SHAC has heard many accounts of victimising by landlords when things go wrong. Typically, this arises when tenants and residents report leaks, damp and mould in their homes and are told that their own ‘lifestyle choices’ lie at fault, and that action may be taken against them for failing to properly maintain their homes.
On alerting their landlords to such problems, tenants and residents are told that they need to open windows, hang their washing outside, and ventilate the property properly. Structural problems such as poorly built and aging housing still appear to be the last line of investigation for landlords, despite a heightened media spotlight on damp and mouldy homes.
The second group likely to be victimised are those at the sharp end of antisocial behaviour (ASB), and particularly if they are disabled. Landlords seem especially reluctant to accept that a tenant or resident has done nothing to trigger the ASB. By blaming both parties, landlords effectively give themselves licence to act against the victim as well as – or sometimes instead of – the real perpetrator.
Clarion’s New Low
Now however one of the largest landlords in the UK, Clarion Housing Group, appears to have gone a step further down the victim-blaming and intimidation path. Those who complain of service failures are being automatically placed on a ‘Risk to Staff’ register, according to evidence shared with SHAC.
SHAC considers this an abuse of process. Being on such a register restricts the ability of the tenant or resident to interract with the landlord. Such registers should therefore only apply where there has been an incident in which a tenant or resident has behaved inappropriately towards a staff member, in which case it is entirely legitimate for their employer to protect the worker from further harm.
The Clarion letters however seen by SHAC make no allegations of wrongdoing by the recipient. Instead, they state that the reason they are being ‘registered’ is that they made a complaint about a service failure.
The Letter
One such letter states:
“I am writing to inform you that we have added a risk alert to your computerised records and included your name on our Risk to Staff Register, in line with our policy. The fact that you are on the Risk to Staff Register may also be shared with our maintenance contractors or other partners.
“We acknowledge there have been no recent incidents of concern. However, due to an ongoing legal process, visits will be conducted in pairs to ensure clarity and fairness for everyone. This ensures transparency and mutual understanding in all interactions. You are welcome to have a representative present during any visits.
“We will review the potential risk after 12 months to decide whether it is still appropriate to keep the alert on your record and your name on the register or to remove your entry.”
The promise to allow a representative to be present with the occupier whenever a contractor is visiting the property is disingenuous since the visits are often done without any prior notification.
SHAC’s Complaint to Clarion
SHAC has now written to Clare Miller, Clarion chief executive, challenging the legitimacy of the letters, its abuse of the Risk Register, and the automatic tagging of tenants and residents in this way without any grounds for doing so. SHAC’s email to Clare said:
“I write on behalf of members who have contacted SHAC to say that as soon as they submit a complaint to Clarion, they are automatically added to a ‘Risk to Staff’ register.
“This is being done even where there have been no allegations that the tenant or resident has used inappropriate language, threats, or in any other way harassed the Clarion staff that they are communicating with.
“I am attaching one such letter which confirms that our member is now on the ‘Risk to Staff’ register even though there have been no incidents.
“It is the view of our members that this is an intimidatory tactic aimed at deterring Clarion tenants and residents for highlighting problems. We also believe that it is an abuse of process, and an abuse of their rights under the Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679.
“It is only Clarion Housing Group that feels the need to systematically resort to intimidation when tenants and residents submit a complaint about a service failure. We are not aware of any other landlords using this approach.
“We are now calling on Clarion to cease issuing such letters without genuine grounds for doing so. Please respond by close of play on Friday 28th February. I look forward to hearing from you.”
Clarion Tenants’ and Residents’ Dissatisfaction
It is clear that Clarion regards complaints from tenants and residents as a war that has to be won through intimidation rather than addressing the presenting issues. It is no surprise therefore that Clarion has abysmall scores on its Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs) that the Regulator of Social Housing requires landlords to report.
SHAC’s research into TSM ratings across the 21 largest housing associations identified that Clarion scored the lowest in relation to satisfaction with complaints handling, achieving a satisfaction rate of just 20.3% compared to, for example, 85.2% for Orbit Group. For shared owners, complaints handling satisfaction drops even further to 15.9%. This is a shocking indictment of Clarion’s governance.
Clarion Housing Group Tenant Satisfaction Measures
Clarion only scores just 20.3% satisfaction rates amongst social renters, and 15.9% on the same measure amongst shared owners.
It is not only the Regulator that has been aware of Clarion’s failings when it comes to complaint handling. Michael Gove as Secretary of State for Housing took the highly unusual step of writing to the landlord in February 2024, highlighting three cases in particular where Clarion had failed to address complaints about disrepairs over a long period.
The Housing Ombudsman Service has included Clarion in a report highlighting their failure to properly handle complaints. And the problems are historic. The Ombudsman has found Clarion guilty of severe maladministration more than once, and specifically on its complaints handling. SHAC’s complaint to Clarion has therefore been shared with the Housing Ombudsman which has a role in regulating complaint handling across the housing association sector.
Taking Action
As a result of SHAC’s intervention, Clarion’s Richard Pettifar, Director of Customer Services has now opened an investigation into the matter. We will post updates when we receive an outcome. We will continue engaging with Clarion tenants and residents on this issue until a satisfactory outcome has been achieved.
If you are a tenant or resident of Clarion Housing and would like to get involved with SHAC’s campaigns, please join us free here.
19 February 2025
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We have reported Anchor Hanover Group to the Police and to the RSH, Housing Ombudsman and reported this “Landlord”to a raft of politicians and other authority figures…. for Anchor Hanover Group trying to illegally criminally frame us as tenants….. for “drug manufacture and drug dealing”
We only have positive recommendations/references from previous landlords and no criminal involvement in anything.
What is worse is the male hate criminal tenant they are using to try and illegally frame us for drug dealing…. is at the same time…. abusing a 60 plus black woman tenant ..in the most despicable, crafty, and persistent way possible.
Our tenancy and lives are made a living hell in London UK social housing by Anchor Hanover Group.. for approaching 5 years…. by this desperate untouchable landlord…a landlord that smashes, ruins, terrorises and destroys tenants, were they see fit, with no account to the law whatsoever.
We have documented the daily destructive, ruinous and illegal behaviours by this landlord Anchor/Anchor Hanover Group…..and its sophisticated conveyor belt of staff…that it drafts in and out, often the staff are unaware of the central department controlled terror (Anchor customer relations) that they are brought in to be apart of…!
The Anchor managers that will not put the proverbial boot in on a very likable and respectable black woman tenant are moved, fired, pushed out of the housing organisation.
Thus this landlord destroys more lives, well-being, health, reasonable use of, and mental health of innocent tenants……because they can.
A cancer and an endemic systemic rot within the largest social housing provider of care and retirement living for older people … in the UK.
Anchor Hanover Group are too big to fail/jail….too big to respect the law… or the people it houses.
Anchor Hanover Group tenants – John and on behalf of Linda that has never had a voice…and is terrorised by a bunch of males…. …for Linda merely asking for notice before multitudes of unnecessary visits sprung on her, bombarded on her, and to enter her home, prevent her from living a life (being kept awake all night and threatened with death by Anchors goon and stooge living underneath her) and to teach her a lesson… and to shut her up/force her out…sicken and ruin/destroy her…and now criminalise her.
Social housing landlords that have no humane bounds and zero respect for the law and the UK public.
A sophisticated …Sick, Arrogant, Evil Agenda….. running under everyone’s noses….a social and care housing landlord …..committing daily / yearly abuses on innocent inconvenient tenants…. from its central (command) customer relations department of Anchor Hanover Group…. with the full knowledge of the chairman and CEO….. for years….ongoing.
Guinness partnership also employ such tactics
The technology of any era inevitably outpaces the checks and balances designed to regulate it, shaping new forms of abuse. In the white heat of the AI and machine learning driven information age, data , the new oil, is relentlessly gathered, stored, shared, managed and weaponized against individuals– exactly what Clarion is doing with its ‘ predictive policing’ ‘Risk to Staff ‘ register here, an outright abuse of data surveillence and control. . The Housing Ombudsman’s Knowledge and Information Management Spotlight report of May 2023 exemplifies this, as it co-opted SHAC’s resident focused and protective work on acknowledging and making reasonable adjustments for disability—without attribution—and distorted it into a vague , baggy and over -controlling and overreaching vulnerabilities policy. This policy lacked clear legal or definitional boundaries, effectively encouraging landlords to surveil tenants under the guise of “support.” It granted them license to amass information on residents for virtually any reason, often using it to pressure them into compliance—whether by coercing them into actions they neither needed nor wanted to take, or by silencing them through the implicit threat of retaliation.,ASB claims or worse.
Similarly, the way society treats its most vulnerable– including many disabled people who are not just intrinsically vulnerable but much more vulnerabie to being taken advantage of and being abused by more powerful interests — often serves as a warning of how others will be treated in the future. This is evident in social landlords’ vulnerabilities policies, which allow them to impose landlord-led, rather than tenant-led, support and enforce Single Points of Contact (SPOC) communication restrictions with little regard for tenants’ rights. In one case, the Housing Ombudsman justified imposing a SPOC restriction using a vulnerabilities policy–even though that policy was hastily created after the restriction had already been put in place.
Given how landlords are increasingly using data policies to suppress tenant rights, from intrusive and malicious data gathering to stigmatise ,threaten and and punish tenants to denying access to information and seeking exemptions from Subject Access Requests (SARs) — tenants and residents should pressure the Ombudsman to address data misuse and GDPR abuses. The Ombudsman should also be urged to work jointly with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), just as it has done with the Care Ombudsman, to ensure greater oversight and accountability in how landlords handle or, more likely mishandle tenant data.
That said, the Ombudsman is not our ally, and the illusion of impartiality is as transparent as the Emperor’s new clothes—it’s fooling no one. King Richard prioritizes the interests of social landlords, not tenants, which means we must develop stronger strategies to hold landlords, the Ombudsman, and the social housing sector accountable for the misuse and abuse of our personal data, including its weaponization against us.
With the rapid rise of AI, tenants and residents now have the ability to capture, store, and analyze publicly available data on their social landlords , the Ombudsman.and the sector. But this window of opportunity won’t last long– technology is rarely the great equalizer tech evangelists claim. It is usually quickly monopolized and controlled by those in power, so it wouldn’t be surprising if social landlords and the Ombudsman start restricting access to their publicly available data or making it harder to obtain.
Right now, I think, social housing activists must gather as much publicly available data as possible on their social landlords , including determinations, policies, and precedents — before it disappears. Fiona Fletcher Smith, L&Q CEO and Chair of the G15, has already adopted a “stealth mode” approach, asserting landlords’ rights while actively avoiding engagement with tenants’ rights and concerns.
Another procedural dodge being pushed by the Ombudsman is the shift from complaints to service requests–a tactic designed to create the false impression that landlords are addressing tenants’ issues while bypassing formal safeguards and the Housing Ombudsman’s Code. This is yet another systemic manipulation of data and procedure that must be challenged.
Additionally, tenants and residents should submit Subject Access Requests (SARs) to check whether their names have been placed on “Risk to Staff” or “Safety Risk” registers without their knowledge. If anyone thinks this concern is premature, consider this: this author discovered that his landlord, L&Q, had recorded an Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB) incident against him simply because a neighbour reported him missing while he was taking a break. A housing manager tipped me off as he was so concerned about how inappropriate this was whereas L&Q first denied this , implying I had misheard or misinterpreted what the housing officer had shared with me before eventually claiming the ASB record was created “for administrative purposes” to ensure it was routed to the right department. but that I should not infer the record remotely suggested I had done anything wrong. Yeah, right. If I hadnt been given the heads up, I would have been none the wiser.
Lastly , SHAC should consider establishing an Information and Data group to monitor these developments as landlords find new ways to extract data and metrics from those they house. This includes the growing use of in-home surveillance technology, such as devices embedded into new properties that can track and monitor tenants in ways we are only beginning to understand. The time to act is now, before these practices become even more entrenched and difficult and dangerous to challenge. .
Just my thoughts on dealing with one massive, devious and destructive landlord.
Anchor Hanover Group Social Housing and Care providers – are on a list of serial offenders, and a file is being kept on them.
That is the least that can be done, on these Social landords – that operate above the law.
Keep your own files and lists of actual occurences/transgressions/failed actions/harassment/non/mis/malfeasance…. from your landlords their employees and their contractors….. keep all the names, times, dates, actions, failed actions and emails /record and submit all the details regularly.
Small claims court everything, that you have been illegitimately denied – if possible.
Or live on the moon, iow not a lot of options.
Even if you are unable to take action against landlords that severely and unjustly target you for just asking for your basic legal rights at your home, files kept on them may be useful in future, when they have to pay back ill gotten gains – when the scam and racket employed in some cases is exposed.
Check time limits for taking transgressions to court, report abuses wherever and whenever possible.
Dont expect help from anywhere – its an exclusive club and the renter/worker/self employed is the cash cow not in it, and we the donkeys/serfs are working within/on a very, very skewed playing field.
Somebody has to pay for all the failed management/experiment of things – who do you think will be forced/tricked/conned into paying/losing their rights ?
Try to be less of a victim, if possible – part of the solution.
Be part of the solution to corrupt social landlords.