Housing providers under fire from EOCS

Housing associations were set up with a brief to make accommodation available and affordable for all.

They are now big businesses having largely taken over from local authorities in the role of building and letting social housing while providing the right to buy and shared ownership options.

It is implicit that they also have a social conscience but research by the End Our Cladding Scandal Campaign (EOCS) reveals that profit appears to be all.

The EOCS asked 352 housing association leaseholders caught up in the building safety crisis about their experience with their housing association landlord.

Just over half of leasehold apartment owners who took part in the survey were told their bill for building remediation work would be £20,000 plus and 35 per cent were facing a bill of over £35,000. One in ten of them were facing bankruptcy as a result and eight in 10 were worried about upcoming costs.

Shockingly, the EOCS campaign had heard of only one housing association charging shared owners based on the share of the home they own, with the majority of landlords choosing to pass on 100 per cent of building remediation costs to the leaseholder. The survey was conducted in November last year by the End Our Cladding Scandal campaign after it noted “significant and recurring concerns leaseholders were raising about housing associations”

Housing secretary Michael Gove’s latest plan to prevent leaseholders being liable for most of the building safety work should tackle some of the injustice highlighted above as it will see developers and freeholders responsible for remediation costs unless the developer cannot be found and the freeholder can’t pay. Then the leaseholder will have to pay up to £10,000 or £15,000 if they live in London.*