Tenants must be in charge of their own complaints

By Kerry Pollard

Without fanfare, explanation or grounds, this Tory-led government has found yet another way to attack the rights of those living in social housing. A clause in the Localism Bill will add a restrictive layer of unnecessary red tape to complaints against social landlords, meaning tenants will no longer be able to take their complaints directly to their ombudsman.

Instead they will be required to take all complaints through a third party – an MP, a local councillor or a designated tenant panel.

Let us be very clear. If a tenant wants to involve their local representatives in their complaint, they should have every right to do so. But equally, this must be the tenant’s choice. If they don’t want a third party involved, it shouldn’t be forced by the government.

There are plenty of good reasons why a tenant may not want to involve a politician in their complaint. For example, a social housing tenant who feels they have been discriminated against because of their race might be extremely uncomfortable taking this issue to just any MP or councillors. We have also seen a certain cavalier disregard for people’s privacy in parliament of late. Social housing tenants can’t afford to take out super-injunctions to protect their privacy. What guarantees do they have that their privacy won’t be breached using parliamentary privilege by an MP making a political point?

The bottom line is that this could lead to people whose issues are politically contentious being discouraged from complaining altogether, leaving their issues swept under the carpet.

MPs and councillors will also find it very difficult to take on the deluge of new responsibilities. As a former MP, I know that the level of casework I dealt with was already extremely high, and I am sure that it is getting higher as the Tory-led cuts are affecting so many people’s lives, jobs and services. My staff worked incredibly hard and long hours on extremely varied cases. For them to be able to deal properly with the level of complexity of most of the kind of housing complaints that reach the housing ombudsman (i.e. those that were unable to be resolved with the housing association’s or local authority’s internal complaints procedure) they would need to undergo extensive and expensive training. At a time when the budget for building new social housing has been cut by 63% this is a poor use of resources.

The cost – and the additional complexity – would all be worth it if this were a measure that tenants themselves wanted. But in recent polling undertaken by the National Housing Federation nearly 75% of people living in social housing said they would prefer not to be required to take their complaint through a third party.

When defending this measure as it went through the commons committee stage, government minister Andrew Stunell said:

“Intervention from the centre, whether by the government or the ombudsman, should be the last resort and not the first port of call.”

I agree, and am therefore baffled as to why he is insisting on imposing this undemocratic, heavy-handed and centrally-dictated measure on social housing tenants.

Kerry Pollard is Chair of Labour Housing Group and former MP for St Albans.