SANDWELL SCRUTINY: RED LIGHTS, MOVING GOALPOSTS — AND A COUNCIL PLAN FULL OF “WE WILLS”

Budget & Corporate Scrutiny, October 2026 — the paperwork is talking, even if the minutes aren't... yet

LONG READ WARNING: This is another one for the kettle, biscuits and possibly a packed lunch. If you make it through SEND, housing compliance, homelessness, FOIs and the new Council Plan without needing a lie down, congratulations — you may be ready for local government scrutiny.

Before I start, an important disclaimer.

I was unable to attend the Budget & Corporate Scrutiny Management Board meeting on 15 October, and at the time of writing I have not yet been able to watch the webcast.

The formal minutes of the meeting have also not yet been published.

So this article is based on the 218-page public agenda pack, the previous meeting minutes, the Council's own performance figures and further research into some of the statutory duties sitting behind those reassuring little red, amber and green boxes.

That means I am not going to pretend I know exactly what councillors challenged at the meeting, what officers said in response, or what undertakings may have been given.

When I have watched the webcast and when the minutes appear, I will revisit this article.

As further information comes in, I will update it.

That's rather the point of scrutiny.

You follow the paper trail.

Then you follow the answers.

And sometimes, in Sandwell, you follow the answers for quite a long time.

27 RED LIGHTS — and most of them aren't new

The October meeting considered Sandwell's Quarter 1 Corporate Performance Report, the draft Council Plan 2027–2030 and the Budget & Corporate Scrutiny work programme.

There were 78 quarterly indicators with a RAG rating.

40 were green.

11 amber.

And:

27 were RED.

More importantly, 20 of those 27 red indicators had also been red in the previous quarter.

That matters.

A problem appearing once can be an emerging issue.

A problem sitting there quarter after quarter while reports tell us that “work is ongoing” starts becoming something rather different.

At some point the question changes from:

“What action are you taking?”

to:

“Why hasn't the action worked?”

And that's where scrutiny earns its keep.

SEND — are we measuring failure against failure?

Let's start with SEND.

Because it remains one of the biggest elephants in Sandwell Council House.

Only 21.56% of Education, Health and Care Plans were completed within 20 weeks.

That is an improvement from the previous 12.52%.

Good.

But the target is still 46.1%.

The average time taken for a statutory assessment remains:

41.52 weeks

against a 20-week expectation.

And then we get to phased transfers — those important points where a child or young person with an EHCP moves between stages of education.

Performance:

13.84%

Target:

95%.

The Council also records that 54 young people with EHCPs became NEET after leaving Year 11 last year.

Meanwhile, EHCP numbers have exploded from 2,799 in 2022/23 to 5,125 by July 2026. Public reports pack 15102026 18…

Sixteen extra staff and two managers have been brought in.

Transformation work is under way.

Processes are being redesigned.

Fine.

But I've got a more basic question.

The legal framework says a final EHC plan should normally be issued within 20 weeks, subject to specified exceptions.

Sandwell's own KPI specifically says it measures cases completed within 20 weeks excluding agreed exceptions. Public reports pack 15102026 18…

So...

Why is the target only 46.1%?

If the exceptions are already removed, why are we apparently defining success as fewer than half of cases meeting the statutory timescale?

There may be a technical explanation.

Excellent.

Let's hear it.

Because the national average is not the law.

And benchmarking against poor national performance must never become a way of normalising local failure.

Homelessness — can you have a green box and still be breaking the rules?

Here's another interesting one.

The Council reports 48 families in bed-and-breakfast accommodation for more than six weeks.

The corporate performance target is 30. Public reports pack 15102026 18…

Government guidance is clear that households with dependent children or pregnant women should only be placed in B&B as a last resort and generally for no longer than six weeks.

So perhaps somebody could explain something.

Why is the target 30?

Thirty may be a perfectly reasonable interim recovery milestone.

If so, say that.

Because otherwise the dashboard could theoretically turn green while 30 families remain over the six-week limit.

That's a rather imaginative definition of success.

Sometimes scrutiny shouldn't just ask:

“Why did you miss the target?”

It should ask:

“Why is THAT the target?”

Electrical safety — this is where it gets much more serious

Housing remains one of Sandwell's biggest inherited problems.

The C3 regulatory judgement predates Reform taking control in May.

That is clearly part of the previous Labour administration's legacy.

But what appears in this October pack deserves immediate attention from the current administration.

The Quarter 1 performance figure for five-year electrical safety checks with a satisfactory report is:

81.6%

against:

100%.

But that's not the bit that worries me most.

The report says a review discovered discrepancies between previously reported performance figures and the supporting evidence.

It goes further.

It says earlier reported figures were found to be:

INACCURATE.

Responsibility has now been transferred to the Head of Building Safety and Compliance and the C365 system is being used as the sole compliance-reporting system. Public reports pack 15102026 18…

Good.

Fixing the system is obviously the right thing to do.

But it doesn't answer the governance questions.

How inaccurate were the old numbers?

For how long?

Who relied upon them?

Were scrutiny members previously given inaccurate assurance?

Was Cabinet?

Were senior management?

Was the Regulator of Social Housing?

And most importantly:

Did inaccurate information create additional risk for tenants?

Those are not political questions.

They are basic questions of assurance and governance.

And there's a rather important date coming up...

Electrical safety requirements have now been extended to social housing.

For relevant older social tenancies, installations must have been inspected and tested before 1 November 2026.

That's basically now.

So I don't want to wait months for another quarterly dashboard.

I want to know:

How many properties are outstanding today?

How many are awaiting access?

How many inspections have identified remedial works?

How many remedial works remain incomplete?

Will Sandwell be compliant by 1 November?

And if not:

what happens next?

For a council already carrying a C3 housing judgement, this cannot simply disappear into another paragraph beginning:

"Work is continuing..."

Which raises another perfectly reasonable question

If one major housing compliance dataset has been found to be inaccurate...

What assurance do we have over the others?

I'm not saying the gas figures are wrong.

I'm not saying asbestos, fire, lift or water-safety data is wrong.

There is no evidence before me to make those claims.

But once one important dataset is discovered to be unreliable, it is entirely legitimate to ask whether the others have been independently checked.

The Regulator of Social Housing expects landlords to maintain accurate, up-to-date and evidenced information about their homes and safety obligations.

That's not bureaucracy.

That's how you avoid telling everybody things are fine when they aren't.

Repairs — going backwards

Non-emergency repairs completed on time were previously running at 77.63%.

Quarter 1:

74.37%.

Target:

95%. Public reports pack 15102026 18…

So we've actually gone backwards.

Meanwhile more than 63% of housing-repair calls into the Corporate Contact Centre were residents chasing an existing repair.

There is something beautifully Sandwell about spending time discussing call-centre performance while most of the callers are basically saying:

“Hello. Me again. Any chance you're going to fix the thing I reported last time?”

You could introduce another chatbot.

You could redesign the website.

You could employ more call handlers.

You could install artificial intelligence.

Or — radical thought —

you could fix the repair.

Then the resident doesn't need to phone again.

That is what an outcome looks like.

912 homes provisionally non-decent

The number of council homes provisionally categorised as non-decent has risen from 697 to 912.

That includes 18 properties identified in June with Category 1 damp and mould hazards. Public reports pack 15102026 18…

Again, most of this is an inherited housing problem.

Nobody sensible should pretend Reform created Sandwell's housing difficulties in a few months.

But the political handover creates a new test.

The original question:

What did Labour leave behind?

The new question:

What is Reform doing about it?

And as the months pass, that second question becomes more important.

Transparency — still apparently loading...

Subject Access Requests answered within timescale:

38%.

Target:

90%.

Freedom of Information requests answered within timescale:

62%.

Target:

90%.

Calls abandoned before reaching the Corporate Contact Centre:

21.45%.

Target:

8%.

Average call wait:

8 minutes 51 seconds.

Target:

3 minutes 30 seconds. Public reports pack 15102026 18…

Sandwell is introducing new technology to help with SAR processing, including redaction and deduplication.

That may well help.

But an SAR isn't just somebody asking when the bins are coming.

It is a legal right of access to personal information.

FOIs also carry statutory time limits.

So rather than another general assurance, I'd like the numbers.

How many are overdue?

What's the oldest?

Which directorates are performing worst?

How many complaints have arisen?

And:

When will compliance be back where it should be?

HMOs — rules are no good without enforcement

Those following my planning work will know why this jumped out immediately.

Private-sector housing enforcement Stage 2 performance is:

38.46%

against a target of 75%.

The report also refers to increased suspected HMO cases and says recovery of licensing and enforcement income has been around 20% since 2018.

A business case for additional HMO licensing and income-recovery capacity was supposed to go to senior management in September. Public reports pack 15102026 18…

September has gone.

So:

Was it approved?

How many extra staff?

What was the cost?

How many HMO cases remain unresolved?

How much money remains unrecovered?

And how does this now fit with Reform's plan for a borough-wide Article 4 Direction?

I support tougher HMO control.

But here's the obvious warning.

You can create every planning restriction known to mankind.

If you don't have enough people to investigate, enforce and prosecute...

...you've just created more paperwork for the same bottleneck.

Reform's first Council Plan — now this one IS theirs

This is where we need to separate legacy from current political responsibility.

Housing C3?

Inherited.

SEND delays?

Inherited.

FOI/SAR problems?

Inherited.

The HMO enforcement backlog?

Substantially inherited.

But the Council Plan 2027–2030 is different.

The Council's own report explicitly says that because political control changed in May, a new Council Plan is required to reflect the priorities of the new administration. Public reports pack 15102026 18…

So this is Reform territory.

And there is actually plenty in the direction I agree with.

The three themes are:

Grow Opportunity and Prosperity

Raise Aspirations and Support Families

Build Proud Places and Strong Communities

supported by a commitment to an accessible, financially responsible and transparent Council. Public reports pack 15102026 18…

Reduce deprivation.

Improve housing.

Better jobs.

Stronger town centres.

Earlier intervention.

Help residents out of repeated crisis.

Use evidence.

Improve transparency.

Brilliant.

But I've found one rather large hole.

WHERE ARE THE TARGETS?

The Council's own covering report says something very clear.

If measurable outcomes and targets aren't specified, the authority will struggle to measure impact.

It says Sandwell needs to define exactly what becoming an “outstanding” Council means through concrete targets over both the longer term and year by year. Public reports pack 15102026 18…

Quite right.

Then you read the draft Council Plan.

And there are lots of measures.

Lots of ambition.

Lots of very nice sentences.

Lots of:

“WE WILL...”

But not enough:

“WE WILL ACHIEVE X BY Y DATE.”

Take the economy.

We will measure inward investment.

Business survival.

Qualifications.

Apprenticeships.

NEETs.

Good.

What are the baselines?

What are the 2027 targets?

The 2028 targets?

The 2030 destination?

The same with housing.

How many additional affordable homes?

What percentage decent?

What repairs performance?

When should the Council exit C3?

SEND?

Where is the quantified target for EHCP timeliness?

Transparency?

Where are FOI and SAR compliance targets in the headline Council Plan?

If you want residents to judge you by outcomes, give residents numbers.

Otherwise “improve”, “increase”, “strengthen” and “support” become wonderfully stretchy words.

The Council Plan seems to measure around some of the biggest problems

This is perhaps my strongest concern about the draft.

SEND is currently one of Sandwell's biggest financial and operational risks.

Yet EHCP 20-week performance does not appear among the proposed headline Plan measures.

Housing has a C3 judgement and the Council has now discovered historical electrical-safety reporting inaccuracies.

Yet headline measures focus on affordable homes and overall decency — rather than responsive repairs or key landlord compliance.

Transparency is supposedly central to the new administration.

Yet FOI and SAR compliance are not headline Plan measures either. Public reports pack 15102026 18… Public reports pack 15102026 18… Public reports pack 15102026 18…

Why?

If these are among the biggest things currently going wrong, surely these are exactly the things a serious administration should be willing to measure publicly.

Don't design your dashboard around the awkward bits.

Put the awkward bits on the dashboard.

Moving the goalposts?

Now for one of my favourites.

The target for people completing a Tier 2 weight-management programme has been reduced from 75% to 60%.

Why?

Because the 75% target wasn't achieved under the previous contract. Public reports pack 15102026 18…

Hmm.

Then we have the target for new council homes meeting accessible and adaptable standards.

Last year:

100%.

This year:

73%.

The explanation?

One scheme includes upper-floor apartments only accessible by stairs. Public reports pack 15102026 18…

There may be legitimate operational reasons for both changes.

But this is exactly why scrutiny needs to examine target-setting itself.

Because otherwise the easiest way to improve performance is:

Miss target.
Lower target.
Hit target.
Issue press release.

Lovely.

Scrutiny AFTER Cabinet?

There's another governance point here.

Cabinet considered and recommended the new Council Plan on 14 October.

Budget & Corporate Scrutiny considered it on 15 October.

Full Council considers it on 20 October.

So Cabinet effectively endorsed the document before scrutiny examined it.

That may be perfectly permissible constitutionally.

But surely the ideal point for scrutiny to influence a major policy document is before the executive recommends it?

That's what meaningful pre-decision scrutiny should be about.

The formal minutes of 15 October are not yet available, so at the moment I cannot say what changes scrutiny asked for.

I have also not yet watched the webcast.

So that part of the story remains open.

And I will update it when the evidence is available.

Labour's legacy. Reform's test.

This remains the fairest way to look at Sandwell after May.

Most of these problems were not created by Reform.

The previous Labour administration presided over many of them.

That matters.

History matters.

But so does the handover.

An incoming administration should be given a reasonable opportunity to understand what it has inherited and put corrective work in place.

But “inherited” cannot become a magic word that removes responsibility indefinitely.

At first:

What did you inherit?

Then:

What are you doing about it?

Then eventually:

Why isn't it fixed yet?

That is how accountability works.

And Reform's own new Council Plan gives us a very useful standard.

It says success should be judged not simply by activities completed, but by the difference residents actually experience. Public reports pack 15102026 18…

Excellent.

I couldn't agree more.

In fact, I'd keep that line somewhere safe.

Because we may need it again.

QUESTIONS I WANT ANSWERED

After digging through this pack, these are the questions I'd put straight back to Sandwell:

Why is the EHCP 20-week target only 46.1% if agreed statutory exceptions are already excluded?

Why is the target for families in B&B over six weeks 30 rather than zero?

Exactly how inaccurate were previous electrical-safety figures?

What is the electrical-compliance percentage right now, ahead of 1 November?

Has the accuracy of every other landlord-compliance dataset been independently checked?

Why are non-emergency repairs falling further behind?

Why are more than six in ten repair callers chasing jobs they've already reported?

What is the recovery date for FOIs and SARs?

What happened to September's HMO enforcement/resourcing business case?

Why have some performance targets been lowered?

Why do SEND timeliness, FOIs, SARs and major housing-compliance measures not appear among the proposed headline Council Plan indicators?

And finally:

Where are Reform's hard numbers for 2030?

Not just “more”.

Not just “better”.

Not just “improved”.

Numbers.

Dates.

Responsibility.

FINAL THOUGHT

Sandwell has undeniably improved from the darkest days.

Children's Services are rated Good.

Adult Social Care is rated Good.

Government intervention ended.

The Council has received national recognition for improvement.

Credit where it is due.

But an improving Council still needs scrutiny.

Perhaps an improving Council needs it even more.

Because once everybody starts congratulating themselves, that's exactly when warning lights can become wallpaper.

The October papers contain plenty of them:

27 red indicators.

EHCP assessments still averaging over 41 weeks.

Phased transfers at 13.84%.

Non-emergency repairs deteriorating.

912 council homes provisionally non-decent.

SAR and FOI compliance miles off target.

Families remaining too long in B&B.

HMO enforcement pressure.

And perhaps most troubling:

a key housing safety dataset which the Council now admits was previously inaccurate.

Meanwhile Reform is setting out its plan to become an outstanding Council.

Fine.

Aim high.

But if you want to be outstanding...

define outstanding.

Put the numbers in.

Put the deadlines in.

Publish the performance.

And let scrutiny do its job.

Because Reform says it wants to be judged by results.

Good.

We'll keep the receipt.

UPDATE NOTE: I was unable to attend the Budget & Corporate Scrutiny Management Board meeting held on 15 October 2026 and, at the time of writing, I have not yet been able to watch the webcast. The formal minutes have also not yet been published. This article is therefore based on the published meeting papers and further research. Once I have viewed the meeting and the official minutes become available, I will review what councillors actually asked, what officers and Cabinet members said, what commitments were made and whether anything changes the analysis above. As further information becomes available, this article will be updated.

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Saturday, 17 October 2026