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Why tenants think their feedback is being ignored

The Social Housing Green Paper is set to redress the balance of power between residents and social landlords. Martin Hilditch investigates what tenants would like to happen next.  Illustration by David Lyttleton

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Why tenants think their feedback is being ignored #ukhousing

Will the Social Housing Green Paper give more power to tenants? #ukhousing

Back in September 2015 Alex and Jennie Morrison-Cowan received a surprising and upsetting letter through their door.

The letter was from the solicitor for their landlord, Royal Air Forces Association Housing (RAFAH).

The solicitor’s letter chastised the Morrison-Cowans for “numerous incidents over the past 10 months when you have sought to criticise and undermine the work done by the trustees and management of RAFAH”. It said “prolonged and public criticism of management and trustees has created an unpleasant atmosphere at the scheme” and suggested that other tenants felt the complaints were “destabilising”.

Along with other tenants from the association’s 32-home sheltered housing scheme in the picturesque Sussex village of Storrington, the Morrison-Cowans had been in dispute with their landlord. While there were several strands to the dispute, at its heart was the desire from a number of tenants to be more involved in the running of the scheme and RAFAH’s decision-making process.

They felt that the landlord wasn’t taking their concerns about this seriously enough and that it was also not easy to decipher how RAFAH was spending their rent money, making it difficult to scrutinise what it was doing. Tenants had complained – to the housing regulator, then called the Homes and Communities Agency – alleging a breach of its Tenant Involvement and Empowerment Standard. They had also complained to the Housing Ombudsman and local council, although none of the complaints resulted in any official action.


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The letter heaped pressure on the couple. “We were totally being blamed as individuals,” Ms Morrison-Cowan, a former nurse, recalls. They sought their own legal advice “because if we hadn’t they could have taken us down the eviction route”. While the response from their lawyer and subsequent to-ing and fro-ing appears to have solved the immediate problem for the Morrison-Cowans, many of the scheme’s tenants remain unhappy with the extent to which they are able to influence their landlord’s decisions to this day.

Inside Housing visited the scheme earlier this year. Because it is so small, we were able to speak to a quarter of the tenants on our visit.

Despite an overhaul of management in the intervening period, all of the tenants we spoke to voiced concerns about tenant involvement and the extent to which complaints are listened to (although they acknowledged that not all tenants on the estate feel the same way).

Many are unhappy that they were not involved in a decision to appoint a new managing agent last year. Residents in one property complain that RAFAH “rides over everyone” and that “there is no respect or understanding”. Another says that RAFAH “don’t tell you anything” and a third complains that “we weren’t consulted on the change”.

Rory O’Connor, director of welfare and policy at the RAF Association, says it took over the legal responsibility for RAFA Housing Ltd in February 2017, before which it had been independently run.

“We had been invited to become involved by the previous board of trustees and the association was aware it was taking on a complex and challenging situation,” he says.

He says it went through a formal tendering process to appoint the new managing agency and it “was imperative” this was done “as soon as we took responsibility for Storrington”. “We have been able to set up better and more formal channels of communication with residents” and these and future changes “will mean residents will be more involved in major decisions in the future”.

"The Grenfell Tower fire prompted the government to look again at the experiences of social tenants"

With regards to the solicitor’s letter, he adds that in 2015 RAFA was not responsible for Storrington and that “we are working hard to make sure that the measures we have introduced will lead to the same positive dialogue we have with residents in our other sheltered schemes”.

While this is obviously the story of the tenants of a single landlord in Sussex, the issues raised are ones that social landlords are going to get used to talking about in the months to come.

A year ago, the Grenfell Tower fire prompted the government to look again at the experiences of social tenants.

Housing minister Alok Sharma, and his successor, Dominic Raab, have spent much of the intervening period talking to tenants in order to help them draft a Social Housing Green Paper, which is due out imminently. The most important question, when it comes to involvement and empowerment, is what change would tenants like to see?

At a meeting of the London Assembly’s housing committee last month, residents revealed how they felt structures through which they could be involved in their landlords’ management of their homes, and influence decisions, had been eroded.

Lambeth tenant Ron Hollis said he felt resident participation in the borough “has been allowed to wither”.

Notting Hill Genesis (NHG) tenant Molly Ayton said she was concerned because “there are no elected representatives on any committee of the newly merged NHG, nor was there any in the previous associations”. She suggested it was difficult for residents to understand how and why tenants picked to sit on various NHG committees were chosen as there “tends to be a selection process” which is “conducted in secrecy”.

A spokesperson for NHG says its resident services committee appointed members via a formal recruitment process and ensures “that the residents’ perspective is considered when we make any policy decisions that directly impact on them”. He adds that “residents can get involved in our local scrutiny panels and several other groups which are open to any resident”.

Harry Hall, chair of the Kingston Federation of Residents, said that in recent years the council had “whittled down” the way residents could get involved in decision-making. “We were probably the last [tenants’ and residents’] federation in London to have grant,” he stated. “That ended last year when the old administration decided they were going to put resident engagement out to tender,” which the federation didn’t win.

Dennis Lyons, from Camden Housing Association Residents Forum, said associations had “become increasingly unaccountable”.

Lizzie Spring, a housing association tenant who was part of the shortlived National Tenant Voice which was axed by the coalition government, said a similar voice is needed again.

While all of that gives a flavour of the feedback presented to the Assembly, there were a specific set of demands, too. The London Tenants Federation (LTF) is calling on the London mayor to make it a condition of getting grant funding to build homes that social landlords should have democratic and accountable tenant involvement processes in place and demonstrate that they are properly maintaining their existing properties.

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Mr Hollis, who is an LTF representative, tells Inside Housing that he feels landlords are currently free to ignore the English regulator’s Tenant Involvement and Empowerment Standard, which is widely regarded as being almost impossible to breach (the regulator has never taken action as a result of a breach to this standard).

“If the standard was acted on it’d go a long way to making tenant representation real,” Mr Hollis argues. “If [the GLA] said: ‘What are you doing about it?’ [before providers could access funding] they’d be in a strong position to demand significant change.”

There are obviously important reasons to listen to tenants’ feedback – particularly because they bear the brunt of any failures.

After Grenfell, Diarmaid Ward, executive member for housing and development at Islington Council, wrote in the Islington Tribune about work to one of its blocks, Michael Cliffe House. He admitted that “fire doors need replacing” and that the council was “also looking at improved safety relating to the cabling housed in metallic boxing on the outside of the building”.

"There are obviously important reasons to listen to tenants’ feedback"

While this is good news, these were issues raised in a newsletter produced by the Finsbury Estate Tenants’ and Residents’ Association in August 2010.

Points made by the London Tenants Federation about more active policing of standards has wider support, too. TAROE Trust published a “manifesto for change” earlier this year that called on government to take measures that “will result in more effective tenant engagement and empowerment as a ‘right’ based on prescriptive standards that are rigorously and proactively regulated”.

For now the ball is in the government’s court. After the build-up it has given the green paper, it would be surprising if it wasn’t a stepping stone to significant changes – whether that is regulatory or setting up structures to give tenants a louder voice.

Ms Morrison-Cowan, down in Storrington, certainly hopes so.

“If they get another National Tenant Voice together I want to be on it,” she states. “Because nobody listens.”

Never Again campaign

Never Again campaign

In the days following the Grenfell Tower fire on 14 June 2017, Inside Housing launched the Never Again campaign to call for immediate action to implement the learning from the Lakanal House fire, and a commitment to act – without delay – on learning from the Grenfell Tower tragedy as it becomes available.

One year on, we have extended the campaign asks in the light of information that has emerged since.

Here are our updated asks:

GOVERNMENT

  • Act on the recommendations from Dame Judith Hackitt’s review of building regulations to tower blocks of 18m and higher. Commit to producing a timetable for implementation by autumn 2018, setting out how recommendations that don’t require legislative change can be taken forward without delay
  • Follow through on commitments to fully ban combustible materials on high-rise buildings
  • Unequivocally ban desktop studies
  • Review recommendations and advice given to ministers after the Lakanal House fire and implement necessary changes
  • Publish details of all tower blocks with dangerous cladding, insulation and/or external panels and commit to a timeline for remedial works. Provide necessary guidance to landlords to ensure that removal work can begin on all affected private and social residential blocks by the end of 2018. Complete quarterly follow-up checks to ensure that remedial work is completed to the required standard. Checks should not cease until all work is completed.
  • Stand by the prime minister’s commitment to fully fund the removal of dangerous cladding
  • Fund the retrofitting of sprinkler systems in all tower blocks across the UK (except where there are specific structural reasons not to do so)
  • Explore options for requiring remedial works on affected private sector residential tower blocks

LOCAL GOVERNMENT

  • Take immediate action to identify privately owned residential tower blocks so that cladding and external panels can be checked

LANDLORDS

  • Publish details of the combinations of insulations and cladding materials for all high rise blocks
  • Commit to ensuring that removal work begins on all blocks with dangerous materials by the end of 2018 upon receipt of guidance from government
  • Publish current fire risk assessments for all high rise blocks (the Information Commissioner has required councils to publish and recommended that housing associations should do the same). Work with peers to share learning from assessments and improve and clarify the risk assessment model.
  • Commit to renewing assessments annually and after major repair or cladding work is carried out. Ensure assessments consider the external features of blocks. Always use an appropriate, qualified expert to conduct assessments.
  • Review and update evacuation policies and ‘stay put’ advice in the light of risk assessments, and communicate clearly to residents
  • Adopt Dame Judith Hackitt’s recommended approach for listening to and addressing tenants’ concerns, with immediate effect

CURRENT SIGNATORIES:

  • Chartered Institute of Housing
  • G15
  • National Federation of ALMOs
  • National Housing Federation
  • Placeshapers

 

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