RIVERSIDE BRANDED AN `ABSENTEE `

City `abandoned` by biggest landlord

An extraordinary recent attack on a major housing association in the House of Commons  echoes another  attack when Riverside Housing Asssociation was accused of abandoning a city where it has 6,000 homes and is the biggest landlord.

Mark Francois (left) MP for Rayleigh and Wickford in Essex, told parliament that he has “had enough” of Sanctuary Housing Group, claiming that the group had “consistently provided a poor maintenance service to many of my constituents over a period of many years”.

He said Worcester-based Sanctuary was “highly dysfunctional” and “extremely badly run”.

The attack on Riverside came from Councillor Gareth Ellis (right)  Deputy Leader of Carlisle City Council who branded Riverside an “absentee landlord”.

 

 Liverpool-based Riverside, one of the biggest housing associations in the country -with 50,000 houses- took over the city`s council houses in 2002 and up to earlier this year ran them with a local governing board and a large staff  from a smart city centre office block  in Botchergate.

Now those offices are empty and Councillor Ellis told the city council  the closure was a “a sad deterioration”  of service to  Carlisle tenants and leaseholders.

He went on: “It does  feel like Riverside are just abandoning the city. This organisation has 7,000 to 8,500 tenants in the city.

“They have always had a  customer- focussing  interface either in this building- the Civic Centre- or a few years later in the building on Botchergate.

Riverside`s Carlisle  offices now empty..."a sad deterioration."

“It seems a sad deterioration for the residents of Carlisle who have Riverside as their landlord who now  seem to have become an absentee landlord.”

After the meeting- the Business and Transformation Scrutiny Panel- Councillor Ellis said: “If Riverside did not want to manage Carlisle  accommodation, they should not have taken on Carlisle housing”
     Carlisle Tenants` and Residents` Federation publishes this blog. Information about the Federation is available on 01228 52227