Ombudsman fears removal of lifetime tenancies
The housing ombudsman fears tenants will be frightened to complain if security of tenure is taken away.
Speaking at a session at the Chartered Institute of Housing conference last week, Mike Biles said private tenants are at a disadvantage because ‘if you want to complain you run the risk of being kicked out of the property’.
He said removing security of tenure would place social tenants in a similar position, by taking away ‘links to people like me’.
Mr Biles was speaking in one of three sessions led by the National Tenant Voice to find out what concerned tenants. Its evidence will be handed to housing minister Grant Shapps.
The body, set up to influence national housing policy, was also gathering the evidence in a bid to prove its worth and ensure its continued existence.
Richard Crossley, chief executive of the NTV, recently wrote to the minister to plead the case for the non-departmental body, which has had its £1 million budget frozen.
‘We are telling him what we are about – tapping into the vast resource of voluntary effort,’ he said.
‘It’s about people being engaged in government and actively with landlords.’ The board and its chair are all unpaid, he added. ‘We are frustrated because with one staff member we can’t do any more.’
The NTV met for the first time earlier this year and its main element is a 50-strong council, which will represent tenants to give them a voice and influence government policy.
As well as security of tenure, other NTV sessions at the conference looked at empowering tenants and housing supply.
Tenants were keen empowerment was not forced on them and that efforts should be made to help people understand the need for new homes in rural areas.
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Readers' comments (7)
kass | 28/06/2010 10:35 am
Just in case the Ombudsman denies knowing it - because it's hard to imagine they don't know it and known it all along - social tenants have been and are stopped and terrified of complaining because of harassment or fear of harassment from their landlords.
And governement after governemnt have never given tenants real power to stop this or protection.
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Rick Campbell | 28/06/2010 11:22 am
Quite so, kass
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Rick Campbell | 28/06/2010 11:23 am
Landlords tend to encourage lapdogs not watchdogs.
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Dave Hollins | 28/06/2010 5:18 pm
If the government gets rid of the TSA, keeping the NTV will be a small price to pay to make sure tenants have a voice in government and with landlords.
Security is one issue where the NTV can reflect tenants' fears and concerns to the government. Kass is right - there have been too many examples of bad practice and bad policy by landlords in the past - that's why tenants got security in the first place as a bipartisan measure supported by both parties. Without security, tenants in Westminster would have been powerless in their own defence against Lady Porter.
It's also good to see the Ombudsman speaking out in favour of tenants' rights.
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stephen shepherd | 28/06/2010 11:51 pm
Kass you are so right.
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Anonymous | 29/06/2010 5:08 pm
Hi DH
Losing security has it's good points and the Ombudsman is I'm sure well aware of this
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| 29/06/2010 11:50 pm
Security of tenure is a good thing:
To ensure that the older generation of merit allocated tenants can stay in the properties they have lived in all their working lives and not get hounded out by the RSL due to "over-occupation" simply because there is a large queue of indigenous single mothers on benefits and third world immigrants with vast families waiting to be allocated said property on the basis of their so-called "need".
Security of tenure is a bad thing:
Because it makes it extremely difficult to evict those "needs" allocated anti-social tenants who make the lives of their merit allocated neighbours hell without the RSL spending a fortune on barristers and putting the lives of those neighbours at risk via the tortuous process of getting them provide enough evidence for the supine judiciary to grant possession.
Take your pick. Or rather, instead of looking at fixes for the symptoms of the current malaise of social housing (security of tenure) why not look at the cause of that malaise (the allocation system)...
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