In conversation with Alison Inman

You’ve said domestic abuse will be the focus of your presidency. What can the sector do to improve?

Housing in England can learn from housing in Wales. When Carl Sargeant was [housing] minister, ably helped by Tamsin Stirling, he did some incredible stuff. Every housing provider in Wales has to have a domestic abuse policy. They don’t in England; in England they have to have an anti-social behaviour [policy]. Seven women a month are not dying because of anti-social behaviour – they’re dying because of domestic abuse.

What should a domestic abuse policy look like?

I think it’s about being people-centred. It’s predominantly a gendered crime. Not only are women traumatised – and their children traumatised – by abuse, they’re then moved, and I think there are other ways of doing that.

So when violence is exposed, partners tend to stay at home because of tenancy laws. Women often have to leave pets behind and that’s a huge psychological burden because although it seems trivial, pets are part of the family. The children have an enormous connection with their pets, and with all the other upheavals that can be deeply upsetting. And we also know that pets are often used as tools in domestic abuse: either attacking the pet, threatening to kill the animals, or trying to turn animals against individuals.

And then on top of that, given most people are only a month away from eviction in terms of cash flow, how can you expect women who are being financially controlled to find enough money to rent a new home, given how hostile private landlords are to tenants both with children and on benefits? And social housing providers don’t have a huge surplus of stock to enable a swift and smooth move.

Housing providers have to be people-centred. Some women absolutely need a safe space immediately, they need to be in a refuge. But I’m hearing now from Women’s Aid and other organisations that increasingly women are telling them they don’t want to go into refuges, because moving is stressful enough, and they know the next move will be traumatic enough, and they fear being trapped in the refuge for a long time, when they want to get on with their life.

"One thing I’ve learned is that one of the biggest indicators of domestic abuse is rent arrears."

In Wales, every public housing provider has a duty to ‘ask and act’ if they suspect domestic abuse: they have to sensitively and carefully ask if they think there’s a possibility.

One thing I’ve learned is that one of the biggest indicators of domestic abuse is rent arrears. Often when we think of abuse, we think just of people hitting each other, but financial abuse is a big part of coercive control. So every time we have a conversation about rent arrears, we should be sensitive to the possibility of abuse.

We send people in to do repairs all the time in the social sector, so if you’re replacing a door that has a hole in it and you’ve done it twice before, that should ring alarm bells. There’s still under-reporting – people are still afraid and unsure who to ask, and sometimes it’s easier to have a conversation with someone who’s not a specialist, and that can be done safely. Everyone can be trained to do this.

We live in a country that values homeownership above everything else: that’s the context we live in. One of the interesting things about Grenfell was that we saw the result of a lot of unintended consequences. There were layers upon layers of complexity which made it a very difficult place to manage.

It seemed as if the issue was that every possible thing that could have gone wrong did go wrong, from day-to-day building management to top-level management issues. How can housing providers stop this happening again, when their work is so complex?

A housing association I’m on the board of had a small fire in a sheltered block. We don’t own it, but we manage it on behalf of someone else. And we had both done fire risk assessments, and both used different qualified, appropriate people – and they both came out differently. And if it’s done by the fire brigade it could be different again.

With Grenfell, one of the things it’s made me think is when housing organisations get complaints, we often work really hard to give ourselves assurance that everything’s fine. That’s the psychological approach we use. We’re not necessarily putting as much effort into giving the person who’s made the complaint the assurance they need. It can be people on the defence, but it can also be the fact people are worried and want to give themselves the assurance that it’s fine. Do we put as much effort into making sure the people who raised the complaint are reassured and happy with the outcome?