Regulator knew of repairs issues before Circle upgrade

The Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) restored Circle to a compliant G2 in a judgement on 29 June, saying the 55,000-home landlord had “significantly improved the performance of its repairs service” since a previous downgrade in April 2015.

But three months earlier it had received a detailed breakdown – seen by Inside Housing – of failures to repair boilers on the Old Ford Estate in Bow, which had left vulnerable tenants without heating for months.

The email gave the names and addresses of 10 tenants, all of them vulnerable “either through age, disability or young children living in the household” who were “without heating and hot water for weeks and in some cases many months over winter”.

It said: “Several of these tenants became ill as a result of the lack of heating, and all have endured serious stress and anxiety.”

But this complaint, which warned many more tenants were affected, was not deemed serious enough to merit a breach of the regulator’s consumer standards and an appeal was rejected in June, just six days before the upgrade was issued.

At this point, Circle was in the latter stages of negotiations with 55,000-home Affinity Sutton to complete the largest merger in the history of the housing association sector. Had Circle remained G3, the new organisation would also have received a non-compliant rating.

Three weeks after the merger was formally completed, the regulator changed its stance, placing the newly formed Clarion Housing Group on regulatory notice.

The regulator can only intervene in consumer affairs such as repairs in very specific circumstances. It needs evidence of serious detriment and works under a duty to minimise interference.

It is understood a substantial number of additional complaints were reported to the regulator after it took the decision to issue the upgrade in June.

This coincided with Circle’s attempts to centralise its nine complaints teams into a single call centre with a staff of 20 – an issue which is understood to have exacerbated the problems.

A spokesperson for the HCA said: “As further information and referrals were made, we took that into account, which resulted in the regulatory notice dated December. Our view on whether there has been a breach of our standards is always based on the facts of the presenting issue.”

The regulatory notice in December did acknowledge complaints had been raised in April, but did not specify what it knew and when.

A Clarion spokesperson said: “Over the past two months Clarion Housing Group has already made significant progress in solving issues identified by Circle Housing residents.”