TENANTS`VOICES NEED TO BE PROPERLY HEARD

  Grenfell sparks demand for

old-fashioned democracy

After Grenfell nothing will be the same was the claim by many people after the disastrous tower fire with its 72 dead victims.

Now, a year later and after the appalling allegations at this week`s public enquiry into the disaster, that forecast is proving increasingly accurate.

Nowhere more accurate than the growing demand to ensure that tenants` voices are properly heard in a democratic way in future say two London tenants` leaders, Pat Turnbull and Ron Hollis.

In an article they condemn the failure of the landlord, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea  to engage with its  tenants at Grenfell .They say that there has been similar failures throughout the country by other local authorities and by housing associations.

One association, the Liverpool-based Riverside Housing Associations is notorious for these failures. Riverside owns 50,000 homes and is one of the country`s biggest housing associations.

Its many failures have been well documented over the years in posts on this blog which is published by Carlisle Tenants` and Residents` Federation.

Riverside`s failures led to the heating scandal at Longtown, near Carlisle,  where tenants faced with grossly-inflated £4,000 heating bills were forced to chose between heating or eating.

The article by Pat Turnbull and Ron Hollis is in the influential social housing publication Inside Housing.  It says: “Over the past 20 years there has been a gradual crumbling away of support for Tenants` and Residents` Associations  and the landlord-wide Tenants` Federations, which enable tenants to share knowledge and speak as a collective on matters of joint concern.

“Landlords – councils as well as housing associations – increasingly favour ‘consumer-style’ approaches to capturing what tenants are saying, such as ‘focus groups’ and ‘scrutiny panels.’

“But these are a poor fit for the landlord-tenant relationship.

Not only are participants often self-selected or chosen by the landlord, there are many cases where tenants are told that their role is not to raise the views of their neighbours, nor to be accountable to them.

“Ultimately, if the concerns are unwelcome, their views can easily be dismissed as those of just one tenant - the ‘usual suspect’, perhaps.”

The article concludes: “Tenant panels are no replacement for old-fashioned democratic organisations”.

  Carlisle Tenants` and Residents` Federation publishes this blog. Information about the Federation is available on 01228 522277 or 01228 532803