By the Social Housing Action Campaign

Service charges in social housing are often presented as unavoidable, technical, and tightly regulated. In reality, they are increasingly opaque, poorly understood, and rarely challenged. 

Through Freedom of Information 2000 (FoIA) requests, SHAC member and Housing Sector podcaster Ben Jenkins has sought to identify how much public money is being paid to a single housing association – GreenSquare Accord (GSA), and what, if any, scrutiny is applied when payments are processed. Ben’s research was prompted by the struggles he and his neighbours experienced with GSA, their landlord, in relation to inaccurate service charges and GSA’s resistance to addressing errors. 

The FoIA responses identified that:

• Across eleven local authorities, over £41 million was paid in Housing Benefit directly to GreenSquareAccord to cover service charges for claimants over the last three complete financial years.This however is not the national total. Several councils have yet to respond substantively, while others have refused to provide the information requested.
• In most cases, councils either do not scrutinise beyond checking whether the items are technically eligible under The Housing Benefit Regulations 2006, do not challenge service charge increases at all, or cannot evidence when, how, or why any challenge took place.

The responses collectively describe a system in which large sums of public money are routinely paid to housing associations with limited, inconsistent, and often undocumented scrutiny. 

Ben and Neighbours’ Lived Experience

Ben and his neighbours have spent several years locked in a battle with GSA to find out what the large sums demanded in service charge payments are for, and  He describes residents “paying ever-increasing service charges for services that are not simply being delivered. This ranges from basic maintenance through to supposed 24-hour emergency responses. We pay for services we do not receive. Responses are slow. Complaints drag on. Issues are rarely resolved. The pushback is always the same.”

In repeatedly trying to get the inaccuracies addressed, Ben and his neighbours have submitted Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 (LTA) Section 21 and Section 22 requests but found that “Deadlines have been missed. Complaints remain ongoing. The [LTA] Section 20 £250 consultation threshold has been bypassed through the backdating of costs. Calculations have been wrong. More importantly, GreenSquareAccord have been unable to provide the legally required evidence within the statutory timeframe. 

“What has been provided is often incomplete — screenshots instead of invoices, summaries instead of source documents. Residents have also been misadvised on next steps, being told to go straight to the First-tier Tribunal without any meaningful offer of mediation or engagement.”

He concludes: “We know the maths is wrong, we know Section 20 and Section 22 obligations are not being adhered to. We know charges are backdated. We know services are not being delivered. This is not speculation. This is lived experience.”

The Research

For full transparency, Ben documented and published his research, the methodology he used, and all the responses he received on his website. GSA was offered a right to reply to the findings set out in Ben’s article, but as with previous requests for comment, no substantive response was provided by the time of publication.

Commenting on the research, Suzanne Muna, SHAC Secretary and Cofounder said: “Ben’s research is hugely important and very significant. It fits closely with the work being done within SHAC to end the service charge abuse being perpetrated by landlords, whether the victims are the tenants and residents who pay service charges directly, or the taxpayer who is being fleeced through unscrutinised Housing Benefits payments – it is a national scandal on an industrial scale.

“Our own research is revealing that the pattern identified in Ben’s case study does not just apply to GSA and the councils they operate within, but to all housing associations and councils across the UK.

“We have repeatedly appealed to the Government to use the evidence we and members like Ben have collated over the last five years and clean up the wholly unregulated world of landlord service charges, but they consistently and wilfully turn a blind eye. 

“This, despite claiming a desire to eliminate fraud within the welfare benefits system. They will focus on individual wrongdoing, but ignore it when it is done by corporate bodies. We will not give up our campaign until they finally take action.”

SHAC is currently undertaking further research in preparation for a strategic legal challenge against the Government over unregulated landlord service charges. 

Those who are affected can contribute their evidence here and can find out more about our campaign here.

Ben Jenkins is a GSA leaseholder living in Oxford. He publishes The Housing Sector blog and accompanying podcast which brings together real stories, lived experiences, and professional perspectives from across the housing world.

SHACi s a campaign group linking tenants, renters, shared owners, and leaseholders living in social and private housing. It campaigns to improve the conditions of homes and neighbourhoods, and to reduce the commercialisation of housing.