‘We’re not stopping’: an interview with the ITV journalist exposing poor housing conditions

Her flat was not the only one. Many residents in the block and in another across the road had repeatedly complained to the council about the state of their homes. He might not have known it at the time, but for Mr Hewitt and his colleagues, that first report was the start of an odyssey that would go on to highlight cases of poor social housing conditions across England.

Rightly, this is the story that everyone who lives and works in social housing has been talking about this year. Inside Housing meets with Mr Hewitt to find out what lessons he thinks needs to be learned, what he thinks of the response so far and where he plans to take the investigation next.

Opening an investigation

Early on during the interview, Mr Hewitt asks that the rest of the ITV team – Sophie Alexander, Imogen Barrer, Sarah O’Connell – are mentioned. “The idea that I’ve done this by myself is ludicrous,” he says, later adding that ITV management “deserve an enormous amount of credit” for committing resources to the investigation.

For Mr Hewitt and the ITV News team, the investigation began to take shape at the end of 2020, when he made a pitch to his boss about doing more stories on housing. It was an idea that had been eating away at him since an investigation into child poverty in the North West in 2017 revealed that the conditions of people’s homes were often poor.

“We hadn’t really focused on that element [housing conditions] of it… even though it was clearly a massive problem for families. Often it was the thing that was making them most frustrated, or ill, or angry, and yet
we never really talked about it,” Mr Hewitt explains.

The pitch was successful. Ms O’Connell, Mr Hewitt’s producer at the time, said he should follow up on an older story ITV had covered in Croydon, south London, on housing problems. The tenant involved suggested he go to Regina Road.

After taking photos, we move to a cafe near the estate. Over a tea, Mr Hewitt reveals how he felt when he saw Ms Hewitt’s flat. “It was the most angry I’ve ever been as a journalist, as a human being,” he states.

“Walking into that flat and seeing not just appalling, squalid conditions, but the fact that it was quite obviously dangerous and Fransoy was living there with her two little boys.”

“It was the most angry I’ve ever been as a journalist, as a human being”

It was the smell and the cold of Ms Hewitt’s home which Mr Hewitt says have stuck with him – as well as knowing that repairs teams had been round and she had called the council over and over again.

“I remember thinking that I couldn’t live in this for a day, never mind for months and months and months,” Mr Hewitt adds.

After being exposed, Croydon Council apologised and moved Ms Hewitt – she was offered a new permanent home a week later. The council launched an independent inquiry and, in May, a damning report concluded that Croydon and its repairs services contractor Axis had “failed to deliver even basic ‘core’ housing services”, while there was a “poor operating culture with a lack of care and respect for tenants”.

After the report, ITV was flooded with emails from people across the country living in similar conditions; their mental and physical health often severely affected.

“If you could bottle the dignity and resilience of the people we’ve spoken to and sell it, you’d make a lot of money, because they have to put up with so much more than most people,” Mr Hewitt says. “Everything about their lives starts to crumble and fall apart. How can a child go to school and do well educationally when their home is riddled with damp and is wet and leaking?”

“Families have had their lives completely destroyed by this,” he adds.

Mr Hewitt found throughout his investigation that residents felt they were looked down on, not listened to and not respected. Some believed they were treated worse or ignored because of their ethnicity.

“If you could bottle the dignity and resilience of the people we’ve spoken to and sell it, you’d make a lot of money, because they have to put up with so much more than most people”

Another part of his investigation, published last month, revealed that racism is “rife” at an unnamed London council, with a whistleblower saying that housing department managers were making racially motivated judgements about tenants, were dismissive of their complaints and blamed them for the problems.

This followed an Inside Housing story into how race affects housing conditions, which found that white residents are less likely to be living in a damp home.

What is Mr Hewitt’s opinion about how councils and housing associations have responded to his stories? Although he does give one example of a positive response – Bromford – he says that most responded in broadly similar ways: apologising but “defensively” claiming the cases were “isolated”.