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Editor’s comment


When will the message on tenancy standards get through?


PatrickMooney, News Editor


When ITV News bulletins shone a light on some terrible conditions in the social housing sector, the viewers could have been forgiven for thinking these were exceptional cases affecting a very small minority of tenants, who were unfortunate in having unresponsive and uncaring landlords. The NationalHousing Federation who are the trade body for housing associations, mounted a stout defence of theirmembers saying the small number of cases featured in the television bulletins were not typical, while reiterating the point that neverthess they were still unacceptable. Butmove the dial on a fewmonths and the HousingOmbudsman, which deals with complaints and queries fromsocial housing tenants, has reported that in the three months, April to June this year, there was a 21 per cent jump in calls to his service fromtenants seeking help with getting their complaints resolved. That is a staggering rate of increase and it suggests the sort of problems covered by the ITV investigators were not just “one offs” and they aremore commonplace than the NHF suggested. It also shows thatmore and more tenants are becoming disengaged fromand disenchanted with their landlords’ complaints systems, processes and timescales. Too often these are bureaucratic, lengthy and stacked against the customer. Staff and organisations are not very good at holding their hands up and admitting that they havemessed up and should have done a lot better. It’s somuch easier to close ranks, defend yourself and your colleagues while hiding behind a complicated procedure. Any normal person would rail against this!


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THINGS ARE GETTINGWORSE It is just over 11 years since the Coalition Government (remember them?) led by David Cameron ignited a bonfire of regulations and abolished the Audit Commission, who had been carrying out inspections of publicly funded services, including social housing. It also established a benign regulator, with a “hands off ” approach to social landlords and their services. Social landlords were allowed to regulate themselves and tenants were expected to somehow become armchair auditors and whistleblowers, alerting the regulator to failures in service delivery. In the intervening period it is hard to argue that standards of rental properties and landlord services have improved. They have for some lucky tenants, but not for all. Hard evidence is difficult to come by but the anecdotal evidence is stacking up and it points downwards. It was just over 4 years ago that we had the awful tragedy of the Grenfell Tower fire, but this was not an isolated incident and we have had fires in residential blocks both before Grenfell and subsequently. The Government is responding with various pieces of legislation focused on health and safety – ironically, the very type of regulation that was removed by Cameron, Osborne and Pickles – but it has arguably left behind a bigger,more intractable problem. That of the culture which exists across social housing and is endemic withinmany social landlords, which has leftmany thousands of tenants complaining about the stigma they feel because they cannot afford to buy their own home and as a consequence they live in accommodation rented froma council or housing association, being treated as second class citizens.


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CULTURE CHANGE So how can the culture of a sector providing homes and services tomore than 4 million households be changed? There is little point relying on a system of fines for misdemeanours and bad behaviour. Penalising a corporate body or business will simply result in fewer resources being spent on tenant services. Fines or penalties in a service setting could of course be levied on key individuals – the directors of housing, theHA boardmembers, the councillors in decision-making roles. One or two high profile examples would surelymake the whole sector to sit up and take notice! But better still would be establishing a scheme or system in which all social landlords guaranteed to deliver certain standards of property (at a rent, a letting standard and futuremaintenance) and service levels, where those involved in decisionmaking had to be trained and accredited (or they were barred fromoffice), where landlords were subject to regular inspections and where tenants were included in all stages of the process fromsetting standards, accreditation and the triggering of short notice inspections of their landlord, or of a specific failing service. The power in the relationship needs to change and without this, I do not think the stigma issue will ever go away. This does notmean turning every social landlord into a co-operative (although that is an interesting idea), itmeansmaking itmore of a true partnership where a tenancy agreement (or contract) actually stands for something and is not a badge of dishonour. Something similar could also be extended to private tenants and shared-owners if the social housingmodel worked.


HOUSING MANAGEMENT & MAINTENANCE


OCT/NOV 2021


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On the cover... Enhancing


intercom access Melissa Lloyd-Williams of Intratone explores how access control technology can enhance building ingress.


PatrickMooney


Melissa Lloyd-Williams of Intratone explores howaccess control technology can enhance building accessibility. See page 48.


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