Gove: Why I named and shamed housing associations
Michael Gove the Housing Secretary spoke of his naming and shaming of housing associations for their failures to fix some of the resulting problems for tenants in an interview this week.
He said: “I don’t relish writing letters because it’s an acknowledgement that people have been let down,”
He regularly hears from constituents whose housing providers are not maintaining properties the way they should: “Even [for] issues like basic repairs, it’s a trial to get the housing association to respond.”
The overwhelming majority of people who work in housing are “highly professional” and most housing associations “do a good job”, he said during the interview with Inside Housing`s James Riding, pictured.
. “But we’ve got to focus on failure in order to drive it down and to help tenants.” . But what if it is not enough to push landlords to address their issues? “We’ll listen to what tenants are saying. And if there is cause for concern, and the need to do more, then we’ll do more.”
Carlisle Tenants` and Residents` Federation whch publishes this blog has campaigned for many years against similar failures to those mentioned by Mr Gove by Riverside Housing Association, the giant Merseyside organisation.
Mr Gove said he took inspiration on housing from past politicians such as fMichael Heseltine, Nye Bevan and Harold Macmillan:
Lord Heseltine (Margaret Thatcher’s environment secretary) for his “focus on urban regeneration, what we now call levelling up”,
Mr Macmillan, who under Sir Winston Churchill galvanised the private and public sectors to build 300,000 homes in a year, a feat unsurpassed by the current government – even if some of those homes were “not of sufficient quality”,
And Mr Bevan, a Labour Party titan under Clement Attlee, because in his time, housing was part of health and “the links between poor-quality housing and poor health have become more apparent and quite rightly risen up the political agenda”.
Mr Bevan also recognised “the aesthetic quality of homes” and believed it was “the right of working people to live in and to be surrounded by beauty”, he added.
Community Voice Carlisle is the blog of Carlisle Tenants` and Residents`Federation. Information about the Federation is available on 01228 52
