It could make pretty depressing reading. A group of the largest housing associations in the UK routinely shrugging off repeated findings of serious mismanagement by the Housing Ombudsman. A sector enjoying the protection of a government too scared to effectively regulate them because they help plug gaps in public housing policy.
But tenants, residents, and campaign groups are rebranding the housing association sector, and exposing the changing character of these landlords.
The Housing Ombudsman
The Ombudsman Service is one of the two main regulatory bodies for social landlords. It monitors the behaviour of councils and housing associations, sometimes in response to complaints from tenants and residents, and at other times at their own instigation.
If a complaint is upheld, the Ombudsman can order a landlord to apologise and pay compensation, or issue a Complaints Handling Failure Order; an instruction to the landlord to take remedial action.
The latest analysis from the Ombudsman shows a record number of complaints. But instead of improving their performance, associations are increasingly dismissive of the Ombudsman’s findings knowing that the regulator can do little to enforce compliance.
The Housing Ombudsm – October 2023
The Housing Ombudsm – October 2023
The Housing Ombudsman – September 2023
But while the Ombudsman’s sanctions have proven ineffective, the persistent messaging by campaigners is beginning to break through. Even the sector’s in-house reward scheme is starting to take note.
Sector Self-Congratulations
Analysis of the annual UK Housing Awards between 2019 and 2023 shows that the profile of winners has changed over time, and in a surprising direction.
As a measure of the best performance, the validity of the UK (Affordable) Housing Awards is debatable. They are however a good indicator of the sector’s image.
Where once housing associations walked away with the majority of awards, they are now in the shadows of the councils. Out of 19 prizes, the number awarded to housing associations dropped from 12 in 2019 to just eight in 2023.
Agitation by SHAC and others has publicly undermined the credibility of housing associations, and made the concept of rewarding them slightly toxic to those who do it. The Chartered Institute of Housing no longer sponsors the ceremony.
And instead of the big names, more recent trophy winners are likely to be from among the smaller, more localised cohort. In 2019, the largest housing association to receive an award was Hyde, which owns 43,376 homes. Across all winners, the collective stock totalled more than 190,000 homes.
Five years on, the largest winner was the significantly smaller Lincolnshire Housing Partnership which owns just over 12,000 homes. The collective stock across all winners was just over 51,000 homes; a three-quarter reduction over the past five years.
These trends fly in the face of the sector’s relentless propaganda which insists that bigger is always better; the line rolled out every time housing associations are gripped by merger fever. Pre-merger tenant booklets wax lyrical about the service improvements that will allegedly be delivered by the marriage, but never are.
It is city investors, not tenants and residents, who want their investment vehicles to be large, acquisitory, and hold bloated surpluses. And successive governments have designed a regulatory regime that helps make this happen.
For tenants, the opposite is true. They want small, local, and accessible landlords with rental income reinvested in service delivery and decent homes.
Changes Afoot in Lewisham
In many ways, the most interesting award of 2023 went to Lewisham Homes as Contractor of the Year. This landlord was previously an Arms Length Management Organisation (ALMO), set up by Lewisham council to outsource its housing. In October 2023, after being shortlisted for the prize, Lewisham decided that outsourcing wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, and brought the homes back under direct control.
This is not all that remarkable or even unprecedented – neighbouring Lambeth is considering a similar move. The interesting part is the rationale for their decision as captured in a council statement:
“The aim of bringing housing management back into the Council is to improve it for residents by providing a more joined-up service, linking housing and other Council services that residents rely on. The move follows a survey of residents, in which 71% of respondents said they supported the proposal …”
This is an admission that (as long as it is managed and funded properly) council housing is the superior model. It offers tenants and residents at least some level of democratic control over their homes, and on occasion, they have shown themselves willing to exercise these democratic powers (see Haringey Development Vehicle).
SHAC will continue to highlight the reality of lived experience for tenants and residents, and as we approach a general election, to work with partners to make the housing crisis an election issue at the ballot box.
1 December 2023
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Anchor Hanover Group – the largest “not for profit” housing provider for over 55’s – has a shocking record on abuses of its tenants who dare to speak up about severe maladministration and service charge abuses.
We have been severely threatened with prosecution, eviction and huge costs for merely asking for service charge records from Anchor Hanover Group.
Many Anchor Hanover group residents are targeted/ frightened into silence with multiple threats of (illegal) eviction of residents/tenants, if they dare to speak up about anything that Anchor is severely failing on.
Anchor Hanover Group routinely uses false/fabricated “neighbour disputes” to get legitimate tenants evicted because tenants ask that Social Housing Landlords uphold their side of the tenancy contract.
There is no accessible mechanism to stop illegal actions by social housing landlords against innocent tenants – effectively indicating that Social Housing Landlords are indeed above the law.
So called Anti social behaviour orders are routinely fabricated by Anchor Hanover Group for one, to silence/evict and ruin any legitimate tenants that dare to speak up for their contractual rights.
How do we know this ?
We are still engaged in an over three year battle with Anchor Hanover Group who uses every dirty trick in the book to sicken/ ruin and evict innocent tenants that have respectfully and properly engaged with their social landlord from the beginning.
Anchor Hanover Groups’ use of their solicitors to concoct false statements to severely frighten innocent tenants with threats of prosecution and eviction and huge
costs, tenants who are already the victims of their abuse, highlights the gaslighting and untouchable discrimination that serial abusers have come to enjoy over history.
As the start of this article suggests, there are too many vested interests in the heirarchy of social housing authorities, for anyone in authority to properly enforce / engage with the out of control frankensteins monster – that social housing has become in the UK today.