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Gove writes to Aster and six other landlords over maladministration findings
Housing secretary Michael Gove has written to seven more social landlords, including 36,000-home Aster, over severe maladministration findings.
In the letters to the chief executives, Mr Gove criticised their failings and said he would take “a personal interest” in how the landlords, including three housing associations and four councils, continue to deliver their responsibilities to residents.
Writing to Bjorn Howard, chief executive of Aster, Mr Gove said the housing association’s handling of flooring repairs to a vulnerable resident’s home “fell well below the standard your residents should be able to expect to receive”.
He continued: “You are reported to have come across as unhelpful, heavy-handed and unsympathetic towards your resident which is not acceptable.”
Mr Gove also wrote to housing associations Livv Housing Group and Six Town Housing, which manages 8,000 properties on behalf of Bury Council.
He told Léann Hearne, chief executive of Livv, that the organisation’s “poor response to leaks and damp” had “severely impacted” a resident’s mental health.
Cath Farrell, interim chief executive of Six Town Housing, was told that a “lack of professionalism” in responding to a resident’s noise complaints “had a serious impact on your resident’s mental health”.
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Sandwell, Waverley, Stoke-on-Trent, and Barking and Dagenham councils also received a letter highlighting details of severe maladministration findings by the Housing Ombudsman.
Barking and Dagenham and Stoke-on-Trent were accused of failures to address reports of damp and mould, while Waverley was criticised for delays in installing adaptations for a disabled resident.
Sandwell Council, Mr Gove wrote, failed to consider a resident’s complex mental health needs when they complained about anti-social behaviour.
As part of sweeping social housing regulation reforms, Mr Gove has vowed to name and shame landlords that fail to meet standards. He has been writing to landlords and publishing letters since May last year.
Last month, he wrote to 14 landlords, including Sovereign, Hyde, Metropolitan Thames Valley and Peabody, over the Housing Ombudsman’s findings and a regulatory breach.
All seven landlords have been contacted for a response to Mr Gove’s remarks.
Mr Howard said: “We would like to make clear once more our sincere regret for how this complaint was initially handled. We fell short of the high standards we set ourselves, fully accept the ombudsman’s findings and have apologised to our customer for their experience.
“Since this issue arose in 2020, we’ve worked with our customer to ensure that her home is up to the standards she should expect, including replacing the flooring throughout the property.
“To help ensure we do much better in the future we have reviewed and updated our processes for supporting vulnerable or disabled customers to mean they will always receive individual support. Both our internal lettings process and complaints procedures have been updated, and we have invested in additional training for our complaints teams.”
Ms Hearne said: "We are sorry for the distress this experience caused our customer and we fully recognise that a more holistic approach should have been taken to resolve the issues sooner. While the case stems back to 2017, it was concluded in 2021 and the resident remains our customer today.
"We are in the process of writing back to Mr Gove to assure him of our commitment to the implementation of a wide range of changes in our approach to dealing with complaints about damp and mould, how we listen and respond to customers’ complaints and how our employees conduct themselves towards those customers.
"We have complied with the orders of the Housing Ombudsman and will continue to learn from this case to improve our service for customers."
Ms Hearne added that Livv had introduced a damp treatment framework in 2021, developed a damp dashboard that uses data to identify hotspots and trends in cases being reported, introduced new repairs management software and expanded its complaints team.
A spokesperson for Six Town Housing said: "As an organisation committed to continually improving, Six Town Housing appreciate the role of the Housing Ombudsman in highlighting areas for improvement.
"Six Town Housing are deeply sorry that on this occasion their approach did not deliver the quality of service expected and that internal processes didn’t highlight the issue sooner within the organisation.
"The complaint and review has led to a review of processes at Six Town Housing, and the organisation is committed to learning from mistakes, and in ensuring that errors do not reoccur.
"As such, we Six Town Housing have completed a full review and ensured that systems and our staff are providing the best support, and positive outcomes to our customers."
The spokesperson said all staff have been reminded of record keeping responsibilities. A revised complaints handling policy was introduced on 1 April. Six Town Housing said it wrote to the tenant to apologise, compensated her with £1,100 and had offered her additional tenancy support.
A spokesperson for Barking and Dagenham Council said: “The council have recognised the failings in this case and the impact that this would have had on the family and the ability to enjoy their environment and for which we offer our sincere apologies.”
The authority added that it has introduced a post-inspection regime, a new approach to root cause identification by surveyors, a new dedicated compliance team, and embedded standard operating procedures to achieve consistency and quality of services.
A Sandwell Council spokesperson said: “We acknowledge we fell short on this occasion and we have made changes as a result.
“We fully accept the findings of the ombudsman in this case and have apologised for those failures to our tenant.”
They added that a clear reasonable adjustment policy for investigating officers to follow is now in place and that the authority is working to ensure case management principles are complied with in every case.
“Refresher training on complaint investigation has also been rolled out and a wider review of our complaint handling processes is already under way,” the spokesperson said.
A Waverley Council spokesperson said: “We would like to offer our sincere apologies for the poor service received by our resident and his son.
“Waverley Borough Council accepts that there were unreasonable delays in dealing with an application made by one of our residents for adaptations to meet the needs of his disabled son, and that our communication with our resident could have been improved.
“The council has learned valuable lessons from this case and, as requested by the ombudsman, we are in the process of carrying out a comprehensive review of our policies and procedures around processing requests from our residents for disabled aids and adaptations.”
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