Tenants and residents from Clare House, a tower block alonside lush parkland in east London, have slammed their landlord, Clarion Housing over woefully mis-managed – and still incomplete – evacuation of their flats. Following checks carried out after the Grenfell fire in 2017, Clarion became aware of risks to the safety of tenants and residents.… Continue reading Clarion’s Shame – Clare House Evacuation
By Carl Davis Your landlord is responsible for most repairs in and the safety of your council or housing association home and also for undertaking the annual gas safety inspection. Your tenancy agreement should spell out all your landlords responsibilities around maintenance and repairs and ensuring the safety of your home. It should cover the… Continue reading Studies in Stigma: No Access Must Mean No Access!
In February 2021, senior executives in Riverside discussed a worrying trend: a sharp rise in the number of tenants and residents taking the landlord to court over disrepairs and uninhabitable homes. Claims against Riverside were averaging around 29 claims per month, an increase of over 30% since November 2018. When the report was published, there… Continue reading Riverside Leads United Front Against Tenants and Residents
With the merger of Riverside and One Housing group imminent, tenants and residents of both organisations are understandably concerned about a post-merger deterioration in service standards. The merger will result in One Housing become a subsidiary of Riverside by the end of the year. Of the two landlords, One Housing is generally seen as the… Continue reading Riverside Hid Gas Safety Breach from Regulator
By Carl Davis The Equality Act 2010 requires that employers and service providers like social landlords make 'reasonable adjustments' that will allow disabled people to access the same opportunities and services as non-disabled people. It also requires employers and providers to consider disability in everything they do and to actively anticipate the need for reasonable… Continue reading The Anatomy of a Reasonable Adjustment
With the support of Disability Rights UK and allies, CLADDAG's Leaseholders Disability Action Group has launched a survey to gather some broader data on disabled and older leaseholders impacted by the building safety crisis. You can find the survey here: https://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/SVODM0/. It should take 5-10 minutes to complete. If the survey format is not accessible to you,… Continue reading Survey: Leaseholders and Disability
Over the last few weeks, ITV has broadcast a series of articles highlighting terrible social housing conditions from a cluster of tragic cases in both council and housing association properties. ITV's series of Housing Stories has charted disrepairs in many forms. Using the format of a longer documentary, ITV brought many of these stories together… Continue reading Surviving Squalor: ITV’s Conversation Starter
By Carl Davis L&Q chief executive Fiona Fletcher-Smith must be hoping that the long bank holiday weekend has induced collective amnesia over the damning report in Sunday's Observer (here) on the persistence of appalling living conditions in L&Q homes originally exposed by the paper in 2018. The ongoing scandal of disrepair continues, despite L&Q commissioning… Continue reading Not One Resident’s Voice
Oh, the irony. Or is it hypocrisy? An announcement has hit the headlines. Peter Denton, former CEO of Hyde, has been appointed to lead Homes England, the government body responsible for housing investment. Denton quipped: The government has an ambitious agenda of not just more homes but decent, affordable, safe, energy-efficient ones that sit well… Continue reading Hyde: A Very Bad Apple in a Very Rotten Barrell
The executive of Shepherds Bush Housing Association (SBHA) have been condemned as "unfit to govern" by some employees and tenants horrified at the landlord's culture of mismanagement. Examples of failings provided to SHAC include incorrect service charge bills being sent to around 900 leaseholders over the last eight years. Among the estates affected were the… Continue reading Shepherds Bush Shambles
