RESEARCH BACKS HOUSING CAMPAIGNERS` CONCERNS

 Riverside

tenant concerns get short shrift

 New research backs up what  campaigning group Carlisle Tenants` and Residents` Federation was up against in its long fight against the giant Riverside Housing Association and its continued failures.

 The research shows that overall tenant satisfaction has dropped by five percentage points to 79% since 2020 in an analysis of sector’s performance against new tenant satisfaction measures.

The  research is by data firm Housemark. It shows for the first time how landlords are performing against the Regulator of Social Housing’s (RSH) new tenant satisfaction measures (TSMs). 

Data firm HouseMark...a trade stand.

 The research also found that only 56% of tenants are satisfied with their landlord’s complaint-handling.

The data, which involves more than 100 landlords, comes ahead of the official launch of TSMs in April.

Housemark’s report  said that for the past 12 years, the English social housing sector has seen “little scrutiny” of the services it provides residents since the closure of the Tenant Services Authority, a government body that was scrapped in 2010 in the so-called ‘bonfire of the quangos’.

The Grenfell Tower disaster, which claimed the lives of 72 people in June 2017, was the catalyst for a major overhaul of regulation of the sector.

The resulting Social Housing Regulation Bill, due to receive royal assent this year, brings in a host of changes to the law, including a beefed up Housing Ombudsman and RSH

Many years prior to the Grenfell disaster, the   campaigning group Carlisle Tenants` and Residents` Federation had been attacking  Liverpool-based Riverside as a grossly-inefficient organisation which is accountable  to no one but itsself.

"Tenant concerns get short shrift from Riverside", said a federation spokesman. 

"What HouseMark has unearthed is not very different to what we have been saying for two decades", the spokesman added

    Community Voice Carlisle is the blog of Carlisle Tenants` and Residents`Federation. Information about the Federation is available on 01228 5222