Fire safety backlog keeps pressure on housing provider

A large social housing provider operating in RBWM and Slough continues to face scrutiny over its fire safety improvements.

Metropolitan Thames Valley (MTVH) is run by the Metropolitan Housing Trust Ltd, which took over as the organisation in charge at the end of 2024.

It has a shared ownership arm, SO Resi, which runs schemes in Maidenhead, and provides key worker housing at Heatherwood Hospital in Ascot.

The group also includes Thames Valley Housing Association, which merged.

The Regulator for Social Housing – a government department – first became aware of significant delays in MTVH’s fire safety work in December 2024.

At that time, around 1,700 remedial actions from Fire Risk Assessments were overdue.

Fire Risk Assessments identify problems in a building that could put residents at risk during a fire. Each problem identified comes with an action the landlord must complete to make the building safer.

MTVH has since set out a plan to clear the backlog by the end of this year, prioritising the most urgent fixes.

In a report updated this month, inspectors said they received reassurance that higher-risk buildings had been assessed and that fire safety repairs were being carried out.

However, inspectors said MTVH should be doing more to engage with tenants in higher-risk buildings and those affected by safety works.

The regulator said better engagement is essential to helping residents feel safe.

MTVH has begun gathering more detailed feedback from tenants, and the regulator will continue to monitor how the landlord is doing.

The provider has also changed how it handles complaints to improve the quality and speed of its responses.

It accepts that it needs to cut the number of complaints for which it asks for extra time to respond.

Inspectors said MTVH is doing fine in terms of working with other organisations to address anti-social behaviour and hate incidents.

MTVH was also found to be allocating its homes fairly and helping tenants sustain their tenancies.

“Our judgement is that there are some weaknesses in the landlord delivering the outcomes of the consumer standards and improvement is needed,” the regulator concluded.

It said it will keep working with MTVH to ensure tenants receive the service they should.

The report also noted mixed performance in repairs.

MTVH recently brought repairs work in-house for one of its regions (not specified in the report), which has led to an increase in tenant satisfaction.

But the transition has proved challenging, and the landlord accepts that it still needs to improve its response times for non-urgent repairs.

A spokesperson for MTVH said:

“In May, following a regulatory inspection in early 2025, the Regulator found that we were compliant with all three of their financial, governance and consumer standards.

“We are pleased that a November 2025 stability check upheld these and we remain complaint with all three standards.

“We welcome the RSH’s feedback and recommendations and are continuing to act on these as we work to continuously improve how we serve our residents.”