Norwich City Council home safety checks brought back in-house

Safety checks have not been carried out at council properties across Norwich

Safety checks at council properties will be brought back in-house after contractors failed to carry out inspections.

Letters were sent to 17,000 people across Norwich in October to tell them fire, water and electrical inspections were not done.

The situation came to light after an Norwich City Council internal review was ordered.

The council said it "takes responsibility for the situation".

"It is a serious issue and we put our hands up," said Alan Waters, the Labour-run authority's leader.

"I can only apologise for those safety shortcomings but we have learnt the lessons from this and that's why we've revamped all of our systems."

Norwich City Council breached its requirements to keep social housing safe

In all, more than 1,000 electrical inspections had been overdue, including about 200 communal tests.

Mr Waters said although it hired contractors to carry out the checks, the responsibility to ensure they were carried out was the council's.

Lucy Galvin, deputy leader of the Green group at City Hall, said she wanted the council to "commit to investigating how this went wrong".

"We found out on Friday that some of these checks date back 10 years," Ms Galvin said.

"It is a lot of people affected.

"The issue is probably one of contact management and how the contracts were drawn up."

The authority will need to spend £2m over the next two years to make sure the checks are carried out.

Mr Waters said it had started getting through the backlog of safety checks and was prioritising high-risk properties.

He said residents, or relatives of residents, could contact the council if they were concerned safety checks may have been missed at their properties.