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Peabody defends cuts to neighbourhood management teams as union calls for lessons to be learned
Unite has called on Peabody to “learn the lessons” from its investigation into the death of a resident after the union said it had warned the landlord about the impact of increased workloads for neighbourhood managers.
In its response to an independent report into the death of Sheila Seleoane, whose decomposing body went undiscovered for nearly two years, at the end of last week, Unite said that it had warned the landlord about cuts to staff.
The union said it had raised concerns to the landlord in 2019 that a £1m cut to housing management budgets would leave “potentially devastating consequences to residents and workers”.
Ms Seleoane was found in her housing association flat at Lords Court in Peckham, south London, on 18 February, after the Metropolitan Police forced entry into her home.
The 61-year-old’s body was mostly “bones and dust” when discovered by police, who were called to the property to complete a welfare check.
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An inquest at London Inner South Coroner’s Court last week heard from a senior Peabody executive who admitted that the landlord’s teams did not communicate with each other, and that neighbourhood managers were not provided with all of the necessary information.
The inquest judged that Ms Seleoane’s body went undiscovered for so long, despite the gas being cut off and her accruing rent arrears, as the different teams were not “able to paint the larger picture”.
A subsequent report commissioned by Peabody and carried out by consultancy firm Altair found that large patch sizes for neighbourhood wardens and a silo-working culture led to “missed opportunities”.
In response to the report, Unite said that vital lessons had to be learned. A statement from the union said: “Staff had warned that cuts leading to unmanageably large patch sizes for neighbourhood managers were dangerously misconceived. Residents also protested against the cost-cutting restructure.”
It added: “In October Peabody put proposals to slash the number of housing managers from 80 to 65. That meant more work and less people to do the work.”
In response, a Peabody spokesperson said: “We increased the number of customer-facing roles in our resident services teams as part of this post-merger reorganisation.
“Whilst the number of neighbourhood manager posts reduced, we increased the number of caretakers and property managers by around 70 posts.
“This was on the basis of customer insight and feedback. Any efficiencies were derived from removing duplicate manager and head of service roles and the move from [neighbourhood managers] to more caretakers and property managers was cost neutral.”
The association said that it announced a move to a locality model last year, which will see patch sizes driven by customer need. It also promised to invest in customer-facing roles, including in locally based neighbourhood roles who will be visible in the community and responsive to customers’ needs.
The inquest last week heard how neighbourhood managers can manage up to 1,200 homes each and are expected to make calls to each building every three months.
As a result, the landlord’s investigation recommended that patch sizes are reviewed after it conducted a roundtable discussion with other sector leaders, which found that participants had patch sizes of between 200 and 800 homes.
Inside Housing revealed in March how the body of a second Peabody resident was left undiscovered at his London home for months before police eventually broke into the flat in July 2021.
At the time, Peabody said that it was “difficult to see how it would have known about the situation” and that it was contacted “for the first time” by a resident on the day police found the body.
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