By Alistair McIntosh, HQN CEO.

Tenants and landlords faced questions put by Clive Betts’ committee yesterday. Here are some of the highlights.

Social housing is a fact-free zone

The inquiry makes no bones that it’s in response to the ITV expose of poor standards. So, Clive asked the obvious question: how widespread are the problems in the sector? No one was able to answer him. And I can’t either. We just don’t have the facts. This is the first thing any new regulatory regime has to fix.

How many times did we hear the term ‘anecdotally’? It’s not good enough. What we do know is that the South London MP Florence Eshalomi says that 70% of her case work is housing. So, this is a big deal.

There’s a yawning chasm between tenants and landlords

Tenants are not fans of never-ending rent increases running ahead of inflation. And you can see why, given the way that fuel and food costs are soaring.

By way of contrast, landlords bemoaned losses from previous rent cuts and pointed to big bills on the way for safety, decarbonisation and regeneration. Both sides did agree that more grant was the way to square the circle. We can but hope. Clare Miller was clear that Clarion only did commercial work to make good shortfalls in public funding.

Private sector horses running to form

In many sectors new players without legacy reputations offer to solve all our problems. Indeed, in banking there’s evidence that the disrupter banks are in fact better.

At every turn L&G presented themselves as the champions of customer care. Will they actually deliver on promises and will they grow in housing? Time will tell. Across all of their streams L&G has ten million (gulp) customers!

David Vs Goliath goes into extra time

Professor Ian Cole of South Yorkshire Housing stressed the need to keep services local. His association won’t be changing its name to Transcend any time soon, he quipped.

Ian wanted associations to get back to combating homelessness: “If you play fast and loose with your origins you lose purpose.” Clare Miller was convinced that she runs local services across 170 council areas – whilst, she says, the benefit of scale means Clarion can do more for residents. Who’s right on this one?

The past is another country

At one time we’d have sent the inspectors in to get the answer. But no landlord was calling for this, or the return of the Tenant Services Authority or even the National Tenant Voice.

Pat Turnbull of the London Tenants Federation did put the case for tenant bodies akin to unions. But there was no opportunity for the two sides to come together over beer and sandwiches.

While the landlords sat opposite the MPs in the House of Commons, where were the tenants? They were stuck at home dialing in over Zoom. Maybe there were good reasons for this.

But, as they say on Succession, the optics weren’t good. Was this evidence of an imbalance in power? Work to do.