The Regulator of Social Housing and the regulatory regime for social housing providers have come under national scrutiny after it cleared Clarion of any wrongdoing at Eastfields Estate.

The reports come as part of the latest ITV News investigation, which is focusing on bad quality housing within the sector.

One of the estates highlighted was Clarion’s Eastfields Estate. But after the Regulator said it was going to investigate, it soon found that there was no “evidence of systemic or organisational failure”.

In the latest report, ITV News said it was showing the “strange world of the social housing regulator who didn’t bother speaking to residents”.

Reporter Daniel Hewitt, who has been leading the investigation, questioned the point of the Regulator.

The report also heard from resident Kwajo Tweneboa, who reported the association to the Regulator in the first place.

He said: “This is an absolute joke. No one ever called me or any of the other residents, so I don’t know how they came to their conclusions. It is insulting.”

He added: “It’s not until you come down and you meet the residents and you see the conditions that they’re living in that you get the true picture and if someone from the Regulator would have just done that, they would have been able to see what it is that residents are trying to fight for.”

Clarion has since undertaken over 500 repairs on the Eastfields Estate and its CEO, Claire Miller, spoke to Hewitt.

She conceded that despite the ruling by the Regulator, “there is clearly a lot of work for us to do at Eastfields” and that she believed the Regulator should have more powers to be able to speak to residents and make inspections.

A spokesperson for the Regulator of Social Housing told ITV News: “The evidence available to us: from Clarion and verified by third parties; and from our own records; did not indicate that tenants were unable to raise their requests for repairs, nor that Clarion’s repairs and maintenance service, overall, was failing to respond to the needs of tenants.

“It was on this basis that we concluded the matters were not systemic, and therefore was not a breach of the current standards.

“While we did not find evidence of systemic failure which would be a breach of the standards, the evidence did show that there were individual issues in tenants’ homes and tenants who were living in poor quality accommodation. This is not acceptable.”