By Rob Gershon, HQN associate and council tenant

Headlines can be a strange thing, can’t they? They lure you in with the prospect of something juicy, perhaps contentious or provocative, only to discover the actual content is disappointingly mundane or, in the case of Simon Dudley’s interviews, morally unacceptable.

April Fool’s Day saw the gradual teasing of several interviews with Simon Dudley, who at the time was Reform UK’s housing spokesperson. All of these interviews seemed to claim they were exclusive, presumably. Perhaps Dudley had taken all the people running interviews for mugs, proffering a few slightly different words to cover the same cruel point.

Dudley made callous, inaccurate claims about building safety and its regulation, saying that people didn’t stop driving cars just because other people have died driving cars. His idea that the ‘pendulum has swung too far since Grenfell’ on building regulation was reported in the press, but there didn’t seem to be any real reflection on whether this was true.

There has since been some deeper thinking on the context of the claims by Pete Apps, and  ‘Joe Carpenter’ has commented on the wider problem of disconnection and lack of empathy, but it feels like the outlets that managed to “Gotcha!” Simon Dudley were in it more for the resignation than the implications.

It’s fair to say that Dudley’s subsequent firing as housing spokesperson for Reform UK PLC came about as a result of the backlash against his comments – particularly from Grenfell United – rather than what he said about regulation, which is surely still supported by Reform, but they rarely make the mistake of writing their policies down.

Nigel Farage, leader of the company, indicated that the matter was now closed, but the debate about what Dudley said, why he said it, and why none of his views have been challenged should not end with his dismissal.

Missing from this whole discussion has been any kind of right to reply from tenants. While Dudley’s comments naturally alluded to the Grenfell Tower fire, the outcomes from Reform UK’s support for looser safety standards would affect many other tenants and residents. Not just in the imaginary tower blocks that Dudley believed haven’t been built, but for residents already living with the ongoing uncertainty around remedial cladding work and the issues of cost and responsibility associated with it.

While the ferocity of the backlash may have claimed a scalp, it was clear from some reactions online that some people on LinkedIn shared Dudley’s views. Inside the housing sector, similar reluctance to compromise housebuilding numbers has already taken the form of an either/or debate about improving the quality of old homes versus building new ones. It also comes through in dismissing the need for flooring and furnishings in the new decent homes standard. It conflicts with the government’s intention to have minimum energy efficiency standards and expectations for ‘healthy homes’, but these things also are often framed as preventing more development to meet the ridiculous 1.5 million homes target.

It is here that there has been a failure to reflect on what the story means. Intentionally or otherwise, leaving tenant voices out of the debate has once again highlighted that across the housing press, as much as it’s a problem in government, landlords, policymaking and community building, there has not been any kind of due diligence on the morality of Dudley’s views.

Even if we leave aside his long-term involvement at Homes England, and what effect his repulsive views about the value of human life have had while he’s been in post, we should stop and reflect on what comes next as a result of this story, and what should happen next time a story is predominantly about the lives of residents but doesn’t seek for their voices to be included to provide context or balance.

It also raises uncomfortable questions about what the housing sector is supposed to do about the politics of this kind of thing. Previously looking to work with Reform UK politicians, the National Housing Federation stayed very quiet about what Dudley said, and across the housing sector there seemed to be a predominant silence for fear of ‘being political’.

At HQN’s Comms Fest event hosted by Bobbie Hough, the expectation was that we’ll see more and more Reform councillors and potentially MPs, and that while there is a degree of pragmatism involved in working with whoever gets elected, Bobbie’s point was very much that landlords have spent a great deal of time and money generating mission statements and establishing their values. It would seem incredible to throw that all away just to work with people who think it’s ok for more people to die in order to build as many homes as possible.