Ofsted: Kent Care Leavers in Unsafe Homes

In Kent, young adults leaving care are telling inspectors something no “corporate parent” should ever have to hear: I don’t feel safe where I live. In a local authority survey quoted by Ofsted inspectors, one in five care leavers said they did not feel safe in their homes, and only 63% rated their accommodation positively. The reasons were not abstract or “lifestyle-related”. They were grimly practical: damp, mould and faulty electrical wiring inside the property; unsafe neighbours and local environmental risks outside it.

This sits uncomfortably alongside Kent County Council’s legal and moral role as corporate parent for care-experienced young people—support that can run up to age 25. Kent’s own Corporate Parenting Annual Report 2025 describes the scale: 2,039 “care experienced” young adults, and—within that—1,868 care-experienced young people aged 18–25 supported as of November 2025. These are not small numbers; they are a cohort the size of a village, spread across a county, trying to start adult life without the one thing most people take for granted: a safe, stable home base.

Kent is now led by Reform UK, with Linden Kemkaran as Leader of the Council. The politics matter, not because damp and mould are “party political”, but because leadership sets priorities, demands data, and decides whether an inspection finding becomes a headline-grabbing dispute—or the starting point for a measurable plan.

The inspection’s core warning: safety and suitability are slipping

Ofsted’s judgement on “the experiences and progress of care leavers” was blunt: requires improvement to be good. The most alarming part is not simply that some homes are substandard—though that is serious enough—but that care leavers’ accounts of risk were corroborated.

Inspectors reported that the “same picture” was confirmed on their visit. They also noted that “the quality and range of housing provision has improved little since the last inspection”. In plain English: this is not a new problem, and there is little evidence it has been fixed.

The system problem: 12 housing authorities, one corporate parent, and a lot of buck-passing potential

Ofsted points to a structural complication that many residents won’t realise exists. Kent has 12 district/borough councils that act as housing authorities; this creates variability in both the quality and availability of accommodation. That does not let anyone off the hook—it simply explains why responsibility is too easily bounced from desk to desk.

Care leavers can end up in different forms of housing: supported accommodation, social housing, or the private rented sector (PRS). The enforcement levers also vary:

• District/borough councils are usually the housing authority with the main legal powers to inspect PRS conditions and take enforcement action.

• Landlords have repairing and safety obligations, some enforceable through court claims.

• Kent County Council, as corporate parent and leaving-care authority, may not be the primary housing enforcement body—but it is responsible for ensuring its care leavers are supported, safeguarded and not left to navigate hazardous housing alone.

When the lived experience is “damp, mould, faulty wiring”, a multi-authority map is not a comfort. It is a risk factor.

The knowledge problem: “we don’t have the local evidence”

If you want to fix unsafe housing, you start by knowing how bad it is—where, how often, and what the most common hazards are. Yet a Kent Housing Group paper (Private Sector Housing Subgroup, November 2024) openly describes major gaps in the evidence base. It says local evidence on housing conditions was “scarce”, and notes it could not find good evidence on the number of homes with a Category 1 hazard (the most serious category under the Housing Health and Safety Rating System). It also says there was no clear evidence on the most common hazards found across Kent and Medway, and that some datasets were incomplete.[4]

This matters because “Category 1 hazards” are not academic labels. They include conditions that can seriously harm health and safety—such as dangerous electrics, severe damp and mould, excess cold, fire risks, and other hazards depending on circumstances and assessment.

Kent’s own housing strategy materials reinforce the same themes—damp and mould, electrical safety, and gaps in local condition intelligence. An AECOM evidence refresh also underlines how limited and patchy local housing-condition data can be, and why relying on incomplete datasets can flatter the position.

So we have a bleak alignment:

• Care leavers describe dangerous conditions and feeling unsafe.

• Inspectors say the picture is real and persistent.

• Housing partners acknowledge the local evidence base is thin.

• Strategy documents recognise damp, mould and electrical issues as recurring problems.

The obvious question follows: if the county’s own housing partnership says the data is poor, how exactly is Reform-led KCC ensuring that care leavers—who are meant to have a corporate parent—are not being placed, or left, in housing that fails basic safety standards?

What the law expects: corporate parenting is not a slogan

Corporate parenting principles

The Children and Social Work Act 2017 sets out “corporate parenting principles” for local authorities in relation to looked-after children and care leavers—principles that include acting in their best interests, promoting their physical and mental health and wellbeing, helping them access services, and supporting preparation for adulthood. Kent’s own Corporate Parenting Annual Report explicitly echoes these principles, including the commitment to ensure young people are safe and have stability in their home lives.

The significance is simple: if a significant minority of care leavers are saying they do not feel safe at home—and inspectors confirm the picture—then the corporate parent cannot treat housing quality as “someone else’s problem”. Even where enforcement sits with district councils, corporate parenting requires active coordination, escalation, and advocacy.

Duties around poor housing conditions

Housing law draws a sharp line between who owns the problem and who must act.

• Under the Housing Act 2004, where a local housing authority identifies a Category 1 hazard, it is under a duty to take the appropriate enforcement action. In most Kent areas, that “local housing authority” role sits with the district/borough council (not the county council).

• Separately, landlords’ repairing duties and fitness standards can be enforced by tenants through the courts—particularly via repairing obligations and the “fitness for human habitation” provisions.

• Environmental health powers can also come into play where conditions amount to statutory nuisance.

For a care leaver, the problem is that these rights and duties are fragmented across agencies and legal routes. This is precisely where a corporate parent is meant to bridge the gap: ensuring the young person is not left to fight a damp-and-wiring battle alone, with a landlord on one side and multiple councils on the other.

The human rights frame: home, dignity, and discrimination risk

Public bodies must act compatibly with the European Convention on Human Rights as brought into UK law by the Human Rights Act. Three provisions are especially relevant to the scenario Ofsted describes:

• Article 8 (private and family life, home): Serious, prolonged housing hazards can engage the right to respect for the home—particularly where the state is directly involved in placements, funding, or failures to act.

• Article 1 of Protocol 1 (peaceful enjoyment of possessions): Tenancy rights and the practical enjoyment of one’s home can, in certain circumstances, fall within this protection—especially where public action or inaction effectively prevents ordinary enjoyment.

• Article 14 (non-discrimination): If care leavers—by virtue of their status and vulnerability—experience materially worse protection or outcomes than comparable groups, questions of discriminatory impact can arise, particularly when combined with Article 8 or A1P1.

This is not to say every damp flat is an automatic human-rights breach. It is to say that when the state is corporate parent and the cohort is demonstrably vulnerable, a pattern of unsafe accommodation raises human-rights questions that a serious authority should address head-on—before they become litigation, ombudsman findings, or another damning inspection paragraph.

“Funding pressures” is not a housing strategy: Reform-led KCC’s response after Ofsted

Following Ofsted’s latest findings, Kent County Council issued a public statement pushing the argument that the council faces unique, underfunded pressures from Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking (UAS) care leavers—particularly because, it says, it receives zero funding for UAS care leavers over 21 and that many remain supported until 25 due to asylum delays and lack of family networks. KCC also states that the care leavers “requires improvement” rating is one council leaders “do not recognise”, arguing it fails to account for Kent’s circumstances.

KentOnline also reported—via KM media coverage shared on KMFM’s news feed—that the KCC leader wrote to the Home Office calling for more funding for young asylum-seeking adults who have left care.

These points may be relevant to budgets and national policy. But they do not answer the inspection’s most human finding: care leavers saying they do not feel safe where they live, and inspectors confirming the same. Even if funding is tight, the baseline question remains unavoidable:

What is the minimum housing safety standard Kent will accept for its care leavers—and how will it prove compliance across 12 housing authorities and a mixed market of providers and landlords?

What care leavers (and their supporters) can do now

A corporate parent should provide a clear pathway, not a maze. But while the system catches up, there are practical steps that usually matter most:

1. Report hazards in writing to the landlord/provider (keep photos, dates, and copies). If electrics are unsafe, treat it as urgent.

2. Ask the district/borough council for an inspection under housing standards/HHSRS—especially where you believe a serious hazard exists. Category 1 hazards trigger strong enforcement duties once identified.

3. Use your personal adviser (PA) properly: ask them to put the issue into your pathway plan actions, escalate with the housing authority, and record safeguarding concerns where you feel unsafe.

4. If repairs are not done, consider legal routes: repairing obligations and “fitness for human habitation” provisions may allow a tenant to pursue action against a landlord.

5. Use complaints routes strategically: complaints to the relevant council(s), and—where appropriate—housing or local government ombudsman pathways. (A PA or advocate can help you avoid being fobbed off between agencies.)

None of this should be necessary for a 19- or 25-year-old trying to build a life. But until the corporate parent system proves it can guarantee safe accommodation, care leavers need a playbook that actually works.

The accountability test: what Kent should publish, measure, and fix

If Reform-led KCC wants the public to accept “we don’t recognise the rating”, it needs to show—openly—what it is doing that will change the reality described by care leavers and inspectors. At minimum, residents should expect:

• A countywide minimum accommodation safety standard for care leavers (including damp/mould response times, electrical safety checks, and neighbourhood-risk assessments).

• A shared data dashboard with districts: hazards found, enforcement outcomes, time-to-remedy, and repeat-problem landlords/providers—so the “scarce evidence base” problem stops being an excuse.

• Clear arrangements for escalation and safeguarding when a care leaver reports they feel unsafe at home.

• Contractual levers for any commissioned accommodation: inspections, sanctions, and removal from frameworks where standards slip.

• A public update on how the new Care Leavers Joint Housing Protocol with all 12 districts is being used in practice—cases resolved, timeframes improved, and where it is failing.

Because the hard truth behind the paperwork is this: you can argue about funding formulas and national systems all day. But a corporate parent is ultimately judged the way any parent is judged—by whether their children are safe at home.

The Shepway Vox Team

The Velvet Voices of Voxatiousness