Ombudsman calls for Royal Commission to create long-term plan for social housing
The Housing Ombudsman called for a Royal Commission to create a long-term plan for social housing after finding that current approaches for the sector are not working for residents with a vulnerability.
The Ombudsman’s Spotlight report, focusing on attitudes, respect and rights, assesses what it means to be vulnerable in social housing in 2024, what ‘vulnerable’ means and how social landlords can better respond to the needs of those residents.
The report makes the case that there is a need for human-centric provision of services, and an individual approach to a range of delivery methods. It also calls for a statutory definition of vulnerability and a renewed definition of general needs, alongside a duty to cooperate between agencies such as health bodies and social landlords.
The findings are made up of more than 1,663 public responses from a call for evidence and hundreds of Ombudsman cases, including almost 200 where staff conduct formed part of the investigation. The report used these case studies and direct quotes from residents and landlords to build a picture of how the sector is performing.
Among the recommendations for the sector, the Ombudsman has said landlords should:
- Implement a vulnerability strategy, including how it is defined, who assesses, and what the review process is. This must be in line with the Equality Act, the Human Rights Act and the Care Act
- Test the policy in practice against the 3Rs – recognise, respond and appropriately record vulnerabilities
- Implement a specific reasonable adjustments policy
- Carry out a ‘Resident of the Future’ forecast for the next ten years, drawing upon the available information around demographics, both locally and nationally
- Introduce minimum staff training requirements such as Dementia Friends, and training on customer care, mental health, learning disabilities, and sight and hearing loss
- Undertake a review at Board level as to whether the organisation is currently offering a “human-centric” service provision and identify the barriers to why it is not currently the case
- Ensure awareness and accessibility to the complaints procedure
In its call for evidence, the Ombudsman asked residents about how well informed they felt their landlord kept them on repairs, rents and service charges, complaints and policies. Most residents rated their landlord between 3 and 5 when keeping them informed about changes to rent and service charges. However, for everything else, more than half of residents rated their landlord at 1 – this led to one resident describing feeling like a ‘powerless cash cow’.
Nearly 70% said their landlord had not made any reasonable adjustments, despite being asked to.
Landlords responding to the call for evidence reported that a lack of resources and a breakdown of trust were the two main barriers to better communication. However, landlord respondents also said the internal culture and attitude of their organisations hampered communication with residents.
Housing Ombudsman Richard Blakeway said: ‘Central to our report is what it means to be vulnerable in social housing today, how landlords can respond effectively, and how to do so without stigma or marginalisation.
‘Too often in our casework, residents’ vulnerabilities are missed or the response is inappropriate. Too often the concept of vulnerability is ill-defined by the landlord. Disrepair in homes or poorly handled anti-social behaviour in neighbourhoods is creating – or exacerbating – vulnerabilities.
‘Procedures that should adapt lack agility. Staff are not empowered to deliver the right outcome or insufficiently trained to follow the right process.
‘These events can serve to exacerbate the imbalance of power that exists between the resident and landlord, which an Ombudsman is designed to redress.
‘I’d urge all social landlords to read this report and reflect how their services and policies can be adapted to bring about positive changes for all residents. We acknowledge that in some places the sector needs more help with this too and have made recommendations to that effect for policymakers.’
Images: Sasha Pleshco and Elliott
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