A letter sent to the housing minister Matthew Pennycook- backed by over 20 MPs- has called for more accountability and stronger punishments for housing associations. The report argues that current Ombudsman judgements of non-compliance often lead to non-meaningful resolution, and that housing associations have fallen outside of impactful consequences.
The letter, led by Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy and backed by 26 MPs and three members of the House of Lords, stated: “We strongly believe that residents in housing association properties across the country are being failed…by landlords who face insufficient accountability, by complaints processes that exhaust rather than resolve, and by a regulatory framework that has not kept pace with reforms elsewhere in the housing sector.
“We are therefore asking the government to address this during this parliamentary session.”
The report points to the tightening of regulation and protections for private renters brought about by the Renters’ Rights Act, and argues that social housing tenants are left behind with none of the same protections. The letter continues: “Through our casework, we regularly support tenants and leaseholders in HA-managed properties whose experience points to systemic weakness in the current regulatory and redress framework. In many cases, the mechanisms intended to help residents hold their landlord to account either do not apply to housing associations or are ineffective in practice, allowing issues to be delayed, obscured or left unresolved.
“While recent legislation has strengthened accountability for private landlords… housing associations have often fallen outside the scope of these reforms.”
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The letter identified four key areas it argued where in need of reform, including enforcement measures and ombudsman compliance, fair compensation, leaseholder protections and service charges, and transparency, information rights and support for vulnerable residents.
Information rights is one area in which the sector is already awaiting incoming legislations in the form of Social Tenant Access to Information Requirements (STAIRs). The ombudsman recently finalised it’s consultation on the regulation and updated it’s scheme in response, with the incoming reforms giving social housing residents access to information requests to their housing providers, similar to FOI requests to local councils.
The report claimed that despite the ombudsman finding regular maladministration findings, many organisations escape any meaningful consequence or remediation, with a lack of stringent enforcement measures resulting from repeated failures.
“Residents and leaseholders frequently reach the end of a long process only to find that findings of maladministration do not result in consistent or timely remedies.”
The letter called for stronger powers for the ombudsman, more consistency surrounding compensation payments and for associations to be subjected to the same information transparency standards as local authorities. The group concluded:
“Housing associations play a vital role in the provision of social housing. However, the current framework does not consistently deliver the accountability, transparency and redress that residents and leaseholders are entitled to expect.
“We are calling on the government to bring forward legislative proposals to address these issues and would welcome a meeting to discuss these issues further.”
The letter was signed by a host of MPs, including Bell Ribeiro-Addy, Andy McDonald, Julia Buckley, Apsana Begum, Kate Osborne, Ben Coleman, Kim Johnson, Charlotte Cane, Lord John Hendy, Chris Hinchcliff, Lord Prem Sikka, Diane Abbott, Lord Tony Woodley, Ellie Chowns, Matt Bishop, Grahame Morris, Nadia Whittome, Ian Byrne, Neil Duncan-Jordan, Imran Hussain, Rebecca Long-Bailey, Iqbal Mohamed, Richard Burgon, James Naish, Sian Berry, John McDonnell, Stella Creasy, Jon Trickett and Yasmin Qureshi.
