UK

Public resistance to a bullying landlord

 Hub Editors

Should landlords be able to get complaining tenants jailed? SHAC highlights a glaring injustice.

Of all the bullying landlords – and there are many – GreenSquareAccord (GSA) surely tops the disreputable list for going to the most vicious and extreme lengths in order to silence a resident for complaining about their services.

Ben Jenkins is a GSA resident and Social Housing Action Campaign (SHAC) member who had the temerity to challenge poor service by his landlord. The problem with Ben -from GSA’s perspective – is that he refused to blindly endure the hamster wheel of the internal complaints process. Instead, he went public, not just on his own behalf, but for thousands of others just like him who are being let down by weak regulation and enforcement that allows housing associations to elude accountability. Now, the landlord wants to jail him for it.

Originally, Ben followed Government advice and wrote to his landlord outlining building safety problems, with evidence to back it up. He wrote to them again with more evidence when his first complaint was ignored. His persistence eventually secured a meeting with chief executive Ruth Cooke. He received an apology and a promise of remedy. This should have been a satisfactory end to the story.

GSA however didn’t fix the problems, and eventually, Ben took his complaint to the Housing Ombudsman. This was more successful, and he won his case, with a compensation order for himself and his neighbours. Yet GSA continued to ignore the disrepairs and other issues.

GSA tenant and resident dissatisfaction measured

There is a wealth of evidence on GSA’s need to improve. Social media posts by those at the sharp end of GSA’s customer care show that Ben and his neighbours are not alone. The posts describe phone calls, emails, and letters receiving no response, getting lost in the system, and being subjected to agonising delays, misunderstandings, and ineffective remedy.

Even the regulatory establishment weighed in with its own unfavourable findings. In September 2023, the Housing Ombudsman Service found six counts of maladministration against GSA and launched a special investigation into their activities which is currently underway.

And if this isn’t evidence enough, there are GSA’s own Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs). The measures are compiled through an annual survey which is required by the Regulator of Social Housing. The results have to be made public so that all can judge the landlord’s performance.

GSA’s satisfaction measures range from poor to appalling. They hover around the 50% mark for satisfaction with the landlord overall, satisfaction with repairs and maintenance, satisfaction with the length of time it takes to complete repairs, and satisfaction with keeping communal areas clean and well-maintained. This is no ringing endorsement of GSA as a responsible social landlord.

The response to a question on whether tenant and resident views were listened to and acted upon were even more damning. Only 36% of respondents agreed that this was the case. Lowest of all were the proportion who were satisfied with GSA’s complaints handling. This score didn’t reach even 20%.

In the retail sector, such poor levels of performance would have led to declining sales, an executives sacked with tarnished reputations, and the firm facing takeover by a more competent business. But despite the designation of housing associations as private companies, they do not have customers who can make the choice to go elsewhere. This differentiates them from businesses with genuine customers.

Housing association tenants and residents are a captive audience and their landlord has considerable influence over their physical and psychological health and life chances. And housing associations enjoy a uniquely privileged position where poor performance is rewarded with more government funding and closed rank support from the institutions that should be enforcing improvements.

GSA’s response to the overwhelming body of evidence against them was to focus their efforts on propaganda combined with quashing challenge. They were busy telling the world what a wonderful landlord they were, and couldn’t accept that anyone should be allowed to suggest otherwise.

Ultimately, Ben decided against banging his head on the customer service brick wall, concluding that the cause of the problem lay not with individual staff, but the fact that the designated role of ‘customer services’ was to wage a war of attrition which would deter all but the most determined or desperate complainant. It was a directory tasked with prevention not resolution. In the face of their intransigence, Ben launched a GSA residents website, and GSA responded by suing him.

The agreement
GSA first demanded that Ben shut down his website and all social media channels, and refrain from setting up any new sites. Ben refused. GSA proceeded with legal action and the day before going to court, hand-delivered a bill for over £9,000 for their legal costs. It was an entirely intimidatory act designed to cow Ben into submission. It didn’t work.

In court, GSA were berated by the judge for multiple failings and it was clear that they had no substantive case. Ben therefore offered a token set of undertakings to settle the case, for example making clear that his website was not an official GSA company page. He did not pay any of GSA’s costs and when the case was settled, believed that to be the end of the matter. It wasn’t.

GSA really weren’t happy with the agreement they had signed. Almost immediately, they sued Ben again. This time they brought a criminal case, charging Ben with not adhering to provisions that weren’t actually in the agreement but that GSA felt “should have been”.

The second case was rightly dismissed, and their comments about what should have been in the agreement earned them the judge’s ridicule. This too should have been an end to the sorry saga, but GSA’s thirst for revenge seems to have driven reason and proportionality from their thinking.

Arrested but undeterred

Steve Hayes, GSA’s Director of Corporate Affairs and Communications has now gone a step further and launched a personal attack on Ben. It is unclear if he is doing so with or without the backing of GSA. At half past one in the morning of19th August, six police officers knocked at Ben’s door and arrested him for allegedly harassing Steve. The charge is that Ben had sent emails to Steve despite having agreed not to, although Ben’s last correspondence with him was in November 2023.

Ben is challenging the charges. He is undeterred and determined to call out their shoddy service, unsafe housing, and intimidation against those who complain. In doing so, he will continue to be supported by SHAC.

GSA is one of the worst landlords, but although its actions are extreme, they are not unique. This new Government can and should break with these previously untouchable landlords and implement measures that will genuinely hold them to account. It is also surely time that GSA’s board members took control of the situation and ended the persecution of Ben that is damaging their reputation and galvanising opposition.

SHAC is a network of tenants, residents, workers and activists in housing associations and cooperatives. SHAC campaigns to improve the lives of those who live in housing association properties and to reduce the commercialisation of the sector. Its demands include genuine tenant and resident democracy, improved repairs and maintenance services, reduced rents and service charges, better health and safety provisions for all, and an end to the exploitation of housing workers. www.shaction.org