Siddiq Fazaluddin
Could tougher regulation reduce legal disputes between housing associations and tenants?
Curing conflict
The housing minister, John Healey, recently announced that from 1 April 2010 tenants in council and housing association homes will have a right to clear standards of service from their landlords which will be protected by a regulator, the Tenant Services Authority.
One of the key themes of the new initiative is ‘co-regulation’ - encouraging both landlords and tenants to work together to improve the levels of service. This has come about primarily as a result of consultation with tenants, many of whom felt that they wanted to be more involved in decisions about their homes and to have a direct effect on those decisions. Furthermore they wanted to have good lines of communication with their landlords.
Tenants desired a genuine involvement in the procedures, as opposed to a simple tick box approach where they were asked to choose between several different pre-determined alternatives.
The new proposals offer certain services to tenants under the following headings:
- Quality of accommodation – all social rented homes to meet the Decent Homes standard by 2010;
- Tenant choice and customer service - tenants are given good quality customer service and landlords consult with tenants to provide choice and also obtain feedback about services;
- Repairs and maintenance – the landlord designs systems that ensure the repairs are carried out to a good standard, minimise waste and inconvenience and seek to manage financial resources to obtain a good balance between planned and responsive maintenance;
- Neighbourhood and estate management – landlords manage their estates and support a safe and clean neighbourhood for tenants to live in. This includes issues of anti-social behaviour such as vandalism and graffiti;
- Anti-social behaviour and security – landlords agree with their tenants the level and type of service to be provided and ensure that tenants feel that the landlord is dealing with any persistent nuisance.
So will such new measures lead to a distinct and measurable improvement in each of these areas?
The new proposals appear to be a step in the right direction, particularly where there is a lack of good quality rented accommodation and where tenants feel that there is not much that they can do about unsatisfactory services from landlords.
The principle of co-regulation is likely to make tenants of local authorities and housing associations feel more empowered that their views are important. Many people in social housing have a number of other social issues to deal with such as entitlement to benefits, family breakdowns and harassment from other tenants. If they feel empowered by taking an active role in the provision of housing services, they are likely to feel more positive about other areas of their life as well.
Whilst this would be beneficial to tenants, it does not necessarily guarantee that there will be a measurable improvement in those areas. It is likely to take at least six to 12 months for landlords to adapt to the new measures and put them into effect in a practical manner. Only then can the success of the proposals be measured successfully and tenants’ feedback at that stage would be important.
We will need to wait and see whether the new proposals will ultimately lead to a reduction in housing litigation. If tenants feel that the new measures have not made a difference for them, they will ultimately seek a legal remedy.
Certainly, the new measures are unlikely to make a difference in housing litigation in circumstances where the tenant is looking for an immediate remedy, ie the carrying out of urgent repairs. It is usually only in circumstances where a solicitor is involved and there is an immediate threat of legal action that the landlord will respond forthwith to the tenant’s concerns. It is unlikely that the new measures will change that.
However, the new measures are likely to lead to a better relationship between tenants and landlords in the long term, if tenants are made to feel that they have an active involvement in key issues which affect their daily lives. Ultimately, if the tenant seeks an urgent remedy, they will, undoubtedly, seek a legal remedy.
Siddiq Fazaluddin, solicitor, Hodge Jones & Allen LLP
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Readers' comments (10)
worried well | 24/11/2009 10:16 pm
I respect your knowledge of the law but I think that you step well outside of it when you start talking about the new measures being likely to lead to a better relationship between tenants and landlords. That is pure speculation and opinion. I hear quite a bit about involvement being the key to improvement. It really isn't a substitute for real improvement. There are plenty of housing organisations where (a handful) the residents are well involved and yet no improvement of service. The vast majority who aren't involved just want improved services and do not want to spend their evening sitting in council rooms, or waiting in their councillors or MPs offices to get things done.
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Alan Savage | 24/11/2009 10:21 pm
Councils were saying this 20 years ago. Giving tenants a greater say is a nonsense.
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worried well | 25/11/2009 8:15 am
I didn't say it shouldn't be done (greater involvement) just that it is often deployed instead of improving services. Tenant involvement does not equal improved services. It just means that some tenants are involved in the running of the HA.
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kass | 26/11/2009 10:29 am
RSLs are uysing tenants involment polices as a ploy to cover up endemic and abysmal failures.
RSLs are using tenants involment so that any time things go wrong they either say, we had tenants involved so you cannot blame us for bad services, or they will says, this would have not gone wrong it if tenants got involved, so tenants are to blame for not getting involved.
Lika aburke says, why we tenants to get things rights have to spent our times in committees, in meetings, writing complaints, running campaigns, keep diaries on our neighbours, reporte things to police and councils as well as to our landlords, etc.?
Do not RSLs realise that their tenants have lives to live, work to go to, families to raise, huge personal problems to deal with?
An ongoing attitude has been developed by quite a few Housing professionals. When residents accuse them that they are rubbish they have acquired a self-defence anti-tenant skill which is to make the tenants' fault for their own failures of delivering good decent services. Their reply to you is something like, "if you don't like what we've done what is it have YOU done?" (meaning that if you tenant knew better than them you should have been doing their job for them, obviously while them would still be drawing their salaries and not you).
BY all means those tenants who want to get involved should do so, but at the end of the day greatest majority of tenants want good services without having to waste their time and have their lives ruined because their landlords do not provide them.
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kass | 26/11/2009 11:33 am
"...Ultimately, if the tenant seeks an urgent remedy, they will, undoubtedly, seek a legal remedy."
This last point in the article just does not reflect reality. The greatest majority of tenants do not have money to embark on legal actions. It is unlikely if not impossible for them to get legal aid. Until legal aid is restored social landlords will keep on abusing their tenants unchecked, as their complaints procedures and the ombudsman offer no effective protection.
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Harry Lime | 26/11/2009 12:10 pm
Whenever you invite tenant participation on boards or similar you also run the risk that you get partcularly forceful residents who claim they're representing the majority when in reality they're only out for their own agenda or for their own gain. I particularly remember one resident who's eyes lit up when he found out there was 40p a mile available for travel - you wouldn't believe the spurious journeys he'd go on to keep his expense claims ticking over....
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kass | 27/11/2009 9:37 am
Harry Lime | Thu, 26 Nov 2009 12:10 GMT
well, yes, that is what happens. Even now, tenants represntatives on RSLs boards chosen by the landlords for their nodding dogs quality
are there to make their own interests through arselicking the directors.
that's why we need to have democratic elections for tenants representatives where each tenant is elected by all the other tenants and can be kicked out at the next election if they cannot demonstrate they are doing a good job.
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karen | 01/12/2009 9:00 am
There is no point recruiting a nodding dog tenant... its a waste of time and effort. You want a serious, logical, determined, honest and knowledgeable Tenant who speaks for the majority even when that is against their own opinion.
A third of our Board is made up of such tenants and over 40 are on specific service panels.
What you don't want is a tenant OR STAFF MEMBER who abuses their position for personal gain.
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worried well | 01/12/2009 12:05 pm
Even with a third of the board as residents, it still doesn't mean that the service has or is improving. These are often checklist things that meet inspectors tick-boxes. Lots of residents involved - tick. It means that where performance is queried the organisation can respond by saying there are x number of residents on the board. Therefore responsibility for improvement than moves from the organisation to the residents. The residents will then defend the organisation since they are now part of the organisation.
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kass | 01/12/2009 3:50 pm
aburke | Tue, 1 Dec 2009 12:05 GMT
that's exactly it... it is the new game social landlords play, so that either involved or not involved the tenants are always to blame.
Poor services are poor services and no manipulation of tenants participation can rectify that unless the services actually improve.
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