|
|
 |
| |
‘Give tenants right to sack landlord’
MP Emily tables Bill to hold housing associations to account
EMILY Thornberry, the MP for Islington south, this week named and shamed five estates where residents are getting the “worst service” from their housing associations.
It comes as the House of Commons publishes her ground-breaking Bill that proposes to give Britain’s residents the right to fire their housing association if they refuse to improve their service.
To research her Private Members’ Bill Ms Thornberry carried out a survey of more than 400 housing association residents in Islington, asking them what they felt about the service from their landlord.
The results showed that more than half of residents feel their landlord’s service is poor or very bad.
The worst are all within the King’s Cross-Caledonian Road area: 1) Priors (Peabody); 2) Killick Street (Peabody); 3) Priory Green (Peabody); 4) Marquess, New River Green (Southern); and 5) Ringcross (Hyde Northside).
Ms Thornberry said: “These were all estates where residents felt that there were problems but the association’s management were not listening.”
The five best were: 1) Moreland Mews/Gissing Walk (Barnsbury Housing Association); 2) Muriel Street (Peabody); 3) Harry Weston (Harry Weston Coop) 4); Farringdon Lane (Peabody) 5); Old Royal Free (Circle 33).
Ms Thornberry added: “You can see that certain housing associations are doing well on some estates but not on others.
“Peabody have got estates in both the top five and bottom five in my constituency.”
She believes that current inspections of housing associations are inadequate.
“I want to give them powers to sack their landlord if they feel the service is poor,” she added.
Residents are willing to give their association a fair chance, she added.
For example, on the Market Estate and Priory Green, more than 80 per cent of residents agree there are big problems.
However, only a small group of people on the Market feel their association is doing nothing about these problems, in comparison to well over half the residents of Priory Green.
In response to the widespread feeling that residents need more say in the way HAs run their estates, Ms Thornberry tabled the Housing Association (Rights and Representation of Residents) Bill as a Private Members’ Bill. This would force housing associations to listen to their tenants and give tenants the ultimate power to fire them when they are run badly.
Under existing arrangements, HAs are inspected annually by the Housing Corporation and the Audit Commission.
These inspections focus on the organisations’ top levels and so problems on local estates are often overlooked.
In a radical overhaul, the Housing Association Bill would hand the power for inspection to tenants on individual estates. It proposes that:
n Housing associations should be forced to produce in agreement with their tenants an estate-level service pledge.
n The tenants themselves could trigger an inspection of their service if they felt their association wasn’t doing its job.
n If a housing association were judged to be failing on a particular estate, tenants would have the right to fire them in favour of another.
Although Private Members’ Bills rarely become law immediately, the Government has signalled interest in the Bill and has started to conduct a review into reforming the relationship between housing associations and their tenants.
The Bill is scheduled for its Second Reading on April 22
It is being supported by fellow London MPs Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North), Karen Buck (Westminster North), Dawn Butler (Brent Central), Sadiq Khan (Tooting), Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith), Mike Gapes (Ilford South), Andy Love (Edmonton), and Harry Cohen (Leyton and Wanstead).
Islington’s Labour environment spokesman and Barnsbury Cllr James Murray welcomed the bill. He said: “In Priory Green, for example, we’ve had residents who had no hot water for months, broken windows, damp and mice. The residents complain to Peabody who don’t respond. There’s a similar situation on Priors estate where they don’t carry out sufficient repairs.”
“Compare that with Moreland Court which has a good estate office and has won awards”. Under the proposed new legislation residents will be able to trigger an inspection by a petition or by a ward councillor.
There will be a six-month cooling off period for improvements before a decision is made to remove the current management.
A spokesperson for Peabody Trust said: “It is true to say that residents know what problems need to be tackled on their estate.
“This is why we consulted them extensively on the renewal of their estate, and continue to involve them in a variety of management issues, ranging from monitoring the cleaning on their estate to tackling antisocial behaviour and reviewing the performance of our contractors.
“Hopefully we will be a step closer to meeting residents’ expectations when we roll out bespoke estate management plans later this year.”
|
 |
| |
|
|
|
