At the end of October, SHAC published a whistleblower’s article on a number of failings by Southern Housing which left tenants and residents without basic facilities in their homes.
The revelations came from Mr Brittain and his colleagues from the Kent Regional Resident’s Panel (Kent RRP) scrutiny panel. The SHAC article was soon followed by interest from the BBC, giving national coverage of the problems.
The rare whistleblowing by a housing association’s own scrutiny panel followed months of inaction by Southern Housing which left vulnerable tenants – including children – living in appalling conditions. All attempts to get Southern Housing to fix the problems led nowhere.
The BBC’s interest changed the attitude of Southern’s managers however. Within a day of the article’s publication, Southern sent a contractor to the property with eight staff – two managers and six building workers – who managed to get painting, electrical work, and plumbing completed by the the end of the day.
When the work was done, the contractors left, but failed to clean the dust generated by the work. In yet another demonstration of the sudden elevation to ‘VIP status’ that tenants can experience when their conditions hit the national headlines, a safeguarding call brought Southern’s management on a personal visit to the site, accompanied by cleaning supplies to carry out a deep clean.
The photos show before and after the work was done.
Before the repairs (left) and after the work was completed (right)
Not an Isolated Incident
While improvements have rightly been made for one family, Southern continue to deny that they are consistently failing in their duty of care towards tenants and residents. Evidence gathered by SHAC shows that this is not an isolated incident but a pattern of behaviour.
It is evident that Southern Housing is able to carry out repairs at speed when forced to do so through public naming and shaming. But many more tenants and residents are in the same position and the solution cannot depend on whether the media takes an interest.
Such injustices have led SHAC and campaign partners to launch a project for a democratic national tenants and residents union set up by the trade union movement and working to a collective self-empowerment model.
2 November 2024
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