Opinion: Bury bad news

Yes, we’ve got yet another C3 at a council. Who’s it this time? It’s Bury Metropolitan Borough Council. And we all knew it was coming.

Bury shut down its ALMO in 2023. Done in the right way, that may be no bad thing. But we could tell from the off it’d fall apart.

The council told Inside Housing at the time that they’d deliver an “excellent service”.

We got to the nub of the matter when Bury claimed that “significant opportunities exist to create tenure neutral and joined-up services that will remove layers of duplication and siloed working across Bury, releasing resources to deliver frontline services and investment in housing stock”.

What does that mean? It’s a word salad of meandering jargon. As a general rule, if you see the word silo, spike the report. If you’re not crystal clear at the start, the service will go off beam.

So, three years after the big promises – and even bigger sentences – what did the RSH inspectors find?

Data is poor. Decent homes figures fluctuate and the TSMs for repairs are wrong. Bury didn’t include works from sub-contractors. Tenants that were on the rough end of ASB and hate crime didn’t get the support they needed. All in all, there was a breakdown in trust between the tenants and the council. Strangely, the RSH says that Bury is good on health and safety but that there were question marks over the accuracy of the data. How can that be?

Bury is “engaging constructively” with the RSH – perhaps that’s why this is C3 and not C4.

But I think the RSH should send a stronger message here. When landlords mislead tenants about the impact of restructures or mergers there must be consequences. I’d reduce the ratings in those cases by one point. So C3 would become C4.

We’re about to get a swathe of council and association mergers. Landlords must be honest about what services will be like afterwards. It’s not that hard to predict. To coin an old Greek phrase, the RSH must tell landlords to dip their tongue in their brain before speaking.

I know that some great people work at Bury, but they have a hill to climb thanks to the council blunder in 2023. Let’s stop doing this to people. If you make a change, plan properly.

Of course, it’s true that lack of cash can get in the way of delivering good services. That’s a big factor driving change. The RSH has done many inspections now. They’re in prime position to answer a few key questions. What cash do councils actually need to make a difference? Where’s it coming from? What approaches help services get better in the real world and what stands in the way? C3 and C4 failings could be dangerous. This can’t go on.