Housing Quality Magazine October 2024

“I worry we’ll be nothing but footnotes in a forgotten report”

Grenfell survivors on what the future holds

Tenant empowerment, toxicity, and tragedy

Learning lessons from the rise and fall of the TMO behind the Grenfell disaster

Bring on the budget

High hopes from housing providers but will Labour deliver?

“THE SITUATION ON THE GROUND IS PRETTY BLEAK”

The Trussell Trust’s Helen Barnard on poverty, housing and why food banks are reaching breaking point

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please contact Anna Pattison at anna.pattison@hqnetwork.co.uk or visit hqnetwork.co.uk/competency-and-conduct

Editorial: Alistair

8 Grenfell survivors on what the future holds

Danielle Aumord talks to survivors and bereaved families

14 Tenant empowerment, toxicity, and tragedy

Keith Cooper examines how a TMO became synonymous with one of the worst tower block fires in history

20 Helen Barnard interview

The Trussell Trust director on the state of poverty in the UK and her hopes for the upcoming budget

26 Labour’s housing plans

Neil Merrick reports on the government’s first 100 days and what housing can expect from the budget

The latest research and analysis – in plain English

Bringing you the latest housing research from leading academics, in this edition of Evidence we consider the art of placemaking looking at a partnership between HQN and organisations in Australia.

Design:

All

Published four times a year. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is strictly prohibited.

Editor’s welcome

There’s a theme running through this edition of HQM – the desperate need for the Labour government to deliver.

During its first 100 days, we’ve heard a lot of talk about what this government intends to do but little in the way of affirmative action. Next week’s budget is the moment we’ll really understand the government’s priorities and its ability to fund crucial investment in our public services. The problem is that the country’s infrastructure is creaking. How do you decide what’s more important: hospitals, schools or prisons? And where does housing and welfare fit into it?

Whether it’s housebuilding, social housing reform, tackling poverty or the recommendations of the Grenfell Inquiry, housing associations, councils, charities and residents are crying out for the government to listen to them.

Depending on who you speak to there are varying degrees of expectation. Despite contradicting reports coming from the Treasury and MHCLG about the amount of funding available for new social homes, there’s little doubt that sector leaders have high hopes for next week’s budget (read more from page 26), especially if demands for rent stability are also met.

In our cover feature (from page 20), Helen Barnard from the Trussell Trust expects the government to meet its manifesto commitment to tackle poverty and homelessness and, while not demanding significant amounts of funding, believes the introduction of policies such as a protected minimum floor for universal credit could have a significant impact without costing the earth.

For Grenfell survivors, the minimum requirement from the Labour government is to ensure the recommendations put forward in both phases of the public inquiry are acted upon. But after seven long years of fighting for justice, their expectations are low, as they explain in our exclusive feature on page 8

It remains to be seen what Rachel Reeves delivers but some positive news on some of these key issues will go a long way to assuaging concerns about the ability of this government to pull this country out of the doldrums, and its own priorities as a party.

Jon Land Editor, HQM

From the Chief Executive...

Away from the numbers

“The American people have spoken, but it’s going to take a little while to determine exactly what they said.” That’s what Bill Clinton told us as he struggled to make sense of the 2000 presidential election. And it’s more or less what I think of the new satisfaction measures for housing.

As Clinton spoke on the TV, I was devouring the ‘free’ breakfast in the South Bank Travelodge while running a mock inspection. Some things never change. Sadly, others do. Back then there was no need for Count Binface’s campaign to cap croissant prices.

Our regulator now compels landlords to gather satisfaction data. I’ve read loads of the individual landlord reports and I find them insightful. Many thanks to the companies who run the polls. They do good work.

The problem comes when you start to compare the results for different landlords. Some surveys are face to face, others use the phone or post, and then there are the online questionnaires. Often you get a combination of methods. We see sample surveys and we see attempts at running a census.

The way you ask the questions does affect the results. Face-to-face surveys can yield the highest scores. So, it’s tricky to compare the figures from one to another. That means we cannot readily hold landlords to account for poor work, nor can we identify the better ones to learn from.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The Competition and Markets Authority insists on an independent satisfaction survey across the largest personal current account providers. One polling firm does the work and the approach is uniform across all the banks. This makes it easy for the CMA to put out a league table for all to see. New banks such as Monzo, Starling and Chase always come top. They may well be the best of the bunch, but the lack of history helps too.

Keeping the customers happy isn’t the be all and end all in banking, or indeed in housing. Sometimes you have to say ‘no’. The Financial Conduct Authority fined Starling £29m. Why was that? “Starling’s financial screening controls were shockingly lax. It left the financial system wide open to criminals and those

subject to sanctions.” In other words, it wasn’t doing enough to stop money laundering.

One big difference is that there are only 17 banks and we have many more landlords. That doesn’t mean we can’t tighten up the rules on surveys and it’d be possible to appoint one survey firm. Having one impartial referee might increase public confidence in what we do.

But even with ‘true’ results we’d still have landlords doing different mixes of things for varying groups of people in a variety of contexts. Of course, degree of difficulty drives customer satisfaction. Young people can be a tough audience. Tower blocks are harder to manage.

That’s why the RSH rightly says that the satisfaction figures are a can opener. Back in the 2000s, Ipsos MORI looked at the background factors, like demography, which drove satisfaction to predict the scores for each council housing service. They compared that to the actual figures. The better landlords exceeded expectations, others fell short. Could we return to that? It’d lead to some challenging conversations. But it may be difficult to come up with the right figure for the more spread-out associations.

Anyway, the whole point of the exercise is to get better. That’s why at HQN we don’t just look at the results – we ask what the landlord will do next. Is the improvement plan credible?

The biggest issue to come out of this round of surveys is that satisfaction with shared ownership is poor. How did we go from people queuing round the block to buy these homes to making the selfsame people so miserable? That’s a can that we must open. How do we make a start? It should be mandatory to put the official satisfaction figures in all shared ownership adverts.

Alistair McIntosh, Chief Executive, HQN

Behind the headlines

Back in August, Weaver Vale Housing Trust became one of the first social landlords to receive a C1 rating from the regulator for meeting the new Consumer Standards. Here, Gareth Rigby, Executive Director of Customer, Place and Service, writes about the inspection experience and the approach that underpins their success.

For organisations across the housing sector, navigating the complex and ever-changing challenges our industry faces is critical to improving our services for customers in our communities.

At Weaver Vale, we work as a collective across the trust to plan for any potential changes or risks, ensuring we’re in a position to anticipate and address them proactively. We’re committed to minimising disruption to our services and customers, and this approach means we’re able to lead with insight rather than instinct if an issue arises.

Before the new Consumer Standards were introduced, we were actively working on key projects to improve our services for customers. The Regulator of Social Housing

acknowledged this during their inspection, offering positive feedback on our approach.

They don’t expect perfection, but they do expect you to know where you are and to be always looking to drive improvement. Our commitment to continuous progress means we’re always looking to be one step ahead, pushing boundaries and setting new standards to create better outcomes for the people we serve.

The regulator’s new standards came into effect on 1 April this year and are designed to protect customers and improve the service they receive.

The regulatory gradings play a key role in ensuring that we meet standards, but it’s our shared responsibility to work towards gaining customers’ trust back as a sector. Waiting to make changes only after a new standard is introduced can highlight underlying issues.

Instead, our approach has always been about continuous improvement, centred around projects that enhance customer engagement and improve services throughout the organisation, rather than simply preparing for an inspection.

At Weaver Vale, we don’t just collect feedback. Our frameworks reach every corner, from our rural communities to urban areas, ensuring no customer’s voice is missed. For us, every interaction is an opportunity to learn. Whether it’s a survey, a repair visit, or a conversation with contractors, we’re always asking customers how they feel about their homes and our services. And when we get positive feedback, we don’t just take it at face value – we dig deeper, meticulously

Weaver Vale joint board and engaged customer meeting

scrutinising why it’s good, and we ask again to ensure accuracy.

From joint board meetings to our customer assurance team and accessible complaints process, customers have multiple ways to voice their opinions and influence our decisions. Safety is a top priority too. Long before legislation such as Awaab’s Law was established, we proactively introduced stricter health and safety measures. Our ongoing stock condition programme continuously assesses properties, ensuring timely action where it’s needed.

Every decision we make is scrutinised through our ‘three lines of defence’ audit process, adding layers of assurance that every aspect of our service – from ground-level interactions to executive oversight – strives to meet the highest standards.

Thanks to our customer data and census work, we went into the inspection fully aware of the areas that needed attention and put long-term projects in place to address them. This preparation was key, allowing us to show the inspectors clear evidence of the progress made and ongoing improvements planned.

Our chief executive, Wayne Gales, executive director of finance and business services, Cath Bett, and I met with the

“Our approach has always been about continuous improvement, centred around projects that enhance customer engagement and improve services throughout the organisation, rather than simply preparing for an inspection”

inspectors, along with the chair of the board, the chair of the group audit and assurance committee, and members of our engaged customer groups.

The regulator set clear expectations in advance and conducted a thorough, challenging inspection – which is exactly as it should be. Throughout the inspection the regulator thoroughly analysed our frameworks, policies and, importantly, outcomes being achieved for customers, as well as wanting to fully understand the culture of Weaver Vale.

The process reinforced what we already knew: you can’t wait for external pressure to take prompt action. As housing providers, we must continue to evolve, making sure our services put customers at the heart of every decision.

What comes next?

We’re proud of our colleagues, teams and engaged customers, whose work and ongoing support was key to us achieving our results. We’re proud of the gradings received from the regulator, but we know there’s always more to be done.

Our focus will remain on actively involving customers in every aspect of our work, from strategic decisions to day-to-day operations. Whether that’s through gathering feedback from customer groups or making individual calls, we’ll continue to ensure that every choice we make reflects our customers’ needs.

The inspection has given us confidence that we’re on the right track, but we understand that our regulatory gradings are just a starting point. Our aim is to continually raise the bar – not merely to meet standards, but to exceed them. As housing evolves, we’ll keep striving to enhance our services, ensuring our customers are safe, secure and, where needed, supported.

GRENFELL RESIDENTS:

“I WORRY

WE’LL BE

NOTHING BUT FOOTNOTES IN A FORGOTTEN REPORT”

In the aftermath of the publication of the Grenfell inquiry’s phase 2 report, Danielle Aumord talks to survivors, bereaved families and other members of the North Kensington community about where they go from here. As her reports reveals, there’s still much anger and resentment about the way they’ve been treated – before, during and after the fire.

The Grenfell Tower tragedy has become a defining moment in North Kensington, where much of life is now seen through the lens of preand post-Grenfell.

The recently published second phase report from the public inquiry into the fire offers more than 50 recommendations. However, with many of the life-saving measures from the first phase still unimplemented five years on, the community is left asking what now?

Disillusioned

“I don’t want to go to any of their meetings,” says Nicholas Burton, a survivor of the fire who lost his wife, Maria ‘Pily’ del Pilar Burton, on that terrible night in June 2017. Burton is referring to Kensington and Chelsea Council (RBKC) and expresses disillusionment with the idea of hearing apologies from those who weren’t involved at the time.

“It’ll be all new people who didn’t work at the organisation at the time of the fire or in the leadup to it,” he explains. “I don’t want an apology from them. They didn’t make the decisions.”

This sentiment is shared by others in the community, including Liberal Democrat councillor Linda Wade. While talking over a coffee in a bustling café on Golborne Road, she says: “It’s welcome that the borough wants to rebalance, to redress, but this needs to be throughout the organisation. Essentially, they need to listen.”

Wade recalls her time on the council’s housing and property scrutiny committee before the fire: “Without transparent information, scrutiny within the council failed to identify problems that could’ve prevented the tragedy.” She points to failures in fire safety measures, such as inadequate fire doors and door closers, which compromised compartmentalisation within the building as examples.

North Kensington Labour ward councillor Claire Simmons, meanwhile, believes the Grenfell fire hasn’t been a sufficient enough “wake-up call” for the council. “They refuse to listen and are often still downright cruel. RBKC continues to twist the knife,” she says.

Left behind

Local resident Samia Badani says she worries that those whose lives were turned upside down by the fire could become “nothing but footnotes in a forgotten report,” as she remembers how she lost consciousness when smoke from the fire at Grenfell Tower filled her home.

Badani now lives at Bramley House, just a stone’s throw away from the tower, and chairs the residents’ association there. “We were left behind, we weren’t even contacted until three weeks after the fire,” she says.

Recently elected Labour MP Joe Powell wasn’t around at the time of the Grenfell fire but is determined to deliver change on the ground in the North Kensington community – chiefly ensuring that residents are respected, treated in a humane way and have some influence in decisions that impact them.

He’s disappointed with the scope of the inquiry’s second report, particularly the fact that there are no new recommendations for social housing providers. “It’s narrow in many respects,” he says.

The Grenfell Tower fire, which claimed 72 lives, including 18 children and 15 disabled residents, was a disaster that exposed systemic failings not just at a local level but in the construction industry nationally. The cladding used in the building’s refurbishment, identified as the “principal cause of the rapid fire spread”, was found in many other buildings around the UK, leaving thousands of residents trapped in unsafe homes.

“I apologise unreservedly and with my whole heart to the bereaved, survivors and residents of Grenfell for our failure to listen and to protect them…[the inquiry] shows beyond doubt that this council failed the residents of Grenfell Tower and the 72 people, including 18 children, who died”

Councillor Elizabeth Campbell, leader, Kensington and Chelsea Council

The inquiry concluded that “systematic dishonesty” from cladding and insulation companies and lack of action from central government were all factors in the fatal disaster in North Kensington. Leaseholders in homes also cladded with the same cladding as the material used within the Grenfell refurbishment, have seen their insurance costs skyrocket. They’ve also had to pay for ‘waking watch’ services as a result of the fire safety risks associated with their homes and have experienced difficulties in remortgaging the dangerous flats.

Glacial

Multiple schemes have been introduced postGrenfell by central government to fund the remediation of the dangerous material from social and private housing over 11-metres in height. But years later, data compiled by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has revealed that these schemes are moving at a glacial pace, with remediation work yet to begin on over half of the 4,771 residential buildings identified.

As recently as August, a fire at a block of flats in Dagenham, east London, reignited concerns about the slow pace of this work. When the fire in Dagenham broke out, remediation work was underway to remove ‘non-compliant’ cladding from the block and hadn’t yet been completed.

Alarmingly, each month more buildings are being identified as having fire safety defects, including flammable cladding on their external walls. The emotional and financial toll on Grenfell survivors, bereaved and leaseholders continues to mount.

Over at Kensington Town Hall, direct survivors of the fire and bereaved family members are attending a full council meeting to express what they’d like from the local authority, now that the inquiry’s second report has been published.

Edward Daffarn, another Grenfell survivor, remains frustrated by the lack of meaningful change and emphasised the need for RBKC to

“cooperate with the criminal investigation of the fire”. He says: “We were treated as a nuisance rather than as stakeholders. The report is simply a stark reminder of the failures of the council who have made glacial progress since.”

Institutional racism

Similarly, bereaved family members like Nabil Choucair, who lost six relatives in the fire, have called for justice and expressed disappointment that the inquiry failed to address the role of institutional racism.

Choucair has pointed out that many of those affected were from Black and ethnic minority communities, whose voices and concerns were often ignored. “We were fighting to get the public inquiry to look at racism, but they didn’t,” he reflects.

The inquiry’s phase two report touched on the issue of racism, saying: “Our response to those who wanted us to investigate racial and social discrimination has always been that we would look out for it and that if we came across any evidence that racial or social prejudice might

“I don’t want to go to any of their meetings. It will be all new people who didn’t work at the organisation at the time of the fire or in the lead-up to it. I don’t want an apology from them. They didn’t make the decisions”

Nicholas Burton, Grenfell survivor

Labour MP Joe Powell

have affected any of the decisions that led, directly or indirectly, to the disaster, we would examine it thoroughly and publish our findings, as befits an inquiry seeking to uncover the truth.”

However, it was concluded that there was “no evidence that any of the decisions that resulted in the creation of a dangerous building, or the calamitous spread of fire were affected by racial or social prejudice”.

But Sir Martin Moore-Bick, a retired Court of Appeal judge who chaired the Grenfell Inquiry, said the inquiry did see “some evidence of racial discrimination” in the way survivors and bereaved family members were treated by the local authority after the fire.

For example, the inquiry found that “no regard” was shown for the cultural or religious needs of the affected Muslim residents who were observing Ramadan, a month of fasting, prayer and reflection, at the time of the tragedy.

A spokesperson for the Justice4Grenfell campaign group said they have long called for a fuller investigation into the structural racism that played a role in the tragedy.

“There needs to be a systemic review of how race and inequality intersected with the decisions made about Grenfell, both before and after the fire,” the group said in a statement. “If Grenfell had housed a different demographic, we believe different decisions would’ve been made about the refurbishment and maintenance of the building. The fact that many of the victims were from Black and ethnic minority communities isn’t a coincidence. It reflects a wider pattern of how racialised communities are treated in housing and public services across the UK.”

RBKC will make its official response to the second public inquiry report next month (November). However, council leader Elizabeth Campbell has already pledged to cooperate with

“If Grenfell had housed a different demographic, we believe different decisions would’ve been made about the refurbishment and maintenance of the building. The fact that many of the victims were from Black and ethnic minority communities isn’t a coincidence”

Justice4Grenfell

the police and acknowledges that the council hasn’t gone far enough.

“We acknowledge that it wasn’t us who picked up the pieces after the fire, it was the community,” she says.

Promises are not enough

But with the public inquiry now completed, the message from direct survivors of the tragedy, bereaved families and campaigners is crystal clear – promises aren’t enough. Tangible action, accountability and real, systematic change are needed to ensure that the lessons from the fire are learned, not just in Kensington but across the UK.

Burton puts it like this: “When we think about it, if the lessons from the Lakanal House fire in 2009 had been learned, the fire at Grenfell might not have happened.”

Nationally, the failures highlighted by the Grenfell inquiry have underlined the need for greater accountability.

Inquest, a charity that has closely followed the inquiry, has called for a national oversight mechanism to monitor the implementation of recommendations from public inquiries like Grenfell.

“Currently, inquiry chairs don’t have the power to monitor the progress of the implementation of recommendations after a public inquiry. This means there is no real follow up when state and

Nabil Choucair

Photo: Danielle Aumord

corporate bodies deprioritise or fail to take action in response to recommendations,” explains Aniesha Obuobie, Grenfell Project Coordinator at Inquest.

“A national oversight mechanism would close this gap. The government hasn’t yet implemented the life-saving recommendations made within the first report from the Grenfell Tower inquiry and it’s crucial that this isn’t repeated with the phase two recommendations,” she adds.

An apology

Responding to some of the issues raised in this article, Cllr Elizabeth Campbell, leader of Kensington and Chelsea Council, said: “On behalf of the council, I apologise unreservedly and with

my whole heart to the bereaved, survivors and residents of Grenfell for our failure to listen and to protect them.

“The inquiry has laid bare the chain of events that led to that night. We fully accept its findings, which are a withering critique of a system broken from top to bottom. It shows beyond doubt that this council failed the residents of Grenfell Tower and the 72 people, including 18 children, who died.

“We failed to keep people safe before and during the refurbishment and we failed to treat people with humanity and care in the aftermath.

“We’ll learn from every single criticism in the report. We’ll take time to study it further in detail, listen to the reflections from our communities, and publish a full and formal response in the autumn.”

“The government hasn’t yet implemented the life-saving recommendations made within the first report from the Grenfell Tower inquiry and it’s crucial that this isn’t repeated with the phase two recommendations”

Aniesha Obuobie, Grenfell project coordinator, Inquest charity

Does everyone in your organisation understand their role in meeting the new regulatory requirements? The RSH has doubts. The HQN team is here to help with a series of workshops breaking down the standards and providing practical guidance.

The Neighbourhood and Community Standard

5 November (virtual)

The Tenancy Standard

3 December (virtual)

The Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard (part one)

7 January (virtual)

The Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard (part two)

8 January (virtual)

To find out more and book your place, please visit hqnetwork.co.uk/hqnevents

TENANT EMPOWERMENT, TOXICITY, AND TRAGEDY

How did an organisation designed to put residents at the heart of housing management become synonymous with one of the worst tower block fires in history? Keith Cooper examines the role of the Kensington and Chelsea TMO in the run up to the Grenfell disaster and highlights some lessons that are relevant to all social landlords.

Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation was born in an era of tenant empowerment. The then government was keen on council tenants running their own landlord and altered laws to allow it. And after most of those living in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea voted in favour of the move, the first-ever council-wide TMO was created in 1995. But almost two decades on, it’s now ignominiously known for its role in the Grenfell Tower Fire of 14 June 2017.

So, how did an organisation intended to put residents at the heart of housing management become linked to one of the worst housing fires in history?

‘Toxic’

The inquiry report concludes the fire to be the “culmination of decades of failure by central government and other bodies in positions of responsibility in the construction industry”. But it also exposes failings in the TMO’s “toxic” relationship with many residents, its handling of fire safety, and RBKC’s oversight.

The report found that the TMO had developed a “persistent indifference to fire safety” and a “culture of concealment” about the fire safety problems it knew about as it ignored those of its own residents. Instead of being empowered, many felt “belittled and marginalised” and saw their landlord as an “uncaring and bullying overlord”. The relationship between the two was “characterised by distrust, dislike, personal antagonism, and anger,” the report says.

The report is also clear about where responsibility for maintaining that relationship lay. “[It] fell not on the members of that community… but on the TMO as a public body exercising control over the building which contained their homes,” the inquiry report concludes.

Housing Ombudsman Richard Blakeway says

the report’s findings are of “huge significance”. “It is clear residents’ complaints were devalued and dismissed,” he adds. “The gross imbalance of power and dismissal of residents is striking…I see these themes repeatedly in our casework.”

Key lessons

The report makes no formal recommendations for social landlords; it expects that the Regulator of Social Housing’s “more active role” in policing standards in the professional and social housing and information sharing will address the concerns it raises. The detail of the report, however, contains several key lessons for housing providers and those who work in them.

As well as the perils of failing to respond to tenants’ concerns, it reveals how safety practices are flawed by professionals’ inexperience, poor training, and by burdensome workloads put upon people in “fundamental” positions of responsibility. It reinforces the role of strong oversight from scrutiny bodies, such as boards and council committees, but also that they’re only as good as the people who report to them. The report concluded that was a “satisfactory system” for senior managers to report to the TMO board and to RBKC but that they “didn’t operate effectively” because of an “entrenched reluctance” to report fire safety issues, linked to a “culture of concealment” that came from the top.

To show how these failings played out, the report goes into some detail on the TMO’s, history, the conduct of its officers and the role of RBKC.

Early years

According to the report, the TMO’s first few years appeared to go to plan. In 1996, a year after

“The TMO lost sight of the fact the residents were people who depended on it for a safe and decent home and the privacy and dignity that a home should provide”

The Grenfell Inquiry phase 2 report

its incorporation, it elected a 15-strong board with a majority of eight residents, four council appointees, and three appointees picked by the board itself. Eight years on, in 2002, it became an arm’s length management organisation, a new kind of public body which allowed it to borrow money to do up its homes once awarded a twostar ‘good’ rating by the Audit Commission. This was duly acquired after an inspection the following year and boosted to ‘excellent’ after a further check on its services in 2006.

The relationship between RBKC, the TMO and their residents was set out in a “modular management agreement”. This gave the TMO the right to manage homes owned by the authority while RBKC retained legal, contractual and common law obligations to its tenants. The TMO was responsible for maintenance, repairs and proposing major works within budget constraints set by RBKC. The agreement also contained “detailed provisions about resident engagement in respect of refurbishment”, though most TMO officers “knew little or nothing” about them, the report says.

Cracks appear

The first official sign of cracks in KCTMO’s relationship with its residents appeared soon after its ‘excellent’ rating, in 2008, when RBKC asked Maria Memoli, a retired solicitor, to

investigate residents’ “long-standing complaints” about major works, repairs, customer care and ethics, among others things. Her report, in April 2009, made “serious criticisms” of the TMO’s relationship with its tenants, leaseholders and freeholders. “Complaints hadn’t been resolved, it was felt, for some years,” Memoli’s report concluded.

A month later, in May, Robert Black, an apparently experienced housing professional, became the TMO’s chief executive. He recalled being “made aware” of the Memoli report and of “serious criticisms of the TMO’s governance and its relationship with tenants” but “couldn’t remember” having a copy of the report. “His impression had been that RBKC hadn’t been particularly impressed by it”, the inquiry report says.

The Butler report

That September, a further review of these longstanding complaints, known as the Butler report, made recommendations. These included: setting up a mediation or conciliation services; better sharing of information; and that RBKC should be “more robust in making sure the TMO’s technical services were capable of delivering an effective major works programme”.

The inquiry describes these recommendations as “striking”. “They could just as well have been contained in this report, given what we have found,” it adds. “It says much about the TMO’s character as an organisation that, despite these penetrating reports, eight years later it showed little sign of any change and appeared to have learnt nothing about how to treat, or relate, to its residents.”

From the outset of Black’s tenure in 2009, fire safety and the adequacy of the TMO’s fire safety measures were “regular subjects of discussion”, the inquiry report says.

Grenfell survivor Ed Daffarn. His blog repeatedly outlined fire safety concerns but his warnings were ignored

The London Fire Brigade was “troubled” because the TMO was producing its own “inadequate” fire risk assessments and had indicated it would serve an enforcement notice.

Fire safety failings

Black’s executive team included Barbara Matthews, the director of finance and ICT, whose responsibilities included putting in place arrangements to manage the risk of fire and to monitor the TMO’s health and safety performance. Before joining the TMO in 2015, Matthews had “no training in, or experience of, managing health and safety” and received “no training on the requirements of the Fire Safety Order or of the substance of that person’s duties”, the inquiry report says.

Matthews and the wider executive “relied heavily” on its health and safety manager, Janice Wray. Wray is described as playing a “fundamental role in the TMO’s performance of its health and safety obligations” but had responsibilities “probably too much for one person to discharge properly without substantial assistance and effective oversight and unfortunately she had neither”.

In response to the LFB’s concerns that the TMO was carrying out its own fire risk assessments, the TMO commissioned Salvus Consulting to carry some out on its high-rise blocks. Its first batch of assessments that year, pinpointed several risks and its Fire Safety Management Report pinpointed 19 breaches of the Fire Safety Order, laws governing fire safety in England and Wales.

But a report prepared by Wray for the TMO’s board in December 2009 “gave the board no information about the serious defects that Savlus had found in the TMO’s management of fire safety across its estate”. There was also “no evidence that Black presented the report to the board”.

Black then helped prepare a report for RBKC’s Housing, Environmental Health and Adult Social Care Scrutiny Committee. This flagged “increasingly stringent requirements of the LFB” and a “new approach to fire risk assessments” but not that the LFB had considered issuing an enforcement notice. Such an omission became “part of an emerging pattern of withholding from

“It’s clear residents’ complaints were devalued and dismissed. The gross imbalance of power and dismissal of residents is striking…I see these themes repeatedly in our casework”

Richard Blakeway, Housing Ombudsman

those to whom he reported the fact that there were serious problems with the management of fire safety within the TMO”, the inquiry report says.

The 2010 Grenfell fire

The next year, in April 2010, a fire broke out in the lift lobby of floor 6 of Grenfell Tower. Days later, Wray informed the LFB and Black that smoke had leaked through an extraction system into the lobbies of eight floors, 7, 12, 13, 15, 17, 18, 19, and 20, and that residents had called the fire brigade for fear they were trapped in their homes.

But a report of the incident to the TMO board that June didn’t mention the smoke leakage, residents’ concerns or their calls to fire brigade. “The report gave the impression that the smoke ventilation system has operated substantially as intended,” the inquiry report says. “It grossly understated the extent to which smoke had spread within the tower and was seriously misleading.”

Four years later, in March 2014, the LFB issued the TMO with a deficiency notice “because of its failure to maintain the smoke ventilation system at Grenfell Tower”. But a report to its board two months’ later by Black “made no mention of the deficiency notice”.

‘Culture of concealment’

A year later on 22 October, Wray received another deficiency notice from the LFB for failure to remedy issues identified in a fire risk assessment in another block, Adair Tower. Wray brought the notice to Black’s attention on 31 October, the night a fire broke out in the block. Black agreed

this was a “serious failing on her part” but the inquiry found it “consistent with a culture of concealment that started at the top and filtered down to lower layers of management”.

This deficiency notice for Adair Tower wasn’t mentioned by Black at a meeting of RBKC’s Housing and Property Scrutiny Committee a month later, an omission the inquiry report describes as “a serious dereliction of duty on his part but entirely consistent with the pattern of concealment he had established in relation to fire safety matters”.

‘Weak’ oversight

While the TMO’s board was supposed to oversee its executive, RBKC was supposed to provide a further layer of scrutiny of its performance on fire safety through a system of audits and performance indicators, and council committees. But this oversight was found to be “weak” by the inquiry. The council took “too little or no account” of the “highly critical” Salvus Consulting report of 2009 and none of its performance indicators were about fire safety. “The absence of any rigorous scrutiny by RBKC of the TMO’s performance of its health and safety obligations and in particular its management of fire safety was a particular weakness,” the inquiry report concludes.

As these concerns about fire safety were being concealed from the TMO’s board, Grenfell residents, frustrated by the way it handled complaints, began setting up representative groups.

Resident voices

Grenfell Tower Leaseholders’ Association was founded in 2010 by Shahid Ahmed to give leaseholders a voice about service charges. But it soon became a forum for raising concerns about fire safety. Ahmed told the inquiry he had “no faith” in the TMO’s complaints procedures. He had flagged concerns about the TMO’s attitude to fire safety “for several years” after the fire but felt it had “misrepresented the seriousness”.

The Grenfell Action Group was set up in 2010 by two residents, Edward Daffarn and Francis O’Connor, to give residents a voice about a new

plan to refurbish the tower, which led it to being encased in the combustible cladding that played such a key role in the disaster, seven years later.

But while the action group was recognised as a tenants’ and residents’ association by RBKC in 2012, the TMO refused it the same status, arguing that residents were already represented by the Lancaster West Residents’ Association, named for the estate on which Grenfell was located.

This refusal continued despite the Tenant Participation Advisory Service advice that it “should seek to find a way to support the Grenfell Action Group and establish a harmonious relationship” with Lancaster West Residents’ Association.

The blog

So, in the summer of 2012, Daffarn and O’Connor began a blog to “communicate directly with the TMO” rather than using its “established processes”. Daffarn considered this “a necessary response to the TMO’s overbearing treatment of the tower’s residents”. The blog soon began raising concerns about fire safety, too.

In 2013, after a power surge in the tower damaged electrical equipment, the action group and the leaseholders’ association flagged residents’ concerns in an email and a blog. The blog claimed that the TMO had “played down the seriousness of the surges”. Daffarn told the inquiry residents felt RBKC’s housing and property scrutiny committee had also then “covered over” the matter and that as a result residents “lost trust in the TMO’s ability to take appropriate action in relation to fire safety”.

In January 2014, Daffarn asked the TMO for recognition and funds to support a Grenfell Tower residents’ group. The TMO again refused to recognise the proposed group.

Grenfell Community Unite

In March 2015, a group of Grenfell residents met and agreed to set up a group called Grenfell Community Unite. But when “forthright” reports on those meetings appeared on the action group blog, the TMO’s director of assets, Peter Maddison, responded by asking its legal team “at what point his comments would become

libellous”. The next month, Black is quoted as saying that “TMO people preferred not to meet Grenfell Community Unite, since the meeting would provide a platform for Daffarn”.

It was only after the intervention of the then MP for Kensington Victoria Borwick in July 2015 that the TMO finally agreed to recognise a residents’ group, known from then on as the Grenfell Compact. It was formally constituted that September. But by that time there was only one more year of the refurbishment to run.

Petition

Later that year, some 60 residents petitioned the RBKC housing and property scrutiny committee, “asserting that residents’ views had been ignored or minimalised and that their day-to-day concerns had been belittled and brushed aside”.

The petition resulted in the KCTMO carrying out an “internal review” of the refurbishment but it did this without collecting residents’ views, despite it being a requirement under its modular management agreement. “Whether that was deliberate or not, ignoring residents’ views was entirely consistent with the TMO’s approach to engagement with it residents from at least February 2012 and…on the basis of Maria Memoli’s report, from far earlier than that,” the

inquiry report says.

The inquiry called this review “superficial” and “flawed in its origins and its conclusions”. “Given the history of the matter and the lack of trust between the residents of Grenfell Tower and the TMO, the board should have realised that only an independent review of the management of the project with particular reference to the residents’ complaints could fairly satisfy the requirements of the moment,” it said.

But by this time the atmosphere between residents and the TMO had become “toxic”, the inquiry report concludes. “The TMO lost sight of the fact the residents were people who depended on it for a safe and decent home and the privacy and dignity that a home should provide,” it added. “For the TMO to have allowed the relationship to deteriorate to such an extent reflects a serious failure on its part to observe its basic responsibilities.”

Lessons from the Grenfell inquiry for landlords:

• Safety practices can be flawed by professionals’ inexperience, poor training, and by burdensome workloads put upon people in “fundamental” positions of responsibility

• Strong oversight from scrutiny bodies, such as boards and council committees, is essential but they are only as good as the people who report to them and the quality of information disseminated

• Satisfactory governance systems can only operate effectively if there’s an open and transparent relationship between managers, executive team and board. The TMO was found to have a “culture of concealment” at the top of the organisation and an “entrenched reluctance” to report fire safety issues

• The relationship between a landlord and its residents is at the heart of a well-run organisation. It should be nurtured through effective methods of engagement, open and honest conversations and continuous communication. The Grenfell TMO’s relationship with residents deteriorated over many years. Instead of being empowered, many residents felt “belittled and marginalised” and saw their landlord as an “uncaring and bullying overlord”. The relationship between the two was “characterised by distrust, dislike, personal antagonism and anger”.

Former TMO chief executive Robert Black appears before the Grenfell inquiry

HELEN BARNARD INTERVIEW: “THE SITUATION ON THE GROUND IS PRETTY BLEAK”

As Director of Policy, Research and Impact at the UK’s biggest food bank charity, the Trussell Trust, Helen Barnard sees firsthand the levels of poverty and destitution thousands of people in the UK are experiencing on a daily basis.

Food bank use is currently at a record high. And with another tough winter approaching, support provided in the upcoming autumn budget is going to be crucial to the prospects of many – and a test of the Labour government’s commitment to tackling poverty.

In this exclusive interview, Helen talks to HQM editor Jon Land about the trust’s vital work, the changes to welfare policy that are desperately needed, the intrinsic link between poor housing and poverty, and why housing associations need to step up as decent landlords and do more for their struggling tenants.

Jon Land: You’ve worked for organisations tackling poverty for a number of years. What drives you as an individual, and where does this passion come from?

Helen Barnard: I was brought up to think that you should use your life to try and improve the lives of the people around you. That you should try and help people, you should try and contribute to your community and so on. I’ve always wanted to do work which I felt was going to be improving – improving the country, improving the community. I started out as a researcher. I came out of university, I was doing contract research for government into housing and benefits and the labour market and education and tax, doing evaluations of different government interventions. And

I think what I found was that almost all of the challenges that the country faces, an enormous proportion of the unhappiness and difficulties that individuals face can be traced back to poverty. We want education to give people a good start in life. We want the health service to work well. We want the economy to be firing. All of those things get undercut if you allow poverty to continue in the way it is. So, in a sense, it’s going back to the source and saying, how do we fix this underlying problem that’s blighting people’s lives?

income, the support, the services, which means that nobody has to turn to charity for the basics of life.

I have to say the situation on the ground is pretty bleak. The need for food banks in the UK has never been higher. Last year, the food banks in Trussell’s community provided 3.1 million emergency food parcels. Now, that’s a scale I don’t think any of us ever thought we would reach.

It’s the highest number ever in a single year. It’s nearly double the number we provided five years ago. And I think what we’ve been seeing, particularly over the last year or so, is that food banks feel they’re reaching breaking point. They just can’t keep up with the need in their communities.

“We want education to give people a good start in life. We want the health service to work well. We want the economy to be firing. All of those things get undercut if you allow poverty to continue in the way it is”

One of the fears is that we’re heading into another very difficult winter. If you look at the overall package of support available currently, there’s less available this winter because last winter there were cost of living payments going out. There was some support with energy bills. Now, neither of those, I think, were perfect as solutions. We wouldn’t necessarily say, let’s do that again. But having removed those without replacing them with anything, it does mean that people on the lowest income, people on benefits, are actually heading into this with less money in their pockets than last year.

JL: Can you tell us about your current role at the Trussell Trust and what the current food bank and food poverty picture looks like?

HB: I’m director of policy, research and impact. I lead the teams who are researching the scale, the nature, and the drivers of food bank need, developing solutions which we believe can end the need for emergency food, and also evaluating both our own interventions and other people’s interventions to find out what works. At the Trussell Trust, in a sense, we’re doing two things. One is that we’re supporting the community food banks to meet the needs of people. And the other side of our work, which for us is just as important, is trying to create change that will create a future where people don’t need to turn to food banks, where everyone has the

JL: Does that mean we’re pinning our hopes on the autumn budget to come up with something? I’ll talk to you about wider hopes and fears for the Labour government, but just specifically on the autumn budget, what’s the Trussell Trust asking for and what do you actually think you’re going to get from it?

HB: So, yes, we’re urging the government to take urgent action. They came into office with a manifesto commitment to end the need for emergency food. And they’ve reiterated that to us in government. I think they’re genuinely very serious about that. They want to reach the end of this parliament having seen a serious reduction in the scale and the depth of poverty, which is what drives the need for emergency food. Now, I think we’d recognise that this isn’t something you

“What we’ve been seeing, particularly over the last year or so, is that food banks feel they’re reaching breaking point. They just can’t keep up with the need in their communities”

do overnight. If you look at how bad things have got, we’re not going to fix this with one budget or one year. But we do need to start now. What we’ve been saying to them for this budget is that while we recognise this is a challenging fiscal environment, they need to start updating universal credit. The single biggest driver of the need for emergency food, the need for food banks, is the fact that the social security system is just falling short. Design flaws and the low level of support when you do get it means that universal credit isn’t actually enough to cover the essentials.

What we’ve proposed is for the government to put into place a minimum protected floor – basically a level below which nobody will be allowed to fall. With universal credit, an enormous proportion of people don’t get the full amount because some of it’s knocked off to pay debts, mainly to government. You have to wait five weeks for your first payment. Most people haven’t got any savings to tie them over, so they have to take out an advance, which is a loan from the government. That then gets knocked off their payments and they’re left with less money. And we see that people who have got these debt deductions are massively more likely to not be able to eat properly, get into other forms of debt or go without essentials. If they put in this minimum floor, it would mean that debt deductions and also the benefit cap couldn’t take someone’s income below that level. That would start to tackle the deepest forms of poverty. It would start to soften some of the hardest edges of the social security system.

We’re looking for the government to show us how serious they are, to show us they genuinely want to act on these promises. And this minimum floor, it’s not expensive in the realms of government funding. We’ve offered them something which acknowledges that there’s not a lot of spare cash around. This wouldn’t cost them a lot. It’d make a real difference to some of the poorest people. And it would introduce the principle into the system for the first time ever that there should be a floor below which nobody falls.

The other thing that we’re pressing for is the halting of the previous government’s plans to cut support for some groups. For instance, the previous government put into place plans – and

therefore into the OBR projections – to freeze local housing allowance again from next year. I suspect many of your readers will be aware of how awful the previous freeze was and the role that had in driving up homelessness. And that really affects food banks.

A third of people who are referred to our food banks are either homeless at the time of referral or were in the last 12 months. And we also see lots of people who are essentially not able to afford food and other essentials because they’re trying to keep up with the rent, because they’re afraid of being made homeless. So, the idea that you would freeze it again is just unconsumable.

The other thing is, again, the previous government had planned to make some changes to disability benefits, which would effectively cut support for some groups of disabled people. Now, that’s a pretty frightening prospect. About seven in ten people who are referred to Trussell Food Banks are disabled. About a quarter of disabled people already face hunger. And the changes that were planned around the workability assessment, if they continue with those, there would be about 400,000 disabled people who would miss out on income worth about £400 a month. This is an incredibly significant cut and it’s not going to do anything to tackle inactivity or labour market problems. It’s simply making disabled people poorer.

One of the things that we see all the time at food banks is that when people are trapped in this really severe financial hardship, you see them getting sicker and sicker – because if people

“What we’ve been saying to [the government] for this budget is that while we recognise this is a

environment, they need

challenging fiscal

to start updating universal credit…Design flaws and the low level of support when you do get it means that universal credit isn’t actually enough to cover the essentials”

aren’t eating properly, they can’t put the heating on, they can’t always afford to run medical equipment, they can’t afford the bus fare to a hospital appointment. All of these things, along with the mental health impacts of knowing that

“When people are trapped in this really severe financial hardship, you see them getting sicker and sicker – because if people aren’t eating properly, they can’t put the heating on, they can’t always afford to run medical equipment, they can’t afford the bus fare to a hospital appointment”

you can’t pay your bills and your family’s going without, just pushes people further from the labour market, as well as it just being morally wrong to force people into that situation.

JL: And realistically, do you think you’ll be able to get everything you’ve asked for?

HB: I think we’re all holding our breath for the budget, aren’t we? I think there’s a good chance. I think we’ve offered them some very realistic proposals. We’ve really acknowledged the constraints they’re under. And we’ve said to them, these are things which are in the scale of government spending, really affordable, really practical. I hope it won’t happen but if we had a budget where after all they said, they don’t take any action to start addressing hardship, I think we’d be incredibly disappointed. And there will be millions of people out there who are just holding on, hoping there will be some improvement in support.

A Trussell Trust volunteer carries out a stock take at a food bank in Rotherham

JL: In terms of wider Labour policy around welfare, housing and those areas that really matter, how do you feel it’s going so far? Are you holding your nerve given what we’ve seen in the first 100 days?

HB: Yeah. If you set aside some of the ‘communication’ problems they’ve been having and look at the tangible things that they’re doing and they’re planning, I think they’ve actually made a good start. You’ve got the King’s Speech, where they’ve put forward the workers’ rights package and renters’ reforms, both of which include pretty much everything we were looking for. One of the factors that drives people to food banks alongside social security problems is insecure work, low-paid insecure jobs. The renters’ reforms are good. They’ve added in plans to extend Awaab’s Law to the private rented sector as well as the social rented sector. I think that’s really positive.

Those are the two big things but something like the bill to enable bus franchising, when you talk to people on low incomes, one of the big problems they have in getting jobs is that the buses are terrible in lots of places. It’s the same where I live. The bus routes don’t join up with each other. The bus routes don’t go from where people live to where the work is. And it can be a real issue. In the poverty world, we’ve all been saying for ages, they need to do the bus thing. They also extended the Household Support Fund, which was what we had asked them to do on day one. They haven’t confirmed yet what happens after the extension, but the indications are that they realise we need a long-term replacement for it.

If you look at what the ministers at the Department for Work and Pensions have said both privately and in public speeches, there

Food bank facts and figures

• The Trussell Trust is the UK’s leading food bank charity with 1,400 food bank locations and 36,000 volunteers

• Between April 2023 and March 2024, the number of people that used a food bank for the first time was 655,000

• During the same period, more than 3.1 million emergency food parcels were distributed to people facing hardship – an increase of 94% over the past five years

• More than 1.1 million of these parcels were distributed for children.

appears to be a very serious commitment to ending the need for emergency food, to reforming universal credit, to tackle poverty, and they’ve got some early plans to localise employment support to connect it up with health and other local services. The secretary of state has been very clear she wants the department to move away from a compliance culture, the box-ticking, backed up by punitive sanctions, and she wants them to focus on genuine tailored support. That will be incredibly positive if they can drive that through the department and out into the jobcentre network.

I think a lot of fear has built up for people around jobcentres and work coaches because of this focus on punitive sanctions, particularly for disabled people and carers. If they can encourage people to go there and get support rather than fearing that they’re going to be called in and punished, that would be so important.

“We’re not going to solve the problem of deep poverty and hunger unless we can design a housing market that essentially allows everybody to have a secure, affordable home that’s healthy”

JL: Moving on to housing. You must see from your work how important safe and decent affordable housing is to the life chances of some of the poorest people in the country. Where do you think we are in terms of affordable housing provision, social housing, rented housing? And what do you think is going to be required to improve things?

HB: Our broken housing market is one of the biggest drivers of hunger and hardship across the country. In particular, the lack of social homes and the fact that more and more people have been forced into the private rented sector, where the risk of facing hunger and hardship is much higher. For some research that we published just last week, we were looking at the numbers of people facing hunger and hardship. And we found the numbers of people in the private rented sector in that situation had doubled over 20 years. As I said, we see that homelessness is very closely linked to hunger, that about a third of people who refer to Trussell food banks are homeless or have been in the last year. And we know that those sharp rises in homelessness are driven in large part by people losing private

“We’ve seen some terrible examples of social landlords…trapping tenants in appalling conditions and people being treated with an utter lack of respect and dignity. Because they don’t have the money to just pick up and go somewhere else, they’re treated as if they don’t matter. That feels to me like it’s a basic question of values”

sector tendencies because of the insecurity and because of the high cost. And we know that the lack of social housing is a really big part of this, as well as the insecurity in the private rented sector.

The other thing I think that’s less talked about but is also important, is that people who are stuck in damp, mouldy homes with vermin and so on can’t get the landlord to do anything either because they’re too scared to ask, because they might get kicked out, or they’re just ignored, is a massive part of this whole picture. And we’re not going to solve the problem of deep poverty and hunger unless we can design a housing market that essentially allows everybody to have a secure, affordable home that’s healthy. It sounds basic, doesn’t it? But that’s what the housing market should be delivering for people on every income, in every income bracket. At the moment, it’s just utterly failing. That’s because of design choices. This isn’t a natural system. We need to redesign it.

JL: What’s your view of the social housing sector currently? It’s going through a tricky period, obviously with Grenfell and Awaab, and other quite significant issues. Do you have concerns from what you see in terms of the direction of the housing association sector? Or do you feel things are almost out of their control and they are making the best of what they’ve got?

HB: I think there are two sides to this. It’s undoubtedly true that housing associations have been put in a difficult financial position because of the constraints around them. And we can see that. And I think that in terms of increasing the supply of social homes, that’s going to need more funding, more action from central government, from local government, and also bolstering the ability of housing associations and community associations to bring homes back into the social rented sector in a way that’s being trialled in a few places. So, I’ve a lot of sympathy on that

side of things. On the other hand, we do need to hold housing associations and local authorities to account for the quality of the homes they’re providing and the support they provide. It’s not acceptable to say that finances are pushed and therefore we’re just going to ignore tenants asking us to fix problems which are seriously impacting their health and safety. Having said that, some associations are excellent. There are plenty of examples of housing associations that are providing the basics of a healthy home but are also providing positive support, that are connecting people up to other sources of help, and are really trying to do wrap around support for tenants.

But we’ve also seen some terrible examples of social landlords who are essentially trapping tenants in appalling conditions. And treating people with disdain. That was one of the themes from the Grenfell report and from a lot of other examples that we’ve seen – people being treated with an utter lack of respect and dignity. And because somebody doesn’t have economic power, they don’t have the money to just pick up and go somewhere else – they’re treated as if they don’t matter. And that feels to me like it is a basic question of values. It’s what their staff believes is expected of them in how they treat tenants and other people. That’s nothing to do with money.

And then there’s some practises which aren’t intended to cause harm, but they do anyway. I was hearing from some food banks just last week who are trying to work with their local housing associations. The policy of having tenants move into a home with no carpets or flooring has been a standard practice in a lot of places. But, of course, a lot of tenants don’t have savings. So, they end living in cold, unhealthy homes, and then they end up getting into unaffordable debt. There’s a housing association down in Surrey who have started to provide carpets and flooring as standard, but also put together a starter package of support for new tenants, which includes things like helping them access grants or low-cost loans to make the house liveable. They found that it was so successful, they extended it to all their tenants. It’s good for tenants, but it also means things like your rent arrears go down and people are able to sustain their tenancies far better.

But my sense is you’ve got some individual housing associations choosing to do these things. What I think we need is the sector as a whole to move to a set of standards that protect low-income tenants so they don’t have this negative start to the tenancy. We need an agreed set of values combined with practical support.

LABOUR’S HOUSING PLANS: BRING ON THE BUDGET

The Labour government has now been in power for just over 100 days and there’s growing confidence within the social housing sector that we may be on the cusp of an affordable housing revolution. But much depends on the upcoming budget and whether Rachel Reeves can come up with the cash to match the bold pledges. Neil Merrick reports.

Rachel Reeves arrives at Downing Street. The sector’s hopes rests on her autumn budget

Look closely and you’ll notice housing professionals walking around with a new spring in their step.

True, they may not have read the proposed changes to national planning policy from cover to cover, but there’s a firm belief the new government means business when it promises to build more homes.

Among those feeling moderately optimistic is Nick Atkin. “They’ve clearly put housing front and centre of wider plans to grow the UK economy,” says the chief executive of Yorkshire Housing.

Kate Wareing, chief executive of Oxfordshire-based Soha Housing, is similarly enthused. “It’s fantastic to have a government with ambitions to increase the supply of affordable housing,” she says.

Labour’s housebuilding pledge mainly revolves around a more centralised planning system, requiring councils in areas where incomes fall short of property prices to find more land and give developers the green light [see box].

But while many detect the dawning of a new era, shovels aren’t, as yet, exactly in the ground. Earlier this year, Homes England told the sector that grant funding had run out (at least temporarily), while much detail around Labour’s housing agenda is yet to be revealed.

Hopes are therefore pinned on the upcoming autumn budget when the government will be expected to come up with significant funding in order to turn its bold pledge to “turbo charge” housebuilding into reality.

Doubts over grant

Meanwhile, doubts over grant mean some schemes have stalled. “We’ve housing developments waiting to go on site,” says Craig Dransfield, head of development at Soha. “The future of the grant regime is important as we plan ahead.”

Landowners, meanwhile, are keen to know whether their land is needed for housing. “Sites could disappear,” warns Atkin. “Landowners won’t wait until spring to decide whether they sell to us.”

Then there’s the question of tenure. The government claims to see social housing as a priority, but how will that work in practice? Wareing’s solution is to make social rent the default for all homes built through section 106 agreements.

Just two of the councils where Soha builds section 106 homes stipulate they must be for social rent. “I fail to understand why we don’t ensure that what comes out of the planning system is social housing,” she says.

Catherine Ryder, chief executive of the Placeshapers network, says the ambition of virtually all housing associations is to build more social housing. “If the right support is there, they will bite your hand off,” she says.

The dawn of a new era?

That support must consist of not just grant but a long-term rent settlement, with rents preferably rising by 1% more than

the Consumer Price Index (CPI) over the next decade. “In the long term, we’re at the dawn of a new era. The potential is there, but critical pieces of the jigsaw are missing,” adds Ryder.

Sovereign Network Group expects to build at least 20,000 homes over the next ten years, and the total could be as high as 25,000. Its projections include a “reasonably favourable” rent settlement, explains Tom Titherington, the group’s chief investment and development officer.

“If CPI plus 1% is built into our business plan, we can build a significant number of homes,” he says. But while social rent may increasingly become the norm, groups such as Sovereign are looking for wider support, and certainty, over infrastructure and the availability of skilled construction workers. It’d also be good to sort out nutrient neutrality rules.

“We’ve housing developments waiting to go on site. The future of the grant regime is important as we plan ahead”

Craig Dransfield, head of development, Soha

Can councils deliver?

And what of local authorities? In April, Waltham Forest placed its housing company, Sixty Bricks, into dormancy as projects dried up. The east London borough built 356 homes in 2023/24, but more are desperately needed to reduce the households in temporary accommodation, including commercial hotels.

“Having a government that’s putting housing at the heart of everything we’re doing gives confidence to the sector,” says Ahsan Khan, the council’s deputy leader and cabinet member for housing and regeneration.

Waltham Forest received £200m from the Greater London Authority for a multi-developer scheme in central Walthamstow. Two thousand homes are promised, half for social rent, but money is also needed for infrastructure, says Khan, including improvements to the central station.

When Labour was last in government, councils built little or no housing. That has changed significantly, with local authorities completing 1,700 homes during the first six months of this year, roughly double that in 2023.

Across London, Southwark built 557 homes in 2023/24. It took time for councils to build up capacity, says council leader Kieron Williams, but grant is now needed to close the gap between rent income and building costs. “We’re building more council homes than in any decade since the 1970s,” he says. “We’ve shown we can build, but to make it work we need government backing.”

Southwark is also leading a campaign among stockholding councils for a £644m cash injection to prop up

“In the long term, we’re at the dawn of a new era. The potential is there, but critical pieces of the jigsaw are missing”

Catherine Ryder, chief executive, Placeshapers

their housing revenue accounts. Other demands include changes to right to buy, a new decent homes programme, and long-term rent and debt settlements. “Council housing is on a knife edge,” says Williams.

More than just housebuilding

Catherine Ryder agrees it’s important not to overlook funding for rebuilding and retrofitting that ‘levelling up’ largely failed to deliver. “There are estates in parts of the country that have been waiting years for small and largescale regeneration,” she says. “Housing associations want to rebuild communities, but they’ve been doing it by piecing together lots of bits of funding.”

Landlords are waiting to see how much money the government provides for energy improvements, including greener energy. Medium to long-term funding is needed to ‘decarbonise’ older properties, but to date most funding has been short-term, says Laura Shellard, head of sustainability at Notting Hill Genesis (NHG).

All homes owned by NHG are due to meet energy performance certificate (EPC) band C by 2030 – a standard that’s likely to apply to all social housing in England by 2030. “It focuses minds and helps housing associations make critical decisions about where to invest,” she says.

Shellard would also like to see more money devolved to cities and regions, so local politicians decide how it’s spent. “It will be interesting to see what London can do with more autonomy,” she says. “In London, there are specific issues around flats in multiple ownership and heritage properties.”

Devolution, planning and partnerships

Nick Atkin welcomes the government’s desire for strategic planning and co-operation at local and regional level. Areas of Yorkshire with devolution deals already include partnerships of housing associations and local authorities with stock. “We’ve got levels of collaboration that I’ve never seen during my housing career,” he says.

In Oxford, the city council not only wants to build more homes it’s keen for other developers to do the same.

“We’re building more council homes than in any decade since the 1970s. We’ve shown we can build, but to make it work we need government backing”

Kieron Williams, leader, Southwark Council

Beyond housebuilding – what else is

in Labour’s in-tray?

• Right to buy: Ministers have already made minor changes to the way RTB receipts can be used to build new homes. A full consultation is imminent, but those hoping for an end to the scheme in England will be disappointed

• Private renting: A renters’ rights bill, abolishing section 21 evictions and raising standards in the PRS, is making its way through parliament. Barring hiccups, the eviction ban should be in place next year

• Decarbonisation: The warm homes social housing fund has replaced the social housing decarbonisation fund. First bids are due by 25 November. A consultation is also promised on minimum energy efficiency standards in social housing and reform of the EPC system

• Decent homes: The decent homes review, which began in 2021, rumbles on, with new standards expected to apply to private as well as social landlords. A consultation is imminent, while Awaab’s Law is due to be extended to social landlords

• Social rents: Chancellor Rachel Reeves is reported to support a ten-year rent settlement of CPI plus 1%. More will be known after this month’s budget

• Leaseholders: Parts of the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act have yet to be enacted, while the King’s Speech promised further changes, including making commonhold the default tenure for flats

• Fire safety: It remains to be seen what reforms result from the final Grenfell report, but pressure is being put on developers to speed up fire safety work

• Welfare: A cross-government child poverty task force is studying long-term strategy, though ministers have so far resisted pressure to lift the two-child benefit cap

• Staff development: A competence and conduct standard for housing staff will aim to ensure they possess the necessary skills and experience. New qualifications are promised for senior managers and executives.

The problem is land, with the council dependent upon neighbouring areas to provide sites for Oxford’s needs.

The city council built 64 homes last year but is currently locked in a dispute with planning inspectors over its local plan for 2040. The plan was rejected by inspectors in September due to the council wanting two thirds of the extra 1,322 new homes it needs each year to be built outside the city.

Louise Upton, cabinet member for planning, hopes mandatory targets will work in Oxford’s favour. “We have a booming economy but, within the city, we’re very short of space,” she says. “We’re delighted there will be mandatory targets and planning at a strategic level.”

But does Labour have a realistic hope of meeting its manifesto pledge and building 1.5 million homes during the next five years? The government seems unlikely to play any direct role in construction, beyond support given to local authorities.

Parts of the public sector are major landowners, and could help out on that front, but ministers are largely dependent on housing associations and private developers to do most of the heavy lifting for the time being.

Daniel Slade, head of practice and research at the Royal Town Planning Institute, says it’s almost certain more homes will be built, but the target is challenging. There are bound to be periods of uncertainty, but the government has more hope of getting close to the overall target if strategic planning is a success.

And not everything is within the government’s control. “It’s not just about the planning system. There are skill shortages and mortgage rates, as well as changes in demand in the economy,” says Slade. “There are so many moving parts to the puzzle.

“I fail to understand why we don’t ensure that what comes out of the planning system is social housing”

Kate Wareing, chief executive, Soha

Planning for more homes

Under a revised national planning policy framework (NPPF), local authorities will be required to meet higher housebuilding targets.

Housing need will be calculated using a formula based on the size of communities, with an uplift determined by the difference between local house prices and incomes. This uplift will be greater than before, leading to bigger targets.

More homes will be required in every region except London, where targets are down but higher than the number of homes presently being built. In mayoral combined authorities, targets are up by more than 30%.

This summer’s consultation over the NPPF represents the second set of changes to planning policy in two years, after Rishi Sunak bowed to pressure from backbench Tory MPs and abandoned mandatory targets.

Local plans drawn up by planning authorities will need to reflect revised policies, with councils given less scope for failing to hit their individual target.

The County Councils Network describes some rural targets as ‘excessive’, while districts such as Arun, in West Sussex, claim developers regularly fail to build homes for which they already hold planning permission.

While most housing will be built on brownfield sites, leading to higher densities in urban areas, development will be permitted on the green belt. Here, any building will be on so-called ‘grey-belt’ – land that was previously used for development or makes limited contribution to the green belt.

Where land is released from the green belt, it’ll be for councils to decide the tenure of new homes, meaning they can prioritise social rent. Local authorities will also be able to specify social rent within broader housing policies.

In future, there should be more co-operation between local authorities, with strategic planning across council boundaries required by law. This could result in councils providing land to meet housing need in a neighbouring local authority.

Daniel Slade of the Royal Town Planning Institute says the revised NPPF should allow councils to review the type of housing needed locally, but much depends on land. “Local authorities struggling to get local plans in place may be more prone to releasing green belt,” he adds.

Rachel Reeves and housing secretary Angel Rayner don hard hats as Labour pledges to “turbo charge” housebuilding. Credit: Berkeley Homes

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Welcome

Social housing has always been about more than providing bricks and mortar. A decent, safe home is the bedrock for people to live their lives. But they also need a good neighbourhood and community around them to really thrive.

Over the past year HQN has been working with colleagues in Australia on a project to learn and promote best practice in the art of placemaking. Place Making: improving services, engagement, and satisfaction in estate communities, to give it its full title, focuses on revamping social housing practices in New South Wales, Australia. The Community Housing Industry Association (CHIA) of NSW commissioned HQN to research international best practice in placemaking. The project is funded by the NSW Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ).

Our research has taken in Australia including Tasmania, the UK, Ireland and Germany. We’ve talked with practitioners and residents about the key ingredients for nurturing local communities. Our project’s focus is on placemaking and community building on priority estates. These are places with complex housing and social issues,

presenting unique challenges and opportunities. Here, the role of social landlords is much greater than providing housing; landlords can have a strong influence in shaping the social fabric of neighbourhoods. Their ability to respond effectively to the needs and wishes of residents is crucial for fostering and maintaining sustainable communities.

In priority estates, the involvement of residents in decision-making becomes even more critical. Resident participation is fundamental for the success of community development initiatives. Innovative management practices, including enhancing green spaces, security measures and inclusive events, can do much to improve community wellbeing by fostering a sense of pride in place.

In this special issue of Evidence we look at what our research has found so far. We present a selection of case studies where social landlords and residents together have achieved much in supporting residents and building strong neighbourhoods. And we look at the tricky issue of measuring progress.

Janis Bright Editor, Evidence

The placemaking project: Our findings to date

We began our project with a literature review that encompassed as much writing as we could find from the 1980s to date that might be relevant to our work. We also ran surveys in the UK and Germany and undertook a series of case studies with social housing organisations in Australia, the UK and Ireland. You can find more information about our project and the case studies online at https://communityhousing.org.au/placemakingimproving-services-engagement-and-satisfaction-inestate-communities/ The project is ongoing so do check back for updates.

The project pays particular attention to stock transfer estates. The transfer of social housing stock to non-state entities through large scale voluntary transfer (LSVT) has been a pivotal strategy in reshaping social housing landscapes, particularly in the UK and Australia. Whilst stock transfers in social housing have provided avenues

for improvement and regeneration, they necessitate a comprehensive, well-structured approach that addresses financial, organisational and socio-economic challenges.

Major redevelopment or refurbishment has proven to be successful – but equally, in some cases it failed because the fundamentals of placemaking weren’t created or sustained alongside the physical works and in some cases ongoing maintenance was lacking. In one case an award-winning, recently built scheme had begun to suffer problems, demonstrating that the physical infrastructure isn’t the only prerequisite for strong communities. In fact, where plans for or actual regeneration had failed, as in one case study, this could cause further damage to relationships and trust with residents. These issues chime strongly with the work of housing researcher Anne Power who more than 40 years ago pointed to the emphasis on physical infrastructure to the detriment of placemaking.

That’s not to say that stock condition doesn’t matter. On the contrary, residents very often wanted the most basic things, like repairs and rubbish collection, attended to first. Getting these basic housing management tasks right was often a marker for residents to begin rebuilding trust in their landlord.

Our analysis of all this material has identified a number of key themes or action points for organisations to pay heed to in successful placemaking. They include:

• Organisations need to work closely with residents to build and strengthen communities

• To do that, they need to establish a culture of trust and respect

• Cultural sensitivity and knowing the history of a place are crucial

• Build partnerships with other organisations to deliver better services

• Put into place the right infrastructure for long-term success

• Enable the community to lead the way wherever possible.

Addressing social housing challenges in priority estates requires a nuanced approach to community building and engagement. Resident participation is often overlooked, yet it’s fundamental for the success of community development initiatives. Social landlords can facilitate a more inclusive and collaborative environment by fostering a sense of ownership and belonging among residents. Through this work we distilled out a set of values to drive successful placemaking. These, we believe, are common to those organisations that go the extra mile in working with the communities they serve.

Emerging placemaking values

• Community empowerment and inclusion: focuses on intensifying resident participation in decision-making processes

• Safety and wellbeing: aims to uplift physical and social safety to improve quality of life

• Sustainable and quality housing: ensures sustainable, high-quality living conditions

• Social cohesion and sense of belonging: encourages a strong communal bond and integration across diverse cultural backgrounds

• Resilience and adaptability: supports community resilience against socio-economic and environmental challenges

• Cultural sensitivity: recognises and integrates the diverse cultural heritage within communities, especially focusing on indigenous groups.

Our case studies, with organisations at a variety of different stages in their work with local communities, informed our current work towards a toolkit for organisations to undertake successful placemaking. We found that organisations would need to implement their efforts across short-, medium- and long-term phases with goals attached to each, creating a clear roadmap for immediate actions and future strategies.

With that in mind, we offered a series of practical actions that organisations can take, in partnership with residents, from small beginnings to long-term strategies.

The beginnings

• Engage at an individual, granular level with household/ individuals

• Learn about and draw on the culture and history of the residents and the place

• Listen to residents and act on what they say

• It takes time – address the basics and build trust through ‘slow work’.

There may or may not be funding available for physical regeneration. Whatever the situation, dialogue with residents is essential. Our case study participants stressed the need to begin that dialogue at a very basic human level. They had put in the time and resources for ‘slow work’ –officers going on to the estate to talk with each resident and household individually. Many found that communicating via leaflets, emails and other written materials, or calling people to a meeting, didn’t succeed in fostering the engagement that’s vital to placemaking. Residents stress three key words: trust, respect, communication.

Resident engagement

• Residents are only likely to engage when they feel they’re respected

• Listen, innovate and adapt

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The Housing Studies Association (HSA) is a UK-wide membership organisation which brings together researchers, practitioners and professionals to promote the study of housing. HSA runs a programme of events including our annual conference and our public lecture on housingrelated themes. The Association also offers:

• Events grant scheme enabling members to disseminate and discuss their work,

• Seminar Series grant competition

• Conference bursaries to early career and/or nonwaged housing researchers and practitioners

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Follow us on twitter @HSA_UK.

• Tailor approaches for diverse communities

• Ensure there are safe spaces where residents can meet

• Encourage residents to take on responsibilities and lead initiatives.

This project, as with our previous work on resident engagement in Wales, has concluded that trust is the basis for all successful community building and placemaking. In some cases residents have lost trust in their landlord because repairs haven’t been completed, because they see their neighbourhood deteriorating, or because previous attempts at regeneration have failed. Residents may feel that their landlord doesn’t respect them.

In these circumstances, landlords must take special care to be trustworthy. Dialogue with residents has begun, and now the landlord must act on what they’ve been told. Frequent complaints from residents will be about issues that make life a misery for them, such as drugs, rubbish and poor housing maintenance. The landlord must take firm action to show that things are changing. It must especially ensure the basic housing service is working well. Where an item isn’t within its control, it must be open and honest about the limits on what it can do – whilst still seeking ways to resolve the problem. Once again, communication is key. Resident engagement took a variety of forms. In Australia, working closely with Aboriginal elders was considered crucial. Elders play a vital role in leadership of the community and representing its interests and wishes. Here and elsewhere, organisations were supporting and encouraging residents to create their own vision for their neighbourhood.

Partnership working

• Consider the neighbourhood as a ‘place to live’

• Multi-agency partnerships are essential – health, policing, local authorities, third sector

• Embed partnership working for the longer term via neighbourhood plans or frameworks

• Establish longer-term programmes for, eg, education, training and employment, health, wellbeing, intergenerational work

• How can your organisation further devolve power to residents – can they participate in partnership working?

• Evaluate and learn – placemaking is very much a work in progress.

Even the largest organisations cannot hope to cover all of the work needed to support communities and sustain interventions. In fact, there’s considerable debate about the degree to which housing organisations should be working at specialist levels beyond traditional housing management – for example, in dealing with mental health problems or delivering employment training.

We found no single model for what works best in delivering either services or resident engagement. But there were pointers on good practice and warnings on what doesn’t work. Some organisations had adopted a holistic approach to neighbourhood management, with patch sizes kept small so that housing officers could really get to know residents and residents would know their officers. Some organisations were based in tight geographical locations so housing offices were easily reached; others had officers visiting the estate frequently. There could be a single point of contact for residents to use; or some organisations favoured developing specialist staff for particular needs. One had established intensive one-to-one support for families with complex needs, particularly where a member of the household was unemployed.

Our case studies, some of which are outlined here, offer practical examples of these ideas being put into practice. Some, such as Pioneer Group in Birmingham’s Castle Vale, have been running for decades; other organisations only fairly recently took over the estates where they’re working. All have valuable lessons to share from their experience in the complex world of placemaking.

Recording a baseline set of metrics and then measuring progress is a vital tool in working with communities and partner organisations. It can be difficult to drill down to the levels needed and some data may be difficult to acquire. Next in this special issue, we look at potential metrics for placemaking.

Using data to track success

Our research has included a distillation of the values social landlords are working to in successful placemaking. From these we developed a set of objectives, each of which has practical metrics attached – so that organisations can use their metrics data to establish a baseline and then track their progress. The metrics, crunched down from more than 100 potential measures, are designed to drive activity toward the set of objectives. They include both landlord management data and tenant satisfaction measures. Many organisations will already be collecting and using some, perhaps most, of these measures. For others, it will form part of their journey toward success. Here we outline a selection of the objectives and

measures we’re currently developing within the project, using Australia-relevant terms. They form part of our research and discussion with participating organisations and CHIA NSW toward a final set of placemaking metrics that can be shared and used within a country.

Objective 1: Build trust and communication

Key community outcomes:

1. Feel heard: ensure residents feel listened to by housing providers.

2. Stay informed: provide clear and timely communication

about housing and community services.

Example metrics:

Resident measure: “How satisfied or dissatisfied are you that [your social housing provider] listens to residents’ views and acts on them?” — collection method: annual tenant satisfaction surveys.

Resident measure: “How satisfied or dissatisfied are you that your rights as a tenant are upheld by [your social housing provider]?” — collection method: annual tenant satisfaction surveys.

Resident measure: “To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following? ‘My landlord treats me fairly and with respect.’” — collection method: included in annual tenant satisfaction surveys.

Landlord measure: Measure the percentage of tenant communications (inquiries, requests, complaints) responded to within 24 hours.

Landlord measure: Number of tenant-led initiatives and tenant-led changes implemented.

Landlord measure: Number of local partnerships established and evaluation of effectiveness.

Landlord measure: Complaints handling efficiency. This measure uses the rate of complaints addressed within prescribed timescales to measure operational efficiency and customer service excellence.

Objective 3: Boost community involvement

Key community outcomes:

1. Get involved: encourage participation in community events and activities.

2. Your voice matters: provide opportunities for residents to voice their opinions and make/influence decisions.

Example metrics:

Resident measure: “How satisfied are you with feeling part of your community? ( 0 - 10 scale) from the Personal Wellbeing

Index?” – collection method: annual tenant satisfaction surveys.

Resident measure: “How satisfied or dissatisfied are you that tenants are able to influence [name of the provider]’s decision-making?”

Landlord measure: Number of resident engagement initiatives implemented per year — and number of residents volunteering.

Landlord measure: Value for money in resident involvement. Evaluates the impact of resources allocated for enhancing tenant engagement against the improvements in service delivery and tenant satisfaction.

Objective 5: Strengthen social connections

Key community outcomes:

1. Connect with neighbours: help foster relationships and social networks across the community.

2. Celebrate diversity: support cultural cohesion and inclusivity.

Resident measure: “How satisfied are you with feeling part of your community? ( 0 - 10 scale from PWI)?” — collection method: tenant satisfaction survey.

Resident measure: “How satisfied or dissatisfied are you that your landlord contributes positively to your neighbourhood?” — collection method: bi-annual community cohesion surveys.

Resident measure: “To what extent do you feel that your landlord respects your community’s culture and heritage?”

Landlord measure: number of cultural and social events held per year and number of residents attending.

Landlord measure: Benefits to local Aboriginal communities – “To what extent does the landlord respect and enhance community connections, culture and self determination?”

We welcome debate around potential metrics for placemaking. Contact us at evidence@hqnetwork.co.uk with your views.

Case study: Clúid Housing, St Mary’s Mansions, Dublin, Republic of Ireland

Location type: Inner city

Landlord: Clúid Housing

Residents: Many have lived on the estate all or most of their lives, and many families for several generations. New residents are also coming in

Estate size and type: 1940s build of 80 apartments in a square with an inner courtyard. Open balconies facing inward. Total stock locally: 120.

There was a time not so long ago when even social workers were reluctant to visit St Mary’s Mansions. The estate in North Dublin had become a hotspot for ASB, drug-taking

and crime. But residents saw a different picture. They were fiercely proud of their estate and its history as an example of design by the pioneering Dublin city architect Herbert Simms

Landlord Clúid Housing decided it was essential to tap into that pride and sense of belonging to turn things around. The association is itself proud to have its main office located in the historic northern district of the capital. Clúid knew that drastic action was needed on the estate, and the choice was either total demolition or a major refurbishment. Physical regeneration wasn’t enough, though. For it to be successful, the association would need to bring residents with it on a shared journey. Resident engagement manager Steve Loveland says he noticed that existing newsletters tended to feature shiny new homes, not places like St Mary’s Mansions: “We mirrored what they felt – forgotten.”

So, it began its engagement with residents about the future by talking with them about the past – what the place meant to them. Two initiatives based in arts and history began the process. First, Clúid officers and a local artist began knocking on doors to talk with households individually. They brought with them a gift box containing a map, ‘secret scroll’, silhouettes and other materials. And as it was the time of Covid they could not go into people’s homes – so they sat on the doorsteps exploring the box contents and just talking.

With the help of the gift box from the past, residents began to respond and create their own stories of the estate. Eventually there was an exhibition of people’s memories and memorabilia. Clúid stresses the input this process requires. To get round every household, take the time to hear their stories and concerns, and keep going back again for more, took an intense amount of officer time – but the organisation regards this as an essential foundation. Stephen Lovelace comments: “Trust is the currency of engagement. So you have to acknowledge people’s history

and concerns first before going for a bigger ask.”

The project was aimed at helping residents to express what they wanted of their estate. By now demolition was out, and regeneration plans were taking shape with the help of major national government funding. The second initative was to begin work with students from Dublin’s School of Architecture, working up the residents’ aspirations into practical designs for the refurbished buildings. Here, residents’ voice was strongly heard as they took the role of client to the students. Although deck access blocks around the world have become unpopular, these residents wanted to keep their long balconies overlooking the private inner courtyard.

Children were invited to spend a day at the university, seeing the residents’ ideas formed into 3-D models. The idea was both to move the process forward, and to help the youngsters experience campus life, sowing a seed that perhaps they too could become students in the future.

In a similar vein, adults from the estate were invited to give an online lecture to students about social justice and life in social housing. The students then wrote essays on the topic and the residents marked them, offering a prize for the best. Now, with the regular lecture gaining popularity among residents, a group are to take a bolder step and deliver the lecture in person.

Meanwhile, plans for the refurbishment and wider resident engagement were ploughing ahead. Clúid was keen to show first that it could get the basics of management right, further building trust. When it came to the actual construction, there were glitches: for technical reasons not everything people wanted could be achieved. Nonetheless, through the relationships already built and because many features, including small details, were realised, the process was highly successful. Resident engagement staff feel that their earlier work with tenants brought them to a point where more difficult but necessary conversations could be

The regeneration of St Mary’s Mansions

had, without tainting the relationship.

The completely refurbished St Mary’s Mansions has now re-opened with 23 of the original families moving back in, joined by new residents. The engagement work before and during the renewal continues, and has laid the platform for a tenant association to form.

All of Clúid’s tenant engagement work is underpinned by its three-year resident engagement strategy and action plan. This both directs and informs activities aimed at inclusion, under the banner ‘We’re all Clúid’. Part of the organisation’s measures of success at placemaking includes tracking whether it’s an officer or residents leading an initiative: more resident-led activity is the goal.

The key points:

• Approach residents as individuals and households, and talk openly with them

• Put in the resources to visit individually, not just once but regularly

• Offer something to begin the process: ‘trust is the currency of engagement’

• Only later move toward a ‘bigger ask’ once trust is established

• Use history and the arts, rooted in respect for the place, to build bridges

• Allow residents into the driving seat whenever possible and whenever they’re ready.

Case study: Castle Vale, Castle Bromwich, England, UK

Location type: City suburban

Landlord: Pioneer Group

Residents: Many long-term residents, very low turnover. Formerly the community was almost exclusively white but now more mixed ethnicity Estate size and type: Very large estate with 10,000 residents in about 4,500 homes, of which Pioneer manages 2,500. Extensively remodelled to offer low-rise flats and individual houses. Small ‘footprint’ of only one square mile.

Castle Vale has been through a remarkable history of many of the UK’s post-industrial regeneration initiatives. Built in the 1960s to rehouse Birmingham residents from cleared slum housing, it originally consisted of 32 tower blocks plus some low-rise flats. But social problems emerged almost straight away. The area lacked the infrastructure to go with the new housing and jobs were scarce.

the right infrastructure is there to sustain the “eco-system of the revitalised community,” he believes. “The community is not done to, it is engaged with.”

In the 1990s the estate became a Housing Action Trust – taken from council ownership to a housing association with the consent of residents, and completely redeveloped using £250 million of special funding. With the demolition of 30 tower blocks and the creation of new low-rise housing, came new schools, a GP surgery, retail and jobs. Turnover continues to be very low with few re-lets, but the demographics have gradually changed over the years to become less of a monoculture. Half of the lettings are from the local council’s waiting list, which has helped broaden the ethnic diversity of the population.

Equally important, says CEO Simon Wilson, was the community rebulding begun during the HAT days. The HAT’s legacy was “hardwired” so that structures created then are still functioning for the community today. Anchor institutions delivering for the community include charities, health and wellbeing organisations, and youth support. Other organisations deliver employment and skills opportunities, debt advice and more. All of this means that

The original Castle Vale Community Regeneration Services that eventually became part of Pioneer Group runs a thriving community centre. Residents said they wanted better quality in their homes and Pioneer Group promised it would continue to invest after the wide scale regeneration was complete. Based on feedback from residents, it’s also established green initiatives and an estate-wide CCTV service with 95 cameras and a control room.

The environment on the estate gets special attention, too: residents said they wanted ‘clean and green’ so the HA must deliver. A community environmental trust manages the central park and other green areas. Pioneer takes a tenure-neutral approach on fly tipping and bulk waste, and gets it cleared in the interests of the whole community.

Another original structure created by the HAT to improve local governance and sustain partnership working also continues today, in the shape of the Neighbourhood Partnership Board. Over the years it’s been chaired by several high-profile national politicians based locally, and includes the local authority, police, health, faith groups

Part of the original Castle Vale estate

and other key stakeholders. Crucially, residents can also join the board. This is where masterplanning and strategic level initiatives are agreed. It’s also the place where the neighbourhood plan that’s the driving force for partnership working is drawn up. This has been regularly renewed over the last 20 years with the overarching aim of moving the indices of deprivation in the right direction.

The partnership’s value was reemphasised during Covid when it was relatively easy for the organisations to pull together to deliver support wherever needed. Similarly, when the local library, swimming pool and football facility were threatened with closure during the austerity years, the structure was there to enable their future as community assets.

For its part, Pioneer has lived up to its community pledge to put at least £400,000 a year into ‘non-core’ activity in the community, such as hubs, and family and older people’s support. The association’s board continues to support that investment, despite a range of pressures, such as government rent cuts that took £1 million out of the association’s business plan, austerity, increased regulation requirements and rising interest rates. The aim is to ‘get upstream’ of problems, not only react to them.

The key points

• When making a new start, either via stock transfer or major regeneration, community building is the foundation for the future

That’s especially important in a community that’s still among the most deprived in Birmingham. Pioneer tracks the indices of multiple deprivation right down to ‘super output areas’ (very local level), though data such as Census returns are always lagging behind the current reality. The feeling is that although the indices for the area remain challenging, organisations believe they’re bucking a downward trend elsewhere in the region and actually improving their stats. Local people take pride in their estate. That’s largely because the placemaking work begun 30 years ago has stood the test of time. As Simon Wilson comments, “The community puts its arm round its citizens and gives them opportunities to thrive”.

• Establish strong formal structures to ensure partner organisations and the community can work at strategic level

• Draw up and agree a neighbourhood plan that drives all agencies’ activity in the area. Keep renewing it over time

• Make definite pledges to the community – and then keep to them

• Tenure neutral approaches to the outdoor environment will pay dividends long term

• Where community assets are threatened, find a way to support them

• Monitor demographics and deprivation to support interventions and track their success.

Case study: Argyll Estate, Coffs Harbour, NSW, Australia

Location type: Territorial Landlord: Mission Australia Housing Residents: Many have lived on the estate all or most of their lives. Many Aboriginal residents. High levels of disability Estate size and type: 112 homes for social rent, mix of houses and flats, plus some privately owned homes. Extensive undeveloped land surrounding. Part of a transfer of 1,050 homes to MAH in the northern part of the Mid North Coast in 2019.

Mission Australia Housing (MAH) took over management of the estate at a difficult time in its history. The NSW Government Land and Housing Corporation which owns the land, with the local authority, put forward plans in 2018 to redevelop the estate and provide considerable extra housing, almost all of it private. But many residents were confused by the letter they received about it and some thought they were going to be evicted. Vocal opposition began to build.

The regenerated Castle Vale estate

An early task of MAH therefore was to try to rebuild trust with residents when it took on management of the estate from 2019. Community Development Manager for the Mid North Coast Jesse Taylor says the immediate need was to get staff out on the estate, knocking on doors and talking with people. Literacy is low on the estate, which had led to misunderstandings about the proposals, and a digital approach would also have lacked the personal contact needed to establish trust.

From those beginnings MAH has worked hard to engage with residents across a range of issues. A Tenant Action Group (TAG) provides a focal point for hearing residents’ views and needs, and is aimed at sharing “the tenants’ vision for improving their world,” says Jesse Taylor.

Digital inclusion courses have proved popular. With a grant from the Good Things Foundation, MAH trained TAG members and other residents to act as mentors and carry out the training. They’re offered gift vouchers in return. It’s one of a number of initiatives by the MAH team to lever in resources from elsewhere, avoiding over-stretching their own staff. As Jesse Taylor notes, the demographics and socio-economic indicators on the Argyll estate place it among the most deprived and vulnerable communities, meaning it qualifies for interventions or grants from a number of NGOs (third sector organisations). Other similar initiatives include appointing a youth engagement officer for the estate.

Integrated service delivery, responding to residents’ individual needs, is part of MAH’s overall approach. It seeks to unify two ‘streams’ of tenancy assets and community development. To that end it works with other agencies such as the police and mental health teams to improve and join up services. Argyll suffers particularly from crime and antisocial behaviour, often driven by substance abuse. So, MAH works with the police to ensure a report number from each incident is shared and the landlord can discuss the problems with residents. There have been concerns that housing staff have to step in and deal with situations they’re not equipped for, because health services aren’t engaged or

care isn’t coordinated. Today, specialist staff are starting to work with mental health teams under a NSW-wide housing and mental health agreement, walking around the estate and calling on residents together.

Along the way the redevelopment plans for Argyll have been dropped. There’s now a possibility of a new plan, involving much more social housing – but that’s for the future, after much more discussion with residents.

In the meantime MAH has essentially ‘started again’ in working with tenants, first by acknowledging their mistrust and fear, and now by delivering on what it promises. The latest initiative, at Christmas 2023, was another straightforward but highly effective idea: a residents’ fun day. MAH brought together all the agencies involved in Argyll, together with the TAG and others, to create a day of activities and information. In line with MAH’s now firmly established engagement strategy, there was plenty of doorknocking as well as text messaging and easy-read leaflets to get the word out.

As momentum for the event built, a number of agencies

Argylle Street community fun day

Tenant action group

began offering extras: high-quality clothing for free, a gift from Santa for every child, and much more. Some residents raised concerns that money was being spent on the event during a cost-of-living crisis. They said food hampers were needed – so MAH ensured there was one for every household. More than 300 people turned out on the day, which proved a huge success also in getting other agencies and social landlords involved. In the aftermath, professionals are seeking meetings and bringing forward ideas to support residents further. For their part, some residents said they had met and talked with neighbours they had never known before, helping to overcome isolation and loneliness.

Jesse Taylor and his team have a number of takeaways

from their experience of engaging with residents who had lost trust. They include:

• Do the basics. Knock on doors and talk to people openly – don’t rely on digital

• Create platforms for people to engage with each other

• Integrate your own services and work closely with other agencies to offer tailored support, especially for those with complex needs

• Support residents to create their own vision for their neighbourhood

• Lever in resources via grants – avoid over-stretching your own staff

• Deliver on what you promise.

Case study: Tenant Service Assessors pilot

Location type: Organisational

Landlord: Link Wentworth

Residents: 3,917 homes at the time of the pilot (2019-2020)

Estate type and size: Organisation-wide initiative

What: The Tenant Service Assessors pilot was a successful project designed to test the applicability of a tenant scrutiny approach in Australia. Under the Tenant Service Assessor (TSA) and tenant scrutiny models, tenants are encouraged to have direct and detailed input into a housing service area that they’ve selected. The goal is for tenants and landlords to better understand the service area, and through an intensive focus on a particular service, make improvements for everyone’s benefit.

Project background: In 2019/20, CHIA NSW was funded by the NSW Department of Communities and Justice under the Industry Development Strategy to test the TSA approach in NSW. Link Wentworth was selected due to the involvement of their existing Tenant Advisory Group (TAG) and the organisation’s commitment to the project and to continuous service improvement.

Project steps: With the enthusiastic participation of Link Wentworth, and the endorsement of CEO and executive, the TAG group were consulted about the project over a series of events and activities. The consultation discussed the principles behind TSA and examples of tenant scrutiny from UK social housing organisations. TAG group members were asked to vote on a service area for the project to focus on. They ultimately chose complaints handling as their priority for the project.

As one of the side benefits of the project was to grow the number of involved tenants, Link Wentworth and the TAG issued an open invitation for interested tenants to take part in the TSA process, with around 30 tenants taking part, in addition to the existing TAG.

For the TSA approach to be effective, it’s essential that participating tenants are supported to develop an understanding of the relevant legislation, regulatory and contractual requirements for the service area chosen so that they can take part as informed partners. Link Wentworth

and CHIA NSW therefore ran training and briefing sessions on the legislation, regulatory requirements and Link Wentworth policy settings around complaints handling. The next project stage was a detailed review of all aspects of the complaints handling process by the TSAs and the TAG group. A series of workshops were held and were facilitated by CHIA NSW and Link Wentworth managers. Link Wentworth staff from different departments took part, including front of house team members, complaints experts and policy staff. Their engagement was very positive, and throughout their approach was enthusiastic and focussed on practical improvements that could be made. These team members’ detailed knowledge of processes and the reasons behind them was essential.

The following workshops were held:

• 1st workshop – introductions to the TSA approach, participants and training/briefing session on complaints legislation, compliance and policies

• 2nd workshop – definitions of complaints, understanding and awareness, detailed issue identification and TSA priorities for changes and mechanisms for service improvements

• 3rd workshop – further review of complaints policies, including review of other CHPs’ complaints strategies, discussion of best ways for tenants and Link Wentworth to monitor change

• Final workshop – changes made as a result of TSA feedback, including comms campaign, flow chart and website and policy changes.

Practical recommendations made by the TSAs

• Adapt the current complaints policy – following comparisons with other organisations’ complaints policies and processes

• Run a publicity campaign to raise awareness of complaints handling, re-emphasise that Link Wentworth value and welcome complaints as a way to improve services

• Describe the differences between service requests and complaints, and how each are approached

• Make changes to the website content on complaints

• Add in information about appeals and the Housing

Appeals Committee and how complaints are different to appeals

• Create a flowchart diagram for the complaints process to make it more easily understandable for tenants

• Develop a regular survey to follow up after each complaint

• Hold staff briefing across teams

• Make changes to IT systems to enable better categorisation of complaints and service requests and to enable tracking and resolution of complaints.

All the suggested changes were implemented by Link Wentworth during the TSA process.

Project challenges

Tenant feedback

Although the project was successful from both the tenants’ perspective and from Link Wentworth’s, there were some challenges:

• The Covid pandemic reached Australia at around the mid-point of this project. This meant that the timeline was significantly disrupted, with around a year between workshop 3 and 4 and even after the project resumed engagement was moved online due to the health vulnerabilities of some participants

• Link had commenced the process of amalgamating with Wentworth Community Housing before the project started, and the amalgamation proceeded to its successful conclusion during the project

• Changes to a key IT system were introduced during the course of the project. Overall, this was a positive change and it facilitated one of the key suggestions of the TSAs, which was improved identification and tracking of formal complaints through the system. The system now provides robust functionality for tracking and recording feedback by the Customer Relationship team. However, the system changes during the project did make access to complaints data more complex.

Conclusion

The project was very successful and provides a model for other CHPs to consider and implement as part of their tenant engagement toolkit. The approach can be adapted to other service areas and could also be rolled on an area or estate basis.

Input from tenants and staff from across different teams meant that a detailed analysis of complaints policies and practices was possible in a relatively short period of time and with a modest time investment. The focus throughout was positive, practical and based on service improvement. The TSAs were able to bring a unique perspective as service users which was invaluable, and their engagement was constructive throughout.

Feedback from the TAG and the TSAs was strongly supportive of the project:

• They felt empowered in decision-making

• They liked to see changes made based on what they said, with a relatively short turnaround time

• They liked the way the project was presented and communicated. Progress was summarised clearly and they could see a clear progression from TSAs recommending changes to service improvements being implemented by Link Wentworth

• They felt involved every step of the way, with a positive feedback loop and all changes made relayed back to them

• The changes made were clear improvements to the complaints handling process

• Some extra tenants were engaged, beyond the existing TAG

• The TSA approach can be rolled out for other service areas in future to implement techniques to increase tenants’ direct involvement in monitoring and shaping services.

Both tenants and the CHP found the process valuable and illuminating, and important changes in service delivery have been made as a result.

Overall conclusion

The TSA pilot worked well, supported direct service improvements and could be rolled out by other CHPs and with other service areas.

Evidence newsletter editor: Dr Janis Bright www.hqnetwork.co.uk email: evidence@hqnetwork.co.uk  follow us on twitter @HQNMedia

Tenant Advisory Group consultation

Housing in Practice

Household tips: How tenants can help design future estates

Neil Merrick reports on how a housing association’s residents were given a major say over the type of estates offered to tenants in the future.

The residents’ story

Tenants at settle housing association have spent the past year helping to design quality estates by offering suggestions based on their own experience.

An estate design toolkit unveiled by the association this autumn draws heavily on comments made by its voice of the resident panel, a 13-strong panel that also provides managers with feedback on other matters.

settle owns about 10,500 homes in Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and South Cambridgeshire. Since evolving from North Hertfordshire Homes six years ago, it’s built or acquired about 1,000 homes. Over the next two years, it expects to build a further 500 for social or affordable rent,

is now being used to guide the association’s board in approving developments, and may decide whether settle opts to go ahead with specific schemes.

Annette, a panel member, said she and other members appreciated the opportunity to share their opinions. “I’m proud of the toolkit we’ve helped to create and that it will improve developments for future residents and the wider community,” she adds.

What exactly is a voice of the resident panel?

The panel was set up 18 months ago to do exactly what it says – give residents a voice, along with the opportunity to scrutinise their landlord. It meets once every six weeks, with

dissatisfied tenants, as this shows where the association can improve. “If a cohort of residents is dissatisfied about the same thing, that helps us in analysing the problem,” he adds.

How did the panel become involved in designing estates?

To help design a future estate, residents needed to learn how to interpret plans and review designs and thereby measure quality. This included discussing the merits of housing schemes across the sector, and learning how funds are allocated by Homes England.

Residents were taken on a walking tour of an estate, and shown visuals of how homes and amenities would look when built. TPAS, the tenant engagement group, ran a workshop on measuring quality.

Fiona Coulson, settle’s executive director for development, was impressed by the enthusiasm shown by the panel, even though, in the main, they will not directly benefit from the way new estates are designed in the years to come. “We’re building homes that existing residents won’t necessarily ever live in,” she says.

It took the best part of a year to come up with a matrix of features or themes that project teams use to assess proposed developments. Comments came not just from the panel, but from a survey of 550 residents who had moved into settle properties during the past two to five years.

Why is estate design so important?

Historically, social landlords have prided themselves on providing not just bricks and mortar, but communities where people are proud to live. This means looking at the location of new housing, as well as amenities, such as green space.

Furthermore, as part of new tenant satisfaction measures, landlords in England must show the contribution they make to neighbourhoods, and be able to demonstrate this to the Regulator of Social Housing

What sort of ideas did settle’s residents come up with?

Comments by the voice of the resident panel, and subsequent survey, led to the following themes being included in the new toolkit:

• Proximity of homes to shops, services and public transport

• Parking and street layouts

• Signposting to cycle routes, footpaths and green space

• Availability of areas to grow food and enjoy nature

• Provision of safe space, playgrounds and amenities for young people

• Public lighting.

As head of partnerships, Shaun Harrison was responsible for feeding the ideas into the matrix and creating the final toolkit. If new estates fail to address themes in the toolkit, project managers must explain why or come up with

statements in mitigation.

“The questionnaire asked what people liked or didn’t like about where they live,” he says. “The answers provided a guide for which design questions should be included in the matrix and which elements were most important to residents. All the responses were reviewed in the light of what would improve estate design rather than looking at specific suggestions in terms of cost or practicality.”

Fiona Coulson adds she was surprised by the importance that residents attached to signposting and connectivity. However, ongoing park and rewilding projects are in tune with residents’ desire for more green space.

Not everything suggested through the panel or tenants’ survey is within the gift of the association, she adds, including street lighting, but settle works closely with local authorities over wider amenities and services.

Will any housing schemes be rejected because they fall foul of the toolkit?

Possibly. Along with other social landlords, settle regularly weighs up offers from other developers to build social or affordable housing through section 106 schemes.

The toolkit, explains Shaun Harrison, makes the association more aware of issues around estates when reviewing such proposals, with the matrix setting parameters in line with the wishes of current residents.

Earlier this year, settle declined to get involved in a scheme because of a lack of outdoor space. “If we don’t think a scheme scores sufficiently well against the matrix, we won’t take it forward for approval,” he says.

Is the toolkit only going to benefit new residents?

Not necessarily. The toolkit will be applied to regeneration schemes, which involve building some new homes for existing tenants. In addition, settle is in the process of consulting residents over neighbourhood plans for three areas where it owns a significant number of homes, with the same themes likely to enter discussions.

Since the pandemic, aspirations have increased with balconies now the norm for flats, and more importance attached to green space.

“We’re in the process of consulting residents to see if they’re happy with what we do and I’ll be staggered if there are no changes,” says Dean Anderson. “The matrix is really helpful in holding conversations with residents.”

What advice would settle offer to other social landlords thinking of involving residents in design decisions?

settle’s toolkit demonstrates how ideas from residents can be weighed up against those of other parties in planning new developments. However, this must be done thoroughly, with tenants confident they’re being consulted for good reason.

“It’s important to allow sufficient time and resource to fully engage residents and involve the right people across the business to input into the process,” says Shaun Harrison.

Ombudsman Corner

By Richard Blakeway, the Housing Ombudsman

It may be this single line of the Grenfell Tower Phase 2 report that has some of the greatest impact in terms of thought-leadership in social housing. The report stated that landlords shouldn’t have allowed “the relationship [with residents] to deteriorate to such an extent [it cannot] observe its basic responsibilities”.

These words have resonated – and it’s recognised that complaints are central to that relationship. This also came across in the Deputy Prime Minister’s party conference speech around the imbalance of power between resident and landlord – a concept which is central to our approach as an ombudsman.

Whilst the report contains many technical failings, it’s the gross imbalance of power and dismissal of residents detailed in volume 3 that’s striking. It’s clear residents’ complaints were dismissed and devalued.

These are some of the issues we still encounter in our investigations and highlighted in our recent systemic report on attitudes, respect and rights. It identified the need for human-centric provision of services by landlords.

Consider our recent learning from severe maladministration report on temporary moves. You have residents moving for years when they were told it would be weeks; or placed into accommodation that’s neither suitable for their medical needs or vulnerable children.

These failings may not be because of people or processes, although these can be present. Rather, it may be because of inadequate systems. And these systems can act in ways that are callous and uncaring. And it can be this system failure that gives the impression to the resident that the landlord is uncaring.

There’s also wider societal change that needs to take place towards those living in social housing. This starts with the investment needed so that landlords can deliver services that meet residents’ needs and are able to maintain social homes in a way that’s

responsible and ensures decency.

Our work with thousands of residents and landlords has also reinforced how the role of a landlord has changed – providing a one-sizefits-all approach to housing and repairs is no longer viable. This is evident from the Grenfell Tower Inquiry’s conclusions, with the landlord not fully understanding the needs of the residents they were serving. These are themes evidenced repeatedly in our casework.

It serves as a reminder to landlords that complaints hold a mirror up to the quality of service provision and culture of their organisation.

Too often I encounter a defensiveness around complaints and sometimes that extends to senior leadership. These behaviours are all the more apparent when I see the complete opposite being displayed by senior leaders – curiosity, reflection and humility about the need to improve outcomes.

Openness and transparency are essential to addressing challenges, and the concept of the ‘duty of candour’ across public functions is a clear commitment following scandals like Hillsborough and Grenfell Tower. What would this concept look like in social housing?

I appreciate there will be some landlords that feel that our awards of compensation are too high. Compensation can be a challenging area. But look at our next report and you’ll see several landlords award around £150 to residents living with damp and mould.

In each case the resident experienced more than 12 months of delays. The landlords’ decisions were recent and aren’t historic.

Understanding the disconnect between redress awarded at different parts of the complaints journey is important, including the ombudsman, but just reflect on some of those sums and the impact it must have on the resident-landlord relationship.

After Grenfell Tower, landlords should ensure they’re listening and involving residents in their decision-making processes, actions that were devastatingly absent there.

Legal update: How to stay compliant with the gas safety regulations

By Emily Chivers and Gabriel Adeniyi, Birketts LLP

The Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998 impose clear responsibilities on landlords to ensure gas appliances, fittings and flues provided for tenants are safe.

As a social housing landlord, compliance is essential not only to avoid legal repercussions but also to safeguard your tenants’ welfare. The regulations apply to all residential properties where gas appliances are installed, including houses, flats and hostels.

The key requirements include ensuring annual gas safety checks, maintaining records and taking appropriate action in case of safety issues.

Annual gas safety checks

All social housing landlords must carry out an annual gas safety check on every gas appliance and flue in their properties. This check must be conducted by a Gas Safe registered engineer and you should make sure that the engineer inspects every relevant gas appliance provided in a tenants’ home as well as any communal areas with shared equipment.

If an appliance is owned by the tenant, the landlord isn’t responsible for its safety check. However, the landlord must ensure the safety of the associated flue and pipework.

The safety check must be completed within 12 months of the installation of a new appliance or flue, and at intervals of no more than 12 months thereafter.

Record-keeping obligations

As a landlord, you’re also required to keep a record of each gas safety check for at least two years. For new tenants, the latest gas safety certificate must be provided before they move in. For existing tenants, the certificate should be supplied within 28 days of the check being completed.

Maintaining accurate and timely records ensures you meet compliance and provides evidence in the event of an inspection or dispute. Your records must contain the date of the check, a description of each appliance and flue, the results of the check, any remedial actions and the Gas Safe engineer’s signature.

Dealing with safety issues

If a gas safety check reveals an issue with an appliance, as the landlord you’re required to act immediately. If an appliance is deemed unsafe, it must be disconnected, and your tenants should be informed. Repairs must be carried

out by a qualified Gas Safe engineer before the appliance can be used again.

In certain cases, if disconnection will result in hardship for tenants, temporary alternative arrangements, such as providing electric heaters, should be considered until the gas appliance is made safe.

The regulations also mandate that social housing landlords ensure regular maintenance of gas installations and appliances, in accordance with the manufacturer’s instructions. This goes beyond the annual safety check and may involve more frequent servicing, depending on usage and the specific requirements of the appliances.

Maintenance records should be kept alongside the gas safety checks to evidence compliance.

Tenants’ responsibilities

Although you have the primary responsibility for gas safety, your tenants also have a role in maintaining safety standards.

Tenants should be advised not to install or use any gas appliances unless they’re fitted by a qualified Gas Safe engineer. Additionally, tenants must allow access for annual gas safety checks and any necessary maintenance. We therefore recommend you ensure that your tenants understand their obligations and you encourage prompt reporting of any concerns or faults with gas appliances.

Enforcing compliance

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) oversees compliance with the regulations, and failure to comply can result in serious consequences, including hefty fines and, in extreme cases, imprisonment.

For social landlords, a breach of gas safety regulations can also have significant reputational damage and might lead to claims from tenants, including personal injury claims if negligence can be demonstrated.

Regular audits of gas safety compliance, training for maintenance teams, and close relationships with qualified Gas Safe engineers can help ensure your organisation meets all its legal obligations.

Why Housing 21’s extra care milestone will benefit more than just its residents

Kris Peach, Managing Director of Extra Care, Housing 21

As we surpass the milestone of 10,000 extra care properties, it’d be easy to reflect upon what this means for us as an organisation, as we firmly position ourselves as leaders in the provision of older people’s housing.

Across England, there are now 188 extra care schemes managed by Housing 21, dating back as far as 1977, when our first scheme, Lonsdale Court, opened its doors. However, our journey has never been focused on what it means for us, but entirely about those at the heart of Housing 21 – our residents.

When Housing 21 first established itself as a housing association in 1960, our portfolio was solely comprised of retirement living schemes. Now, as we celebrate our diamond anniversary, we’re proud that over 40% of our portfolio is made up of extra care schemes.

Over the past 18 months, we’ve seen accelerated growth through acquisitions, with almost 2,500 extra care properties acquired from four general needs landlords who recognise our expertise in the provision of safe, quality and affordable homes for older people of modest means.

in our care worker turnover, which at 16.7%, is lower than the sector average of 28%. Unlike other care providers, we’re proud to pay at least 10% above the National Living Wage and offer benefits in line with corporate colleagues, including holiday pay, occupational sick pay and maternity/ paternity pay. Our flagship Extra Care Academy, exclusive to care workers, also offers on-the-job training and recognised qualifications to support them into management roles, positioning care as a viable vocation and career opportunity.

In turn, we also know the value residents place in having a dedicated on-site scheme manager who they know and trust. It’s for this reason that we’re committed to including these employees as part of any acquisition discussion and have a dedicated team of Housing 21 colleagues to offer them tailored support during the first 12 months of their transfer.

This investment in our people has helped to create properties and environments that residents want to live in, whilst easing the demand on adult social care services that support people living in privately owned or rented properties. Extra care also offers alternatives to residents who may otherwise prematurely move into care homes which aren’t suited to their needs and often force couples of differing care needs to separate after a lifetime together.

“We recognise the importance in continuity of care for our residents and do our best to recruit and retain the best people”

In North Yorkshire, where Housing 21 manages ten of their 28 extra care schemes, it’s estimated each site saves the local authority approximately £300,000 per year by reducing costs for people who would otherwise need nursing or residential care. But the economic benefits brought about by our schemes don’t end there.

Our reputation and success are driven by three key principles: quality and compliance, performance, and resident satisfaction, which, at 87%, is above the sector average but below our ambitious target of 95%. We’re proud that 100% of properties meet the Decent Homes Standard and 94% of schemes where we provide inhouse care have CQC ratings of ‘Good’ or ‘Outstanding’.

These achievements are the result of ongoing investment – in our properties, in our systems and in our people, who, to our residents, are the faces of Housing 21. We recognise the importance in continuity of care for our residents and do our best to recruit and retain the best people to ensure consistent service and retention of knowledge within the organisation.

We know our care workers, who work most closely with residents, are integral to our success. We’re proud to invest in building strong, established teams and this is reflected

Extra care can also help to relieve pressure on the NHS. Residents who live alone and require care following a stint in hospital can often be discharged sooner when returning to an extra care scheme, where the on-site care workers are available to support with both planned and emergency care.

With the government currently in discussion with the National Planning Policy Framework about approaches to achieving substantial housing growth, extra care offers a viable solution through purpose-built properties that strike the balance between independence and support.

By creating more housing opportunities specifically designed to meet the needs of older people, this will help to attract more people into properties better suited to meet their needs and free-up capacity within general needs housing, helping to deliver better housing solutions for everyone.

Housing in Practice

Reaching ‘seldom heard’ voices

Liz O’Connor, Housing Director for Horton Housing Association, details a project to revitalise her organisation’s involvement and engagement offer for ‘seldom heard’ residents.

People getting stuck into Horton’s involvement card game at their Housing and Community Support service in Bradford

At Horton Housing, we pride ourselves on a long history of working with people going through difficult times in their life.

It’s our 40-year anniversary in 2025, and over the years we’ve seen many people successfully overcome challenges, such as substance use, rough sleeping, moving to the UK as a refugee, experience of the criminal justice system and the impact of mental health conditions. Based in Bradford, Kirklees, Calderdale, and North Yorkshire, last year we supported 3,402 people.

Every housing provider will have come across a tenant who shares some of the challenges we specialise in. The sector often talks about the difficulties of engaging with people with different and additional needs, usually using the term ‘hard to reach’. We prefer the term ‘seldom heard’.

Why ‘seldom heard’?

The term ‘hard to reach’ suggests that the problem lies with the person we’re trying to engage. ‘Seldom heard’ puts the responsibility back where it should be – on us. As professionals with access to resources, shared good practice, training and a wealth of experience, it’s our responsibility to look at innovative ways of including people who are seldom heard in the engagement conversation.

Horton faces several barriers when trying to engage with people using our services. For example, a lot of the people we’re working with aren’t digitally engaged and so we cannot reach them with a simple email. We need to think of other ways to communicate with people. We use traditional methods, such as post, phone calls and posters, but we also try to be creative. Face-to-face contact usually works best and works even better in a low-pressure environment. We use activities such as cook and eat sessions to engage differently. While we’re chopping and stirring, we’re able to have great, meaningful conversations. One tenant said that talking while doing an activity means you don’t have the pressure of being in the spotlight. You don’t have to make

“As professionals with access to resources, shared good practice, training and a wealth of experience, it’s our responsibility to look at innovative ways of including people who are seldom heard in the engagement conversation”

eye contact, and it feels like a more natural conversation. We’re lucky because we provide support alongside housing, so it gives us the opportunity for personalised communication, with high levels of trust. However, we believe that the principles we use can be implemented in many settings.

Despite some great practice, we’re still keen to improve things. We have real strengths in engaging people, but we recognise that we’re not maximising the feedback we hear. We’re keen to use feedback in a transformative way to ensure our services get right to the heart of what people want and need.

We’re already signed up to the Together with Tenants Charter, but we want to push further. We welcome the Regulator of Social Housing’s (RSH) new Consumer Standards, as they hold us to account and encourage us to creatively implement a programme that meets the specific needs of the people we work with.

Revitalising involvement and engagement – but what’s the difference?

With this in mind, we recently started a project with Tentacles Consultancy aimed at revitalising our involvement and engagement offer. Although the RSH doesn’t make the differentiation, we think it’s crucial to look at involvement and engagement separately. Here’s how we think they’re different:

Involvement – how the views and ideas of people using services are used to change, influence or affirm the way Horton operates. True involvement is a partnership between colleagues and people using services, with an equal share of power.

Engagement – focuses on relationship building and bringing people together. Engagement usually involves activities that impact on wellbeing or personal development but aren’t about how Horton works. Engagement can be a great way to start conversations about involvement.

Malcolm, Brenda and Tom enjoy a drink and a chat at Horton’s community café in the Selby district

Claire from Tentacles Consultancy started the project by creating workshops to discuss involvement and engagement with people using our services. The short and interactive sessions were designed to appeal to a wide range of abilities and skills, using a simple card game. The game enabled people to find out about the possibilities for involvement, as well as exploring what they would gain from getting involved. Using stickers, people selected the top five activities they would be interested in.

At Horton, we’re very aware that people in our services have a lot on. People don’t always have the headspace for things that are additional to the challenges they have. Some find it difficult to focus or sit in one place, some have low levels of literacy, while others are still learning the basics of speaking English. With this in mind, we weren’t sure how much interest there would be. We were delighted with the results.

The workshops were done for 15 services and we met with 92 people. The enthusiasm was overwhelming and almost all of them were interested in something, and not always what you’d expect.

For example, there was a lot of interest in being more involved in the workings of health and safety. There were a range of reasons people wanted to be involved, including:

• Understanding how safe their home is feels reassuring

• It’s essential knowledge for future work

• People could have a say in where to put security cameras

• Having some experience will look great on a CV

• Knowing about this stuff could save lives.

There’s a lot to be learned from this single example. We realised that people aren’t always interested in what you

think they will be, so we shouldn’t make assumptions. We also learned that motivation varies and that people have aspirations beyond the short term. Getting involved can be brilliant experience and a great stepping stone.

When people become involved with our services, it’s important to be mindful that they’re giving their time, wisdom and experience to help us. We need to be sure we’re making it worthwhile. As well as providing incentives and expense costs, people need to see they’re getting more experience, confidence, skills, knowledge and change.

The workshops fed into a final report which made recommendations for the future. People’s’ expert guidance has enabled us to identify the next steps in partnership with people using our services. We’re changing things together, which means we’ll make a meaningful difference.

Some of the key recommendations are to:

• Co-produce a new strategy with people using our services

• Tailor involvement to the needs of the individual so they can get involved no matter what their situation

• Ensure that tenants lead our involvement programme rather than it be driven by organisational need

• Ensure colleagues have the right training, resources and support to deliver involvement programmes that are inclusive.

Adopting creative, sensitive and innovative ways of including seldom heard audiences in the organisation ensures that we never underestimate the expertise of people in our services. We value their lived experience and their input into our organisation. This isn’t just a ‘tick-box’ exercise but a valuable and meaningful exchange of ideas that can only strengthen our organisational development.

Getting involved at Horton’s Housing and Community Support service in Bradford

Enjoying activities at Horton’s Bradford Homeless Partnership service

A life in 15 questions

Lydia Stockdale

Communications and External Affairs Director

Eastlight Community Homes Limited

1. What do you do for fun?

I focus on my kids. They’re very funny, quirky people. It’s impossible not to have fun with them.

2. You have the power to change one thing about the social housing sector: what would it be?

I think the sector is already heading in a good direction, but if I could speed something up it would be the way it advocates for itself. We need to build a more solid sector-wide reputation based on high levels of trust, so we’re in a stronger position when we demand political backing and greater investment.

3. What advice would you give to someone starting out in housing? Know the reasons you’re here and hold on to them.

4. Who’s your favourite author, and why?

Anne Tyler – I love the way she builds characters and family dynamics. I find her stories stay with me.

5. Strangest thing you’ve ever experienced? Childbirth.

6. What are your three favourite albums?

My current go-tos are Noah Kahan, Live from Fenway Park; Mumford & Sons, Live from South Africa; and Arctic Monkeys, Live at Royal Albert Hall. I find live albums have an energy I need in the morning, which is when I tend to listen to music.

7. Sat snugly at home or travelling around the world?

Travelling around the world.

8. A world without music or a world without literature?

If this only applies to me, a world without music. I need books.

9. If you had to work in housing in another country, which would it be, and why?

Canada – specifically Vancouver. I worked in a coffee shop there one summer when I was at university and it’s a city with everything: beaches, mountains, beautiful parks. However, it also has a shocking long-term housing and homelessness crisis. There’d be plenty of work to do.

10. Favourite food?

Anything my partner, Ade, makes for me. He’s a fantastic chef.

11. Pessimistic, optimistic or unsure about the future?

Optimistic. Got to be.

12. You can resurrect anyone from history and talk to them for an hour: who, and why?

William Shakespeare. There are lots of people who think a man from the Midlands with his level of education couldn’t possibly have written all those plays and contributed hundreds of new words to

the English language, but I hope he did. I’d love to use my 60 minutes to gather as many details as possible.

13. Favourite film?

I can’t choose between Withnail and I (pictured) and Lost in Translation

14. If you didn’t work in housing, what would you do?

I’d still work in comms, but in the third sector. However, I like to think there was a world in which I made a living writing and painting.

15. What makes for a good life?

I’m figuring that one out, but I think it comes down to loving people and trying to make life better for others. I believe we all only get one shot at this, so every day is precious.

In the frame

 Meals by Mitch whg

Residents have been cooking alongside food influencer Mitch Lane as part of the social landlord’s new ‘Food Matters’ programme.

 A grand age Grand Union

The Milton Keynes-based housing association celebrated its 30-year anniversary this month.

 Supporting Black History Month ncha

Staff got involved in a range of activities to recognise Black History Month, including regular ‘lunch and learn’ sessions.

 Mobile homes Thirteen Group

The provider’s ‘mobile touchpoint’ will visit communities throughout the year, providing people with an opportunity to report repairs, provide feedback, discuss their tenancies, find a new home to rent or buy or receive employment support.

 Tree-mendous First Choice Homes Oldham

Oldham residents are being urged to join forces with the social housing provider to make their neighbourhoods greener by becoming Tree Guardians.

 Aloha! Aspire Housing

Aspire Housing held a Hawaiian-themed fete with its customers to celebrate the 15th birthday of Mill Rise – the first purpose-built extra care scheme in Newcastle-under-Lyme.

If you’d like to be featured In the Frame, please email your pictures to max.salsbury@hqnetwork.co.uk

Secret diary of an ex-housing CEO

After being caught in the mechanics of a sewerage processing plant’s water purifier, the sopping pages of an unknown former housing association CEO’s personal diary found their way to the HQM offices. Now read on…

Aug 5: For too long now my expertly experienced sector excellence has been kept apart from the sector. It’s with great magnanimousness that I’ve decided to return – as a board member of Jonah Housing. Not for me a wasteful lifetime of yachting and golf! And the new experiences I’ve experienced during the three days of my new tenure have led me to my top ten, sorry, eight tips, which should be read and acted upon by everyone who has even a passing interest in socialised houses.

1. The Social Ombudsman Regulator would appear to be taking a keen interest in the living units we supply for tenanted personages. Fax them for details and check out their official Internet database for what it is they want.

2. Those residential in our people-dwellings should definitely be among our top 20 concerns. Don’t just sit around faxing the SOR all day. Find out what the socially-housed really think by reading popular publications like Into Houses and Board Stiff.

3. Money. If you’re going to build the bungalows (for instance) today for the bungalow users of tomorrow (for example), you’re going need money. Talk to your fellow board members about where the money you need might come from. Perhaps from a government? A bank? Wherever it comes from, make sure you get it, because, in my experience, it’s essential for the purchase of things like building materials, labour etc.

4. Know your human-orientated domiciles. Where are they? Are they underground, close to useful amenities, (like theatres, yachting clubs etc), in Scotland? What are they made of? Bricks? Wood? Straw? Do they have charging points for a new Tesla? Find out and write it down. It could serve you well in the future.

5. Net zeroes. The country (and the wider world, I shouldn’t wonder) is becoming increasingly obsessed with the question of carbon and the effect it’s having on our summers. In July I was twice forced to bring garden parties to an early close because of some ominous-looking rainclouds rising in the south, so there could well be something in it. Don’t be left behind and looking foolish. Talk to your local weather person about how much carbon there is in local cloud groups and adjust your policies accordingly.

6. Diversity. We live in an increasingly diverse state of society. Some of your residentalised humanoids could be very different from what you yourself are like. Some may be Methodist, or Presbyterian – others might subscribe to the widely discredited theory of agnosticism. Others still may refuse to eat venison. Some might be divorced or listen to the BBC’s Radio One channel. No matter who or how wrong they are, it takes many an omelette to roast a pudding and you’d do well to respect all your service users, even if their Denim trousers shock/appal you.

7. Repairs. When I was a successful, influential, respected and esteemed CEO, this little word kept coming up. I cannot emphasise enough how much trouble you could find yourself in if you fail to find out what it means, and its implications for your career. Put simply: though the subject may be tedious in the extreme, your body container compounds will slowly deteriorate over time as a consequence of natural factors, such as wind, rain, snow, sleet, cooking, cleaning, and possibly the physical act of love. Who knows? Regardless, aim to get doors, windows, toilets etc fixed at least within two years of the 27th complaint.

8. The Grenfell Inquiry’s final report. Lots of people are talking about this. Look into it (or get someone else to).

Time’s ticking

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Limited spots available. Secure your place today and start your journey towards success.

Take a look at what’s available and book your place at hqnetwork.co.uk/public-training

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By Hannah Fearn, freelance journalist specialising in social affairs

“As readers here will be more than aware, it’s often the housing sector that’s left to pick up the pieces when the state hesitates or retracts”

Relief of hunger is a moral obligation of the

government The last word

If a prime minister’s first 100 days are supposed to provide a weather forecast for the rest of their term, then the climate under Keir Starmer looks, well, a little mixed.

On the sunny side, though his popularity bubble was promptly burst by the farright rioting, tackling the incident played directly to his expertise and strengths. The quick overhaul of planning laws to get social homes built at the speed we need to tackle the crisis was also a fresh spring breeze after 14 years of stagnation.

But there are gathering clouds. Serious questions about poverty won’t go away. For many, the decision to remove the Winter Fuel Payment for low-income pensioners not claiming pension credit was an anathema. The scales are further tipped by the silence over the two-child benefit limit.

We’re still waiting for Rachel Reeves’ first budget, and I remain hopeful that it’ll contain a more comprehensive overhaul of the benefits system that’ll see the cap finally axed. But in the short term, the outlook for Starmer is unsettled.

As readers here will be more than aware, it’s often the housing sector that’s left to pick up the pieces when the state hesitates or retracts. Poverty continues to damage our society. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation there are 4.2m households going without essentials and 3.4m who don’t have enough to eat. There are 1.6m working Brits living on below the minimum wage. With rapid inflation and the rising cost of food and energy, the situation is unsustainable.

A group of housing associations has decided to jump in where the new government hasn’t (yet). Led by Peabody, including a consortium of large London landlords from the G15 group and emergency food providers, the project has committed to ensuring that no social housing tenant should go to bed hungry.

I spoke to Sahil Khan, the project lead at Peabody. He told me that, while housing associations have funded foodbanks and other local anti-poverty projects since their inception, the shared need across London has escalated and now requires a more coordinated approach.

“If someone is in a destitute situation, increasingly housing associations have had to help their tenants by giving them money. We issue people with cash vouchers so they can do a shop or put gas and electric on their meters,” he said. “But where we do fund food insecurity projects, they’re set up in a way that’s dignified and gives choice. If you go to any of the [food] pantries on a Peabody estate there’s an element of choice, there’s a shopping experience. Tenants will contribute something, two or three pounds, and there’s wraparound support there too. The aim is to build mutual support in communities. We’ve got a really good chance that if we work together, we can really make inroads and progress things.”

This service isn’t only necessary, it’s also welcomed by those who use it. It’s brilliant to hear that it should soon be a basic standard of service offered to social tenants in desperate circumstances right across the capital.

But what strikes me is the unfairness of the situation: not only for tenants but also for housing associations – organisations that have also been stripped of their resources over the last decade. Labour is investing in their services, but it’ll take time for the funds to filter through. This food poverty work is urgent.

I remain hopeful that, politically at least, we’re about to enter an Indian Summer. But as Starmer and Reeves together prepare her first budget speech, they shouldn’t fool themselves that this emergency work can last long. Housing associations aren’t the organisations with the broadest shoulders. Relief of hunger is a moral obligation of the government, not a business side hustle.