We Can End the Conspiracy of Silence: Join MPs’ Call for Action

By SHAC and Lindsay Bush

Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP and a cross-party group of MPs have blasted the Government’s lack of housing association accountability, writing to the Housing Minister, Matthew Pennycook, on the 29th July saying:

We strongly believe that residents in housing association (HA) properties across the country are being failed. They are being failed by landlords who face insufficient accountability, by complaints processes that exhaust rather than resolve, and by a regulatory framework that has not kept pace with reforms elsewhere in the housing sector. We are therefore writing to urge the Government to address this during this parliamentary session.

Bell’s letter was an extraordinary, public admission that a sector which houses some of the most vulnerable people in the country, which has amassed an operating surplus in excess of £4 billion through rents, service charges, fees and sales, and which receives £4 billion annually in public sector grants is both persistently failing and unaccountable.

Yet this powerful statement on a subject of major national importance has not generated a single inch of media coverage that we have been able to find. It feels like a conspiracy of silence, even when high-profile politicians are making the call for change.

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Action #1: Please share the letter by downloading it here. If your MP is one of the signatories, please encourage them to maintain pressure on Government to address the gap. If your MP is not among the signatories, please ask them to endorse it. You can find your MP here.

Action #2: Bell Ribeiro-Addy is the MP for Clapham and Brixton Hill. SHAC has invited Bell to meet with us to discuss housing costs, transparency and accountability, and whether the Social Housing Bill could be used to strengthen protections for residents. If you live in her constituency, please write to her supporting our request for a meeting. You can compose your own correspondence or use our draft text here.

For a fuller analysis of the letter, plus details of the signatories and non-signatories, please see the Peabody Complaints Archive by David Wood.

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Who Speaks for Social Housing – and Who Speaks for the Residents?

Housing associations frequently tell residents that lessons are being learned when things go wrong. But look across several years of Housing Ombudsman findings and a troubling question emerges: how many lessons have to be learned before something fundamentally changes?

The Housing Ombudsman published its first report devoted to severe maladministration in 2019–20. It featured just five cases. By 2022–23, the Ombudsman recorded 131 severe maladministration findings, up from 31 the previous year. Of those 131 findings, 112 involved landlords with more than 10,000 homes.

Then came an extraordinary jump. In 2023–24 there were 856 severe maladministration findings, with 88% involving landlords with more than 10,000 homes. In 2024–25 there were another 714 and, once again, almost four out of five involved landlords with more than 10,000 homes.

These figures should not simply be read as proof that landlords suddenly became vastly worse: the Ombudsman’s powers, workload, visibility and reporting have changed considerably over this period. But they do show the extraordinary scale of serious failures now being independently identified. And many of the names involved are among the biggest and most influential housing associations in the country.

The G15 Irony

The G15 describes itself as the collective voice of London’s largest housing associations. Despite retaining the G15 name, it now has 11 members as a result of the merger fever that has gripped housing associations in their bid to secure numerical dominance. Together they own or manage more than 880,000 homes nationally and provide social and affordable housing to around one in ten Londoners.

The organisation exists partly to influence housing policy. It works with government, the Mayor of London, regulators, funders and national policymakers, and believes itself to be a driver of positive change within the sector. Yet every one of the 11 housing associations currently comprising the G15 appears in the Housing Ombudsman’s published 2024–25 table of landlords with severe maladministration findings.

Their figures for current G15 member ‘severe maladministration findings 2024–25 show that together, they have racked up a total of 228 condemnations:

• L&Q = 77
• Peabody = 34
• Southern Housing = 24
• Notting Hill Genesis = 22
• Clarion Housing = 16
• A2Dominion = 11
• Metropolitan Thames Valley = 10
• Sovereign Network Group = 10
• Riverside = 9
• Guinness Partnership = 8
• Hyde = 7

The Ombudsman made 714 severe findings altogether that year. On that basis, the organisations which make up today’s G15 accounted for almost one third of the total at 228. That surely deserves attention?

Who Represents Whom?

There is another layer to this story. The National Housing Federation (NHF) is the main trade body representing housing associations in England. Like the G15, it is not a regulator. Its job is to represent the sector. Cross-checking current NHF membership against the Ombudsman’s 2024–25 severe maladministration table shows dozens of NHF-member housing associations appearing in it.

That perhaps isn’t surprising given the size of the NHF’s membership. More interesting however is its Board. The current cohort of NHF Board members include Ian McDermott, Chief Executive of Peabody, Mel Barrett, Chief Executive of Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing, Ruth Cooke, Chief Executive of GreenSquareAccord, and Victor da Cunha, Chief Customer Officer at Notting Hill Genesis. Once again, all four of those landlords appear in the Ombudsman’s 2024–25 severe maladministration table. Between them, they received 68 severe maladministration findings that year.

This does not mean those executives were personally responsible for the individual failures, nor does sitting on the NHF Board imply wrongdoing. But residents are entitled to notice the extraordinary overlap between those who help represent the housing association sector at national level and organisations which feature prominently in the independent Ombudsman’s findings.

Ian McDermott and The Revolving Doors of Influence

Ian McDermott provides perhaps the clearest illustration. He is Chief Executive of Peabody, which received 34 severe maladministration findings in 2024–25. He also sits on the National Housing Federation Board. And he is currently Chair of the G15. In other words, the chief executive of a landlord with 34 severe maladministration findings simultaneously helps govern the national body representing housing associations and chairs the collective representing London’s largest housing associations.

This starkly illustrates just how interconnected the upper levels of the housing association sector are. And the G15 makes no secret of wanting influence. It says its mission includes helping to shape policy and working with local government, the Mayor of London, regulators, funders and national policymakers.

The obvious question for residents is: where is the equivalent organised resident voice with comparable access and influence?

Clarion’s Eastfields Estate Shame 

Perhaps nowhere is the gap between residents’ experiences and regulation illustrated more starkly than the Eastfields estate in Mitcham. In 2021, television investigations exposed families living with damp, mould, leaks, collapsed ceilings and rodents. Clarion apologised. Its Chief Executive Clare Miller subsequently told MPs that she was “ashamed” of what had happened.

Yet the Regulator of Social Housing investigated and concluded that, while individual repairs problems clearly required resolution, it had not found systemic or organisational failure indicating a breach of the consumer standards.

MPs were unimpressed.

When Jonathan Walters, then Deputy Chief Executive of the Regulator, appeared before a Parliamentary committee, Labour MP Ian Byrne challenged him over the decision. Walters acknowledged that what residents experienced was unacceptable but explained that Clarion had organisation-wide systems and processes in place.

Byrne pointed out that the Regulator had imposed no sanctions on Clarion, which was confirmed by Walters on the basis that it had not found Clarion in breach of the serious-detriment test or its standards. Parliament’s subsequent report was scathing. The cross-party Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee said it did not find the Regulator’s explanation of why Clarion could be compliant at Eastfields convincing.

Even more concerning for residents, the Committee said it was “deeply concerned” about how little the Regulator appeared to engage with tenants. MPs concluded that the Regulator’s approach had resulted in “the most passive consumer regulatory regime permissible under the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008” but no action ever ensued against Clarion, and it has continued receiving government housing grant.

While the law has since changed substantially, with the old serious-detriment test abolished in favour of slightly stronger proactive consumer-regulation, SHAC continues to receive scores of complaints about Clarion.

There is also a striking postscript. Jonathan Walters became Chief Executive of the Regulator of Social Housing on 1 May 2026. He therefore now leads the organisation whose earlier regulatory approach he defended before MPs. There is no suggestion that his appointment was improper, but it leaves tenants and residents to question of whether the culture of regulation has changed as much as the law has.

Naming and Shaming Not Working

While the sanctions that the Ombudsman can apply are mild, the orthodox theory goes that the public naming will shame housing associations into improving their performance. The evidence once again shows that this is not happening.

The Ombudsman’s severe maladministration publications stretch back to 2019–20. Hyde appeared in that very first severe maladministration report. Orbit appeared in 2020–21. A year later, the list included L&Q and Metropolitan Thames Valley.

Further, by 2022–23, the number of severe maladministration findings issued by the Ombudsman had risen to 131, with large landlords accounting for 112 of them. By 2023–24, the number had reached 856, and in 2024–25 there were another 714 declarations.

Not only are the same names appearing time and again, but the promised improvements have not materialised. The Ombudsman published ‘Learning from Severe Maladministration’ reports in 2025–26 and 2026–27, yet the familiar large housing associations continue to feature. This is why residents may reasonably question whether severe maladministration is always being treated as an exceptional failure when the evidence increasingly looks like something much more persistent.

The uncomfortable question

Housing associations have considerable collective influence. The NHF speaks nationally for the sector. The G15 speaks for London’s largest housing associations and openly seeks to shape policy. Chief executives and senior officers of major landlords sit on these bodies and engage with politicians, government and regulators.

Meanwhile, the Housing Ombudsman continues to publish hundreds of findings describing what happens when residents encounter the other side of this system: failed repairs, damp and mould, unsafe homes, poor communication, ignored vulnerabilities and complaints which go round in circles. As Bell said, “complaints processes that exhaust rather than resolve, and … a regulatory framework that has not kept pace with reforms elsewhere in the housing sector.”

It is clear that some of the organisations with the greatest collective voice in shaping the future of social housing are also repeatedly appearing in the most serious findings made by the body investigating residents’ complaints.

Perhaps the question politicians should ask is not simply what the housing sector needs, but who decides what the housing sector needs, and, above all, where is the residents’ equally powerful seat at the table?

Building Tenant and Resident Power

During elections, the media regularly reports that housing is one of the top three doorstep issues for voters. It then largely ignores housing issues when the electioneering stops. Yet if failures on this scale receive so little press attention, and if attempts by MPs to call out the sector are so effectively dismissed by the establishment, it is time to build our own power.

SHAC’s project to create a national housing union for all tenants and residents is one way that we make it happen, and make sure that individually or collectively, we can make decent, secure housing for all the priority it deserves to be.