By Lindsay Bush
The Post Office Horizon Inquiry has done something that tenants and residents rarely see in housing: it has stepped back from thousands of individual experiences and asked whether they were actually signs of a much bigger system failure.
The Inquiry did not just investigate faulty computer software. It examined how complaints were dealt with, the deployment of legal action against sub-postmasters, what senior executives knew, and how governance, institutional culture and government oversight operated. Read the inquiry summary
The comparison is not that housing and the Post Office scandal are identical. It is that an inquiry can look beyond individual cases and examine the systems, decisions and safeguards around them.
What Should a Housing Inquiry Examine?
SHAC proposes that an independent inquiry consider questions such as these. They are starting points for investigation, not findings that every problem listed has been proved or occurs in every landlord or tenure.
1. How are rents set and capped, and do rent policies adequately take account of wages and affordability as well as market comparisons?
2. How did housing-management, service-charge, procurement and complaints-handling systems develop, and what safeguards were built into them?
3. What is the scale of service-charge problems, including calculation or apportionment errors, charges allocated to the wrong blocks, duplicated costs, inappropriate insurance charges, poor records and inaccurate accounts?
4. In England, how effectively is the statutory Complaint Handling Code implemented and monitored, and does evaluation give enough weight to outcomes as well as procedural compliance?
5. How are legal routes used when residents dispute charges or landlord conduct? The inquiry could examine debt recovery, forfeiture and possession proceedings, solicitor involvement and legal-cost clauses, and their effect on residents’ ability to challenge a landlord.
6. What information do chief executives, finance directors and board members receive about residents’ experiences? Are warnings escalated, or do reports understate recurring problems?
7. What are the financial, physical, mental and social effects of housing problems and prolonged disputes, including hardship, fear of losing a home, damaged relationships, inability to sell and depletion of retirement savings?
8. What forms of redress are appropriate when people have been wrongly charged or badly treated, and should it reach all those affected rather than only those who complain? Where charges were met through Housing Benefit or Universal Credit, what further questions about correction or redress arise?
9. Is there evidence that legal claims intended to deter public participation, or anti-social-behaviour procedures, have been used against residents because they challenged a landlord? What safeguards and remedies are needed?
10. Do government departments, the Regulator of Social Housing, the Housing Ombudsman, councils and other public bodies form a coherent system of oversight, or are there gaps between their roles that leave recurring problems unaddressed?
One example raised in Parliament illustrates why this question should be examined. During a House of Commons debate on SLAPPs on 21 November 2024, Green MP Siân Berry named Ben Jenkins as a shared owner with GreenSquareAccord (GSA).
Berry told MPs that he had faced serious legal threats from his social housing provider after speaking publicly about residents’ concerns, including poor repairs and safety risks. She also described allegations by GSA’s lawyers, demands that he sign undertakings, and a warning of legal costs. Berry said the Housing Ombudsman had found GSA failed to respond adequately to a series of serious complaints. This is evidence that the case was raised in Parliament during a debate about SLAPPs. It is not a court ruling that the threats legally constituted a SLAPP. Read the Hansard record of Siân Berry’s speech.
The inquiry’s geographic scope would also need to be clear. If it were UK-wide, it would need to account for the different housing systems and institutions across the devolved nations. Several bodies named above, including the Regulator of Social Housing and the Housing Ombudsman, have England-focused roles.
The Atomisation of Complaints
Across Britain, tenants, shared owners and leaseholders report problems with repairs, damp and mould, building safety, service charges, insurance, major works, complaints, access to records and the way they are treated when they challenge their landlord.
Usually, each case is dealt with separately. One resident complains to their landlord. Another takes a complaint to the Housing Ombudsman. A leaseholder may apply to the First-tier Tribunal about a service-charge dispute. Someone facing debt proceedings may end up in the County Court. The Regulator of Social Housing looks at a different part of the system.
There is no single body with a clear remit to examine every part of that picture across landlords, tenures and routes of redress. The question is whether existing bodies can join up the evidence sufficiently to identify patterns and address their causes.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP and other MPs have called for action on housing association accountability. In a public letter to the Government, they wrote: “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.”
Read SHAC’s account of the MPs’ letter (We Can End the Conspiracy of Silence: Join MPs’ Call for Action). The letter focuses on housing associations, but its concerns prompt a wider question: what could be learned by considering similar experiences across the whole housing system?
The Golden Web and the Question of Independence
SHAC has used the term “Golden Web” to describe the relationships and career moves linking housing providers, regulators, government bodies and organisations responsible for scrutiny and redress. These connections do not, by themselves, show improper conduct. They do raise questions about independence, safeguards and public confidence.
Richard Blakeway completed his second and final term as Housing Ombudsman on 31 July 2026. Aster Group announced that he became a Non-Executive Director on 1 October 2026. Aster is a major housing provider, and its announcement says his experience of regulation, governance and customer accountability will support its board. Aster’s announcement.
Blakeway had also become Chair of the Office for Legal Complaints, which oversees the Legal Ombudsman, on 1 April 2026, while he was still serving his final four months as Housing Ombudsman. The Legal Ombudsman’s biography.
Fiona MacGregor stepped down as Chief Executive of the Regulator of Social Housing in April 2026. On 24 September 2026, Sanctuary announced that she had joined its Group Board as a non-executive member. Sanctuary is itself a major registered social housing provider. Sanctuary’s announcement.
There is no suggestion that either appointment is improper, and both organisations may reasonably value the experience these individuals bring. The question for an inquiry would be whether the boundaries between providers, regulators and bodies responsible for redress are sufficiently independent, and whether a cooling-off period should apply to some senior appointments.
A housing inquiry could also examine whether close professional networks can contribute to groupthink or make robust challenge less likely. That is a question to investigate, not a conclusion that follows from any individual appointment.
Lessons from Horizon
One lesson from Horizon is that several layers of governance, professional advice and oversight can exist while serious problems remain unrecognised. A housing inquiry should therefore examine more than bad repairs or disputed bills. It could look at the relationships between housing associations, their boards, government, regulators, the Housing Ombudsman, professional bodies, lawyers, auditors, consultants and contractors.
It should examine whether close professional networks affect challenge, and whether declarations of interest and existing safeguards are sufficient to maintain independence and public confidence.
It should also consider the difference in influence between senior housing professionals and the people who live in the homes. Residents need a meaningful opportunity to have recurring problems heard together, not only through separate cases.
Renters must be included
This cannot be an inquiry only about leaseholders. Tenants also pay for communal cleaning, gardening, heating, lighting, caretaking, management and many other services. Sometimes those charges appear separately; sometimes they are included in the rent.
The rights and practical routes available to tenants to scrutinise those costs can differ from those available to leaseholders. Whatever someone’s tenure, if a landlord asks them to pay towards a service, they should be able to understand what they are paying for, how much it cost, who provided it, how their share was calculated and whether the service was delivered.
Government Recognition
There are signs that government recognises some wider problems in the property sector. Speaking at the Labour Party Conference on 29 September 2026, Housing Secretary Angela Rayner criticised excessive leasehold administration charges and announced plans for independent regulation of property agents. Her speech referred to homeowners, renters and leaseholders facing hidden fees and traps. Read the conference speech.
The announcement was not specifically about housing associations. It leaves an important question: will the proposed regulation cover agents managing homes for housing associations, and how will it fit with existing social-housing regulation? The scope needs to be clarified; the speech alone does not establish that housing association residents are excluded.
Join the Dots
The Horizon Inquiry examined internal documents, senior decision-making, lawyers, governance, oversight and institutional culture. It asked not simply what happened to one sub-postmaster, but how the system allowed similar injustices to happen repeatedly.
Housing deserves the same kind of question. Instead of asking only whether an individual tenant can prove that their landlord got something wrong, we should ask what repeated experiences reveal when they are considered together.
When tenants, shared owners and leaseholders report similar problems, what might we learn by joining those experiences together? And when senior figures move between providers, government, regulation and scrutiny, is housing oversight sufficiently independent? Who is ultimately holding whom to account?
A genuinely independent public inquiry could find out.
10 October 2026
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Excellent article!
I would also add – although it might seem a minority subject – that social housing organisations also need to be made to comply with disability discrimination law which is that all of their properties should be disability accessible. Up until now and including my own housing association they disobey the law with impunity having non-accessible doors and wheel chair and mobility scooter users having to rely on able bodied tenants to open the doors for us – which they do I can report with solidarity and kindness. But what we want is independence and for the law to be obeyed.
This is not actually a minority subject because anyone can become disabled through bad luck and barring death everyone is going to get older which brings its own vulnerabilities.
Also properly accessible buildings would also help people with push chairs/buggies and heavy shopping etc. so everyone would benefit.
The serious scandal and hugely sickening failures /serious consequences caused by Social Housing body failures and cover ups – are much worse and much larger/ more serious than the Post Office scandal in our opinion, we will soon find out how much worse and how more serious.