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Clarion completes controversial last stage of merger
The UK’s largest housing association has completed the last stage of its merger in the face of some local opposition.
Clarion yesterday merged Tower Hamlets-based Old Ford, the last of the landlords that made up the housing association Circle, into the 125,000-home landlord.
John Biggs, the mayor of Tower Hamlets, had previously condemned the decision, telling Inside Housing: “The lack of local management is a significant problem for many residents, particularly given it was a term of the original transfer agreement [from the local authority] that decision-making would remain locally accountable.”
The mayor added that the council was exploring all its legal options for enforcing the transfer agreement. Inside Housing has asked whether it intends to press ahead with any of these.
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Clarion said that it had carried out “extensive consultation with residents and local stakeholders”, but the local council voted unanimously in November to complain to the government and the regulator if the merger were to go ahead.
Neil McCall, chief executive of Clarion Housing Association, the association part of the group headed by Keith Exford, said: “We are pleased to have concluded the simplification of our structures so soon after merger and our focus continues to be on improving the services to residents particularly in those parts of the former Circle Group where they had been failing.
“We’ve been making steady progress and the simplification of the structures will help as we seek to drive up performance across the group.”
Old Ford was at the centre of a 2015 judgement from the Regulator of Social Housing, which slammed Circle for failing to carry out urgent and emergency repairs on time.
The judgement centred on Old Ford’s 4,000 homes in Bow, where the Circle merger caused severe problems in the local repairs service.
