Guildford Council moved from a C3 grading to C1 in under two years. It managed that without a digital work order system and without a settled repairs contractor, having come through a major contractor fraud, a self-referral to the regulator, staff losses and national press coverage. Julian Hickson, the council’s strategic director, walked through the journey at this week’s panel on proactively meeting regulatory standards in repairs and asset management.

Kate Dodsworth, Deputy Chief Executive at the Regulator of Social Housing, was on the same panel, and her account of what sits behind a C3 or C4 was strikingly consistent. Two weaknesses keep recurring. The first is insufficient grip on health and safety remediation and on prioritising risk. The second is poor stock condition survey coverage and thin data against the Decent Homes Standard. Landlords who grade well tend to show the mirror image: good stock condition coverage, and data systems reliable enough that the same numbers reach committees and boards month after month. Nearly three years of Tenant Satisfaction Measures point the same way, with repairs and maintenance the single biggest driver of overall satisfaction.

Hickson’s moves are worth reading as a sequence rather than a checklist. He had the services externally assessed early, on the principle that it is better to take a kicking before the inspector gets there. He binned 2,500 electrical certificates that could not be validated and started again. He built a simple compliance dashboard showing real-time evidence and incremental progress, and set up a Housing Operations Board with members, residents and independent experts around the table. Then came the uncomfortable call: responsive repairs were deferred to year two so the higher-risk compliance work could go first.

Three months before inspection, several contractors were lost, contractual irregularities surfaced, staff were suspended, and a new major contractor was mobilised in six weeks. The council rang the regulator rather than waiting to be asked, kept them informed throughout, and the episode ended up as evidence of the organisation’s ability to mobilise. C1, as Hickson put it, does not mean perfect. It means the basics are right, the plans are achievable, and there is enough confidence to deal with what comes next.

Rachel Crownshaw at Places for People treats her organisation’s C1, awarded around 18 months ago, as a waypoint rather than a finish line. Places for People now visits every customer face to face once a year, which surfaces unreported repairs, damp and mould, domestic abuse and tenancy fraud. It creates more work in the short term and prevents more acute problems later. On complex repairs the panel agreed that communication does more than anything else, because residents will tolerate things going wrong if they are told what will happen and the promise is kept. The brake on the next stage of Awaab’s Law is contractor capacity: long-term contracts need varying, schedules of rates need changing, and HHSRS-qualified operatives remain scarce.

None of this depends on a large digital programme. It does depend on being able to produce evidence on demand, which is the part Alix is built for. Alix keeps job information in one place, including photos, resident vulnerability flags, the decision trail behind each priority call, and the surveyor’s report generated from the site visit instead of typed up later that evening. Repairs leaders get a view of the whole workload rather than only the jobs shouting loudest, so the important-but-not-urgent work stops sliding quietly into next month. When the regulator, a board or an Ombudsman case asks what you knew and when you acted, the answer is already assembled.

Guildford got there with a simple dashboard and honest reporting, which suggests the tooling was never the real constraint. Knowing what is happening across your stock, and being able to show it to someone who asks, is the constraint. If you would like to see how Alix supports that, we would be glad to show you.