Housing associations sceptical about FOI-style transparency demands in white paper

Ms Shirt warned that associations may have to respond to “fishing exercises” which will move resources away from dealing with the issues at hand.

“Organisations should be very transparent about the way they deliver services to customers and that should be in open forums, but we do not want it to become a bureaucratic exercise where people are fishing for information,” she added.

Geeta Nanda, chief executive of 57,000-home Metropolitan Thames Valley, said the access to information scheme is just one aspect of the white paper that will have cost implications for landlords.

She said: “The amount of information we a recurrently giving, for example trying to talk to tenants about building safety, in itself is a mountain of information that we have to deal with.

“It’s very difficult for residents and difficult for our staff as well in terms of coping with the information that people already want to challenge and then anything that opens up more information is going to be costly.”

Inside Housing previously reported that housing associations were having to put more resources into dealing with subject access requests, in which individuals can demand access to personal data held by organisations under the terms of the Data Protection Act 1998.

Emma Palmer, chief executive of newly-merged Eastlight Community Homes, said the FOI principles are “already established in their business” and so expects to be able to meet the demands of the new proposal.

Nigel Wilson, chief executive of 32,000-home North East landlord Gentoo, said the association “will need to see how it actually operates”, adding “it’s about making sure it works effectively for the people who need it”.

Pat Turnbull, regional representative of the London Tenants Federation, said the idea “holds promise”.

“The extension of some version of Freedom of Information to tenants of housing associations is not far off one of the things we are calling for in our tenants’ manifesto, which will be launching early next year.”

The plan to introduce a new system for tenants and leaseholders to access information from their social landlords is among a number of new requirements placed on organisations in the white paper.

Landlords will also now have to assign a responsible person for consumer standards, with that person acting as the figurehead for ensuring the landlord is delivering good customer service and driving culture change where deficiencies are found. A responsible person for health and safety will also need to be appointed.

Under the proposals, social housing landlords will also now be be measured against a new set of tenant satisfaction measures which will assess organisations on areas such as building safety, handling of complaints and keeping properties in good repair.