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Ombudsman candidate grilled by MPs over comments on social tenants
London’s former deputy mayor for housing and the government’s preferred candidate for the Housing Ombudsman has been grilled by MPs over past comments about social tenants.
On Monday Richard Blakeway faced a pre-appointment hearing at the Housing, Communities and Local Government Select Committee.
Bob Blackman, a Conservative MP and member of the committee, read from a 2009 Inside Housing article that quoted Mr Blakeway as saying: “The quality of life is a joke. Forty-six per cent of social tenants love their dog more than their neighbour. Why? Largely because of the total absence of the market.”
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Mr Blackman told Mr Blakeway: “It goes to the centre of how you are going to treat social housing tenants who feel that they’ve been let down very badly by their social housing provider. They will want to feel confident that you’re going to be on their side to produce justice for them.
“Do you say you didn’t make those remarks or they were made a long time ago and you don’t believe in them anymore?”
Mr Blakeway responded: “I really don’t feel that reflects the view I have of social tenants.”
He added: “I’d like to think that I’ve had a constructive and positive working relationship with those organisations [that are part of the ombudsman scheme] and that I would be perceived as someone who’s very committed to improving the quality of life for households in social housing.”
As Inside Housing reported in 2009, Mr Blakeway made the comments at a British Property Federation conference in a speech in which he said families in social housing were locked in a “vicious cycle”.
He also said: “Intergenerational poverty is staggering, with children never seeing a parent go to work in the morning. Worklessness is rife, with 70 percent of tenants having no qualifications, easily double that outside the sector.”
At the time Mr Blakeway was serving as deputy mayor for housing, land and property under Boris Johnson. He was then appointed as special advisor by David Cameron, although shortly after he was due to start, Mr Cameron resigned as prime minister following the Brexit referendum.
Since 2017, he has been working at right-wing thinktank Policy Exchange’s housing and urban regeneration unit as chief advisor. He is also a non-executive director of Homes England.
