Islington's nearly 112,000 properties. And it has well below average performance on every key indicator of landlord services. Inaction on dealing with hazardous cladding, damp, rodent infestation or broken-down lifts, and failure to tackle neighbour nuisance or other forms of antisocial behaviour, are typical of the concerns that Peabody tenants raise regularly. And Peabody, while it is one of the worst offenders, is not unique. Ask any councillor or Citizens Advice worker in any of our largest cities about their housing caseload, and they will tell you the same story. Yet locally elected representatives are often powerless to act. Before 2010, the Audit Commission, of which I was chief executive, routinely inspected housing associations. But for the Regulator of Social Housing, created by the Tories, the main preoccupation was with their financial viability; tenant services were no longer their focus. Since the Grenfell Tower fire, this has begun to change. However, social housing remains the least accountable of all our public services. In England, providers are not even subject to the Freedom of Information Act. And the housing ombudsman, which made four findings of severe maladministration against Peabody last year, has also been unable to drive change. In one of last year's findings, involving dangerous cladding, the ombudsman noted that it had taken 24 emails and an intervention by the local MP before Peabody responded to the issue.. In another case, Peabody refused to look beyond the last six months at a problem that had persisted for eight years, even though it had previously admitted that its property was in 'a very dangerous state My neighbours, who have suffered from dark, damp and neglect for longer than the duration of the second world war, would no doubt empathise. Klute, the critic from Islington council clearly has a point. Asked to respond to the many criticisms, Peabody says it spends £1m a day on maintaining residents' homes with teams in each local area and that it seeks to listen to residents to improve 'the basics'. In this case, Peabody says it regrets how long the scaffolding has been up. The building is listed and it says that means any changes must involve the council, English Heritage and everyone who lives there. 'This has all taken longer than we would have liked and we're very sorry. We're aiming to do the work as soon as possible.' Residents would welcome that. But the real problem is bigger than Peabody. Housing is now the responsibility of the deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner. She is commendably increasing the rights of tenants in private rented property. But her renters' rights bill does not address the growing crisis in the experience of social housing tenants. And as Labour promises yet another quango cull, housing associations will lobby for even greater deregulation than has so far been suggested. For building the additional homes the country desperately needs, they may have a point. But their tenants need more protection, not less. This does not mean reintroducing inspection, which is costly and can be ineffective. Instead, Rayner's many options include giving local authorities a clear role in the accountability of the sector. For instance, she could permit councils to require attendance at public scrutiny meetings by associations felt to be neglecting their charitable roots. She could allow the housing ombudsman to consider super-complaints from councils, which would act like a class action in law. She could extend the Freedom of Information Act, as proposed by the Labour MP Andy Slaughter in 2019. She could also give existing regulation more bite, with stiffer penalties and a new duty on housing providers to be good neighbours, requiring them to keep communities informed. In my own particularcase, Peabody has never provided any information about its plans for the properties adjoining my home, despite erecting scaffolding which extends across my windows. But one change, above all others, would compel all housing associations, not just Peabody, to give their responsibilities as landlords the same focus that they now devote to development activities. The law permits councils to order the repair of some properties in very poor condition. However, the powers, provided by the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, convey only trivial penalties for non-compliance. It is possible for councils to then undertake the necessary work themselves – yet they are not able to recover the cost of doing so immediately, by billing the delinquent providers. Instead, they must place a charge on the property that is recoverable only if, and when, it is sold. No cash-strapped council will take such a step lightly. To remedy this imbalance, the offenders should be compelled to pay immediately on completion of the repairs. And if they then challenge council invoices in court, the onus should be on the provider in each case to show that it had taken reasonable steps to avoid direct action by the council on behalf of vulnerable tenants. Before Margaret Thatcher, when social housing was mostly provided by local government, disaffected renters could vote against their landlord. That is often no longer the case, so it is vital that we find other ways to empower social tenants and make politics relevant to their concerns. Meanwhile, Peabody's chief executive, who has failed to respond to the letters my neighbours and I have written to him about his organisation's failings, will soon become chair of the group of London's largest housing associations. As such, he will arguably be the most influential person in the sector. When they meet, Rayner should tell him to first put his own house in order. And should he fail, that she will enable councillors to put things right. Steve Bundred is a former Audit Commission chief executive
The Guardian
10-02-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Campaign launched to make public toilets a legal requirement in Britain
It will involve spending more than a penny, but it's a call that is likely to be viewed sympathetically by anyone who has ever been caught short while out and about. A campaign has been launched to make the provision of public toilets a legal requirement for central government and local authorities after a slump in the number of loos in town centres, parks and other locations. The Legalise Loos campaign is the brainchild of the British Toilet Association (BTA), a not-for-profit members' organisation, which estimates that the number of public conveniences has fallen by about 40% since 2000. The national shortage has been blamed in part on cash-strapped councils cutting expenditure on public loos in order to protect services they are obliged by law to provide for local people. Lavatory humour has long been a part of British culture and society, but the BTA reckons this is no laughing matter. It said the slump in the number of toilets was 'impacting both people's wellbeing and the health of our economy'. 'This affects people of all ages, whether travelling, participating in activities outside or visiting family, friends and colleagues,' it said. Trying to assess the seriousness of the problem is complicated by the fact that there is no central database or system for managing information on public loos in the UK – or, arguably, a clear definition of what constitutes one. The BTA, however, said that by piecing various bits of information together, it believed 40% 'is a reasonable estimation for the decrease over the last 25 years'. According to the Audit Commission, there were just over 6,600 public toilets in England in 2000, while the official Valuation Office Agency put the figure at 5,410. In August 2023, the Liberal Democrats published freedom of information data stating that the number of public toilets had fallen by 14% since 2018-19. The BTA believes the number now stands at around 3,300. Local authorities are responsible for the provision for public toilets, but it is an optional provision rather than a mandatory requirement. The BTA quoted 2019 research which claimed the 'loo leash' put as many as one in five people off venturing out of their homes as often as they would like. The organisation said that '14 million people have incontinence issues, 15 million people menstruate, and 16 million people have a disability'. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion Rose Marshall, 36, a communications consultant from Chelmsford in Essex, said: 'I'm a runner with Crohn's disease, a heady combination that often means I get an urgent need to go to the loo when jogging around streets and parks. Over the years I've developed a mental map of where I can go should the need arise, and it's alarming how scarce my options are. 'The situation has been getting steadily worse, especially as shops are increasingly making toilets only available for paying customers. This is affecting people up and down the country … Why should we have to pay for what is a basic human right?' The BTA managing director, Raymond Martin, said: 'Now is the time for action. This government has an opportunity to reverse recent decline and make public toilets legal by making their provision a duty and not a choice.'
