Written evidence submitted by the Barkantine Management Team [RSH 031]

Thank you for inviting us to present evidence to your committee – we appreciate the opportunity.

The Barkantine Management Team (BMT) is the Tenants and Residents Association (TRA) for the Barkantine Estate, 800 flats and maisonettes in the shadow of Canary Wharf in London. Our Housing Association is One Housing (OH), recently taken over by Riverside HA.

We think we are a successful TRA, elected and accountable to residents, holding regular public meetings where many views are heard and listened to. We think we have an accurate idea of what residents think and feel about our landlord and housing services.

We would like to submit the following observations:

Does the current regime allow tenants to effectively resolve issues?

Our main concern is that our Housing Association is not accountable to residents.

One Housing does not have a meaningful or effective way of hearing residents feedback or consulting with them about improvements to their services:

• Members of the Area Panels, the nominal resident representation, are appointed by OH, not by residents,
• These panel members are also paid by OH so they have an incentive to not rock the boat
• Area Panel meetings cannot be attended by residents and we do not see the minutes,
• Area Panel members do not attend TRA or any resident group meetings and do not communicate with us in any way,
• Residents do not have any way of contacting their panels and do not even know who they are,
• The residents’ Board of Directors member is appointed by OH and again, we do not have any way of contacting them or do they have anything to do with other residents. As the current resident board member is also a shared ownership tenant, they do not even receive the same services as the rest of us.

This situation may seem exaggerated and does not seem credible but it can continue unchallenged because there is no way TRAs or residents can challenge it.

• OH Board of Directors gets its information from the CEO and Executive Officers,
• OH does not have any independent resident satisfaction surveying procedure – it is done in-house,
• As performance indicators reflect manager status within the organisation, the surveys will be selective and can be self serving,
• When an organisation is target driven this undermines the actual residents’ experience of their housing service which becomes unimportant,
• OH’s continually positive resident satisfaction levels do not reflect most residents experience. TRA meetings and other residents’ feedback situations demonstrate a strong sense of dissatisfaction, lack of trust and frustration with OH.

Residents’ experience of OH to impersonal email and phone calls:

• Residents can only deal with the contact centre, not directly with the staff responsible,
• The Customer Contact Centre (CCC) staff do not know the properties or estates so cannot always enter appropriate information into the computer,
• After the CCC have passed on the information, they have no way of following up on the job or being accountable. It is ideal for “passing the buck”,
• Most of the responsible staff and officers do not have direct contact with residents so do not hear where the problems and frustrations lie,
• Contractors and in-house repair staff who do the actual work in peoples homes are not accountable as no follows-up or check what is done,
• Complaints about poor service or incomplete or unsatisfactory work is again put through the contact centre where the unfortunate computer has to take the blame - no one has to take responsibility for poor service,
• The Complaints Procedure is complicated and not resident friendly and has to go through the contact centre so it is only the determined and resilient residents who go through with it,
• OH does not welcome complaints or feedback as an important indicator of their services and performance, or as a tool to see where the problems are and to improve.

Are we really Customers?

• By referring to its residents as Customers, residents feel undermined and undervalued,
• We have no choice and cannot take our custom elsewhere,
• OH doesn’t even need to provide a good service to keep their customers coming back,
• It does not reflect any respect for their residents or their homes to call them names that they do not identify with and that refer to a completely different market and transactional relationship.

Is the current regime for regulating social housing fit for purpose?

The reason OH has been able to ignore residents and TRAs and sideline us so much is that they are not held to account by anyone accept themselves:

• The regulator only looks at viability and value for money. It does not seem interested in the residents’ experience,
• The regulator does not expect any independent survey of resident satisfaction – it accepts the executives version of events,
• The CEO is accountable to the the Board of Directors which is accountable to the Regulator. If the Board of Directors doesn’t have to take residents’ views into account, it has completely disempowered the residents,
• Some Housing Associations do engage with residents effectively but this is because it is seen as good practice. If a CEO like ours does not want to, there is no obligation.

As an example, One Housing has recently been taken over by Riverside. OH was obliged by the regulator to undertake resident consultation explaining what was happening and asking for comments:

• OH set up a joint panel of residents to oversee the process,
• The residents on the panel were effectively appointed by OH,
• The resident panel members never even communicated with residents - we had no way of even contacting them directly and they did not respond when contacted through OH,
• Financial information concerning the merger was not available to us in any form or summary, and all we had were vague generalisations about what would change.

We asked the regulator to look at the effectiveness of this consultation. The OH CEO responded to the regulator’s enquiries by saying residents were well represented and had ample opportunity to comment. This was not true. In fact less than 2% of the residents were in favour of the merger and residents were not given any opportunity to be part of any panel. But the Regulator accepted the CEOs version without question even though there is considerable self interest involved. It was just a box that needed ticking.

The Regulator seemed to have no interest in what residents thought and as we are at the heart of Social Housing, that is plainly unacceptable.

Will the reforms proposed in the social housing White Paper improve the regime and what progress has been made on implementing those reforms?

Our new Landlord, Riverside, has said they will adopt the new White Paper guidelines, but in the past we have been given so many empty promises that we are very sceptical. Our question is about whether the Regulator will be able to ensure the engagement guidelines are adopted. Can the Guidelines be wriggled out of and be dependent on the CEOs version of events?

In the end, the Regulator is the residents’ teeth. The Board is responsible for ensuring resident engagement is effective, but if they don’t it is only the Regulator who can hold them to account. The residents don’t have that power or responsibility.

The Regulator must have access to independent resident satisfaction surveys to show the real experience of the HA residents, to show how they are really performing, not what targeted Performance Indicators are made to show.

How widespread and serious are the concerns about the quality of social housing?

When the Barkantine Estate opted for Housing Choice in 2006 we set up a small, local resident led HA on the Isle of Dogs called Toynbee Island Homes (2k properties). This merged with Community HA to form One Housing Group (17k properties) which was London wide so we lost our local identity. Now we are having to merge again with Riverside (making a 75k properties giant) and have now lost even our London regionalism and will share the same network as Carlisle, Liverpool and Dumfries.

In each merger residents lost influence and were made to feel more remote from their landlord. Recently OH took away Estate Officers without even consulting with residents – a hugely unpopular move and there was nothing we could do to stop it.

When OH got into financial difficulty they had no choice but the find a partner that could afford to take them on and so create a giant HA.

• There was no choice because there is no alternative,
• Residents don’t like being part of vast incongruent organisations,
• They want to deal with a landlord that cares and understand about their homes and their neighbourhood,
• One size does not fit all when it comes to the diversity of homes around the country,
• The giant remote and impersonal housing associations that are being created are not liked by their residents who have seen a decline in their services.

Why is there no alternative to this? Why do we want to create these giant HA s that residents do not like and are more inefficient?

When OH seemed no longer viable we would have liked to have a choice - A workable alternative might have been for OH properties in each london Borough to vote to choose a successful local housing provider like another HA that was popular with its residents. We do have those on the Isle of Dogs and in Tower Hamlets. Instead of being trapped by an untrusted and disrespectful landlord and then being taken over by another – why not let residents choose their housing provider.

Then we really would be Customers!

We hope this information is helpful.

We are not a politically motivated group and do not have any agenda accept trying to improve the homes and environment of our residents.

We do not think OH shares that same simple objective despite all their pretty words and website public relations.

TRAs like ours find ourselves feeling like victims rather than an active force for positive change. It is undermining and demotivating so we hope that your committee is able to be proactive in changing the current situation.

December 2021