Regulator of Social Housing awards Ealing a C2 rating. “Some weaknesses” – and that is not a compliment

In November 2025 the Regulator of Social Housing issued its first consumer grading for the London Borough of Ealing: C2.

On the four-point scale used by the regulator, C1 means a landlord is delivering the outcomes of the consumer standards. C2 means there are “some weaknesses in the landlord delivering the outcomes of the consumer standards and improvement is needed.”
The weaknesses identified by the Regulator focused on two of the four consumer standards: the Safety and Quality Standard and the Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard.

Ealing Council had self-referred to the Regulator as far back as 2022 because it lacked effective systems to monitor statutory health-and-safety responsibilities across electrical, asbestos and water safety. Since then the authority has carried out a significant restructure of its housing service, completed a full stock-condition survey (93 per cent of homes now meet the Decent Homes Standard, with a funded plan to reach 100 per cent by 2028), committed £425 million over five years to improving kitchens, bathrooms, lifts and roofs, and improved compliance with fire-risk assessments and other safety checks.

Yet the Regulator was not prepared to award a C1. It found ongoing weaknesses in the timely completion of remedial works arising from safety inspections, persistent problems with the speed of repairs (even though several thousand overdue jobs have been cleared since late 2024), insufficient knowledge of the characteristics of its tenants, limited genuine tenant influence at board and scrutiny meetings, and a complaints service that had only “started to improve.”
The Regulator has made clear that it will continue intensive engagement with the council on its asset-management strategy, health-and-safety remedial programmes and complaints handling. The council’s stated ambition is to move from C2 to C1. For thousands of tenants living in the borough’s social-housing stock, the difference between those two grades is measured in leaking roofs, delayed repairs and the daily sense that their voices still carry limited weight.

Opposition councillors have repeatedly described the pace of improvement as too slow and have pointed to continuing cases of poor housing management. The C2 grading is therefore not merely a technical score. It is an official acknowledgement that, more than three years after the council first raised the alarm about its own systems, material weaknesses remain.