Peace in his time

The chief executive of Britain’s largest registered social landlord has spoken out for the first time against anti-transfer campaigners who he says tried to portray the association as a “rapacious landlord”.

Michael Lennon took charge at Glasgow Housing Association almost a year ago. He is still angry about the campaigners even though they have now called off long-running efforts to undermine the RSL, which took over 80,000 council homes in March 2003.

“I’m mad as hell about the disgraceful campaigns that have been targeted toward vulnerable people in different parts of the city,” he says. “In some areas, where the houses are literally crumbling, they have told people we are going to be a rapacious landlord that will knock down homes and sell the land they live on.”

Earlier this month, the Campaign Against Housing Stock Transfer, the most outspoken of the GHA’s critics both before and since the transfer took place, declared that the “war” between itself and GHA was over.

The group said it intended to get involved in consultations between local housing organisations and GHA over its £5bn plan to resurrect the city’s social housing.

Lennon says he will listen to any “constructive views” the campaigners have to offer.

However, he adds that the declaration of peace came because the campaign was “largely irrelevant, as their core argument has evaporated”. And he says that in future negotiations, GHA will refuse to deal with campaigners who try to “use our tenants as fodder for their fringe political interests”.

The campaigners had plagued GHA for the past 16 months, latching onto perceived failings in the RSL’s performance: for example, a larger-than-planned £100m surplus at the end of the first year of operating prompted fierce criticism that GHA was failing to improve its homes quickly enough.

Spiralling rent arrears were held up as more evidence that GHA was less than competent.

And the revelation last December that GHA planned to review the long-term future of 26,000 homes, in addition to the 14,000 it intends to demolish as part of its business plan, caused widespread concern.

At the end of the year we wouldn’t give ourselves top marks, but I think it’s a pretty solid pass

Lennon says: “We don’t pretend everything has gone right but with a project on this scale – the biggest housing project in Europe – if everything had gone right you’d have had to be a bit suspicious.

“There were things that jumped up and bit us during the course of the year: we lost control of some core services, our arrears got away from us during the middle of the year and we didn’t spend as much as expected. At the end of the year we wouldn’t give ourselves top marks, but I think it’s a pretty solid pass.”

GHA’s surplus is still expected to be about £100m by the end of this financial year and Lennon expects calls for the RSL to do more to continue, at least in the short term.

But he is quite happy to have that kind of money in the bank and says one of his biggest challenges is to “manage” the expectations of tenants who hoped to see instant improvements. “We’re spending £110m this year and there has been no money of this consequence spent on housing in the city for years,” he points out.

A decision on demolitions has been deferred until GHA receives the results of a survey that will project the numbers likely to need social housing in future.

If, as expected, the survey indicates that demand will continue to decline, Lennon

hopes to demolish more than the bottom-line figure of 14,000 homes. Sitting tenants will be given “substantial opportunities” to choose a new home, he says, in what sounds like a tacit admission that some will be rehoused outside their neighbourhood.

The rising arrears that threatened to undermine GHA earlier in the year have been brought under control, he says. In July, arrears fell for the fourth month in a row.

“There was an element of trial to see whether GHA would be a soft touch,” says Lennon. “We want to create a payment culture, but where people won’t pay we have an obligation to take action.”